Keel bolt nightmare

[Marathon1150]

Originally Posted by hd002e

The photos did not show up. Can you try again?

The photos show up on my screen. They are also posted in the "Member Galleries" under Marathon1150.

Also, if you hover on "Photos" in the tabbed menu at the top of the home page, the two photos will show up there too.

Let me know if you are stuck and I can try to send them to you. I also took photos of the bolt that we were able to extract, but I have not been able to locate it. The amount and strength of the bolt was impressive but sadly it was useless without a head.

[barnakiel]

What progress on this project?


Have you cleaned up the rust? What have you found beneath it?


barnakiel

[CHM]

I have done this myself in an 1988 Moorimgs 432. You are looking at a cast iron keel with galvanized bolts and washers. I bought mine from Beneteau. I used a 3/4 inch impact wrench with impact sockets and the bolts came out relatively easily. Also, the bolts were in pretty good shape except for the heads and washers. I used anti-seize on each one as they were installed. Good luck with this. The bolts in the first photo don’t look too bad actually. Even if you can’t replace all of them, do what you can until you’re in a better place if you needed to drop the keel.

[JBsurfin]

Originally Posted by Pete7

The first thing to do is get an angle grinder with a wire brush attachment and clean up the rust around the bolts, nuts and backing plates so you can see what is going on and give yourself a change to get the right sized socket on the nuts.

Also were is the water coming from, the bilge looks wet.

Pete

Before jumping on with a grinder, perhaps a wire wheel and spraying the heads with a one of the various rust converter products? I've used VHT and had good success with it.. Hopefully the heads are not softened to a poit where they just twist off. Which may be a better advantage and just drop the keel and then work them out.

[capt jgw]

Originally Posted by Allied39

I am going to address one point only.
Building a support for a keel is incredibly easy and requires very few tools.
A hand held circular saw and a cordless drill.
Materials are some 6x2 and 3x2 timbers. Dry wall screws.
The most important thing to remember in designing keel cradle is that you are simply maintaining it in an upright position. You do not have to support it in a 45 degree angle. All weight (force) is straight down.
Two or three or three or four 6x2 flat on the ground depending on dimensions. uprights atatched to the 6x2 and gusseted with 3x2 timbers as needed
Incredibly simple (almost childlike in simplicity) and almost free, especially in comparison to the other expenses you are about to incur.
Have fun!

Just what I did when I dropped my keel a few years ago. Built it of 4x4's and 2x4's and 1/4" threaded rod. Only had about $20 in it. I had the yard set the boat on my 4x4's then built the uprights and removed the keel bolt nuts. Then the lift came back and lifted the hull off the keel. Easy peasy. Whatever Columbia used for sealant in 1969 was still soft and gooey and the parts separated easily. If yours used 5200 or similar, you may have to run a saw through the joint to make it let go. That stuff can hold the keel on with no bolts at all.

[capt jgw]

Originally Posted by svHyLyte

A. The bolts are high strength steel not stainless;

B. The bolts are "Dacrotized", i.e. coated with a finish similar to galvanizing but thinner, smoother, stronger and more long lasting which is a European industry standard.

C. The look of your keel bolts is about what one would expect given their age. Note, however, that "rust" is about 600% greater than the volume of steel that has "rusted" or oxidized so looks are deceiving and not an indicator of the condition of the underlying bolt heads. The rust can be wire brushed off, if necessary the sides of the bolt heads can be ground somewhat to get flat surfaces that will accept a socket and they can be unscrewed. Ninety-nine point nine percent of the time they will come out clean and dry in which case the seal between the keel and the keelson is intact. Note that the bolts are torqued to about 150 lbs-ft so loosening them takes some effort, preferably a long "breaker bar". The new bolts should be inserted through new square washers with a modest amount of sealant on the 1/2" or so of the bolts above the threads--Not On The Threads! Once in place a torqued, cover the bolts and washers with a glob of wax from a toilet seal. That replaces the epoxy sealant that Beneteau used in the original build but will last longer as it isn't brittle but can easily be removed if one wishes to inspect the bolts at some future date.

D. BeneteauUSA has a technical bulletin on the replacement of the keel bolts which can be done, one-by-one, in a star patterns, with the boat in the water without difficulty. You can contact Ward Richardson at BeneteauUSA for a copy of the bulletin or PM me and I will email you a copy.

E. This subject has been discussed on the forum frequently. Do a search (above, right) on "Beneteau Keel Bolts" for the various discussions. The job isn't hard, just tedious


FWIW...

When the boat is first hauled look for water seeping out of the joint. If it does, you'll know it's leaking. If the water looks rusty, you'll know the bolts and or keel are compromised. You can base your plan on that. I dropped mine because of the rusty water. When I pulled the nuts off the bolts I found found the tops of the galvanized mild steel bolts rusted to the point they barely held the nuts, and one of the bolts broke off in the joint. That one was the source of the rust.

[capt jgw]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

I guess this is not really helpful to the particular case, but this is exactly why I have always thought that I can't afford inexpensive boats (as the Germans say, "Ich kann mir keine billige Schuhe leisten").


This is an egregious construction detail. You're doing to need to put the boat on the hard and remove the keel, and do this all over again. If you can get those bolts out/off without breaking them, you will be doing great. But then how do you redo them?


I don't know how it's done with iron keels, but lead keel usually have J bolts molded into the lead. So you have nuts and washers on top, not bolts. All this hardware needs to be best quality 316 stainless because it is almost impossible to replace the J bolts later without complete remaking the keel. How this is done I don't know -- are they regular threaded bolts? Or lag bolts? Will they be rusted into the keel?


Keels falling off boats is like wings falling off airplanes. You just can't risk it. I know this is not good news, but you really need to get the boat out of the water and do a proper job on this, preferably with help from a good surveyor, even if you have to fly him in.


Thread drift: Lest anyone be feeling smug about having a lead keel -- these have drawbacks as well. I just had mine sandblasted -- what a PITA! It creates hazardous waste, needs tenting, and is a total PITA to paint. Everything is a compromise.

The keel on my 1969 Columbia 36 is lead, but the keel bolts are hanger bolts (similar to lag bolts but with threaded tops to accept nuts). Apparently they used a harder alloy of lead to make that work. It's the only model I know of done that way, and I've never heard of one falling off.

[capt jgw]

Originally Posted by Cheechako

Yeah, I can't see a reason why not SS. SS is mostly steel. Not sure which is less corrosive paired with Cast iron.... but probably cast iron? and if that's the case it's a lot larger mass, so maybe SS would be good?

Mild steel is stronger and more elastic than ss. If course, once it rusts away a little it isn't stronger anymore. Actually the best material is bronze, but it's crazy expensive and you have to go bigger to get the same strength so nobody much uses it. But it just doesn't corrode in this application.

[sailorladd]

Stainless steel is a brittle material and I would not trust keel bolts made from either 304SS or 316SS... When I ran my little boat yard and was involved in fitting/maintaining keels and boats that had bolt on keels, most of the bolts were made of silica bronze, some even galvanized steel. Stainless steel does not like being deprived of oxygen, and keelbolts submerged underwater will eventually pit and lose all their integrity...

I never did have to remove a keel and replace it's bolts.... that could take some preparation... and if I were considering doing this I would most likely chock the entire boat up off the ground/floor enough that you could slide hydraulic jacks underneath, and when the bolts inside the bilge were exposed and freed with an angle grinder, the jacks would lower the keel clear of the boat hull.. you would need to be able to work on the keel without the boat in the way...

One would not be able to use the same position where these old bolts entered the hull...
You have two options....One is to order a new keel from the company that built the boat, the other would be to rig up a good drill press above the old keel and drill as many new holes as is needed in new positions, and tap the holes for rugged threading and turn in new silica bronze keel bolts, using an epoxy as a "Loctite" system... obviously a mock up of the new bolt positions would be needed for inside the keel bilge, the old holes plugged and glassed in and new holes drilled..

The former may be the cheapest, as you will obviously get a good trade from your old lead keel...Good luck and keep us all posted..

[BBill]

I'm not trying to step on anyone's toes but...the bolt heads can look perfect and the bolt be 50% hourglassed at the hull/keel joint. Heads can also look bad and the bolts are perfect. Then SS crevis corrosion is a known and possible hidden problem. It varies from boat to boat and isn't exclusive to iron or lead keels either. 25 yr old bolt heads that look good tell you only one thing...the bolts heads are good. Otherwise you are rolling the dice if you don't pull the bolts.

[GarthGregory]

My Beneteau 473 - build year 2005 - very definitely has S / Steel keel Bolts and S/S washers into the cast Keel - I am not sure if the keel is Cast Iron or Steel , probably Cast Iron . Good luck with the work - sight unseen , I would take it off and re-bed keel etc .

[Shaneesprit]

First thing to do is add your choice of Lube to the bolt and let it soak.
Second get a six sided socket and bar and work out the most comfortable way of applying pressure to the bolt, in doing this imagine what the perfect tool set up for this will be? Now go and buy the best tools you can find ideally a Snap-On socket but what ever you do don’t buy cheap tools as that will reduce the chances of success considerably.
Applying pressure to undo the bolt, in a disorganised manner is likely to round off the bolt head! If this happens there are specific sockets for griping damaged bolts.
Third either take a big hammer and squarely hit the head of the bolt very hard - shock is always a good start OR your using an Impact gun?

Only do one bolt at a time

My dad ( a highly skilled mechanic) was trying to undo a bearing nut and struggling and asked me to have a look ( he is getting old ) so I fetched socket and a torque multiplier and smoothly removed the nut without any effort at all, he had never seen a torque multiplier - the nut was removed due to the smooth and immense pressure applied by the tool, so choosing the tooling is paramount to success.

[Manateeman]

Hi. You can buy silicon bronze threaded rod in short sections or thread the rod yourself. Extra heavy nuts, which are worth the money, are available, so is plate, so you can make your own backing plates. I would reinforce the hull with 1808 set in epoxy. You want to spread the loads.
Tef-gel the threads and you will never have problems removing the nuts again.
I had silicon bronze chainplates with button head bolts , extra heavy nuts, bronze ,in hull, backing plates. 30 years later, the threads looked like new.
Iron and steel do not fare well in salt water. Stainless is steel.
Go to a TIG welding web and see why one needs argon on the inside of stainless tubing while it is being welded on the outside.
Fix it once, correctly, and sleep tight.
Hope your project works out well.
Kind regards, Mark the manatee

[mitiempo]

I don't think bronze bolts are a good choice for an iron keel.

Excellent for a lead keel though.

[mitiempo]

Here is an example of a stainless keel bolt that has suffered from crevice corrosion. The portion that was visible inside the boat looked good.