Yeah man you mine as well just do the whole transom. It will be more difficult for try to piece that back together and it will not be as strong as it was.

A good and fair glass guy can replace a transom like that for 1500 bucks. I just had the stringers, transom, and gel coat done in my Excalibur for 3100 but i had already removed the entire transom and prepped some other areas for glass. Took the guy 3 days. I recommend removing it yourself and then giving it to a glass guy, worked well for me.

By all means if you want to do it yourself go for it, i wanted to do mine myself but i dont have a heated workspace and its to cold to lay glass in MA right now. I want to boat next summer when it warms up not lay glass :)

Yeah glassdave and a few others here have made valid points to why I should just replace the entire thing. That's what I've decided to do. Ordering a bunch of materials from US Composites today. Steve is a very top notch, friendly guy to work with. Figure I have some time this winter, but I will be cutting it close as our spring comes quite fast here in Arizona. Either way I'm more focused on the details and final product. Not going to rush this just to be out on the lake early. Boating weather just went away last week, as we are blessed with a very long season.

Are you going to raise the drive height borgie?

FYI - 5200/4200 literally lasts years after opened if you just put It in the freezer promptly when done using it. Just bring it out a couple hours before you want to use it again to let it get to rm temp and youre good to go.

I would like to raise it two inches or so, as I agree the drive is way too deep and I'm not realistically going to buy a $14,000 drive with a short lower to accomplish this ever as that would be pretty foolish. Not building a big dollar boat here, just a simple n/a 600hp job. The transom work doesn't scare me, although the skin work on the outside is intimidating, not gonna lie. Do you think its a no brainer decision now that I'm doing a complete transom?

The only tought part about the outside is the final painting- you could farm that out cheaper than buying the gun. Grind your current opening on a nice angle about 2-3 inches out from the edge before you in stall the inner transom. Once the inner is in you can clean up anything that squeezed out. Precut some cloth 1708 the size of the original opening and cut at least 9-10 more gradually getting bigger until you have a piece the size of your ground out area. I think it took 10 on my last and I installed it layer by later all at once in under an hour. Ground it smooth the next day and was amazed at how good it looked. No filler was needed. Shoot with gel or paint and start measuring for the cut out.

I'm not clear on the outer skin coat you are speaking of. DO NOT just cut out the transom .You clean the wood from the inside ,leaving the outer layup alone. Maybe I read it wrong ,but that is what it sounded like you intended to do

Yes I'm not planning on cutting the outside(except for the new drive cutout, if that's what I end up doing). Just speaking of the exterior hull fiberglass and filling to move the x dimension up a couple of inches to gain some speed. Seems like that mod is a no brainer in a boat with a deep drive as I'm already doing a complete transom replacement.

Life Caulk is a calk. It's used for bedding transducers, thru-hulls etc. Life Seal is a sealand/adhesive, sort of like a silicone. Life Caulk can be bottom painted over. I you use lifeseal, it can react with the aluminum.

I usually use weather strip adhesive or bellows adhesive to mount the new seal on the transom assembly. Usually install dry.

Exactly. Never saw a problem when done just like that. Even on 20 year old boats we restored no signs of water past that rubber seal.

Do you know what your propshaft depth is now and is it alpha or bravo? You just need to make sure you aren't going so high that you won't be able to get on plane.

Below is a link to my transom job, pages 1-3 primarily. Note how we left the 2 upper holes from the old transom assem outer skin to measure up 2" from as reference.

http://forums.boatfreaks.org/showthread.php?t=12595