Rusty keel bolt nuts

[seashanty2]

I’ve scoured the forums and the threads I’ve read confused me even more so I’m hoping that posting specifically for this situation with pictures will help me.

I bought a Ranger 26 - I really liked how it looked and the price was very cheap for an in water sailable boat with a marina slip. The main concern that the previous owner was upfront about was that the nuts on the keel bolts needed to be replaced sooner rather than later because they did not match the bolts and they are corroded because of it. I was told it could be done relatively easily and even in the water myself. Now I’m about to do this repair, I’ve searched online on how to take this on and results were plenty on both sides. Many for do it yourself in the water and many for hauling out the boat and dropping the keel. I haven’t seen any thread specifically for a Ranger 26 so I hope this will clear it up.

Attached are pics of 2 of 10 bolts but they all are around this condition with the cracked looking nut being the worst one. I was told the bolts are SS and the nuts and washers are mild steel or other non SS metal.

[barnakiel]

Yep. Now that she is yours, you are removing these one by one, checking the thread below, then applying new washers and nuts. You may opt for custom oversize washers to spread the load better.


In our boat, there is a coat of sika under the washers. And mind now to break the bolts when tightening the nuts. It is easy to go with too much force.


b.

[wingless]

Welcome to the forum.

Note that stainless 18-8 or 316, have tensile strength less than Grade 5 fasteners, so where high strength is required stainless is not the best choice.

The rust stains on the hull could / should be removed prior to assembly, using both chemicals, like FSR, possibly combined w/ mechanical removal. I like to use a hand held utility knife blade as a scraping tool in those situations.

Ensure the fastener is properly sealed to prevent raw water ingress.

[dfelsent]

I did this for my Redwing 30. I had oversize rectangular washers water jet cut by a local shop for short money.
Then used sika under the washers and used a torque wrench to avoid over tightening.

[jimbunyard]

Those bolts look like stainless. The nuts shown are in such bad shape that removing them may mess up the threads so that the bolts need to be replaced regardless of if they're bad or not. Perhaps it would be better to use a nut splitter on any that are as bad as those shown in the pictures.

As for where you do it, removing them one at a time in the water is fine; they need to be replaced anyway, if after replacing them you find that the bolts need replacing too, then you can address that issue seperately.

[gfrazier]

You can use a nut splitter which will make the job of removing the nuts much easier.

[Mlp48]

Oh.. that's something to be dealt with ! A good college friend had a Paceship daysailer and had showed me a similar situation in his boat but perhaps worse. His boat was out of the water and in a yard. I happened by and said, "Fix these asap !" but he had a "scorching hot date" that night and had the boat launched. He called me days later to ask, "Do YOU how to find a lost keel ?" Despite a lot of trying, it was lost. I always wanted to know just how the boat did not sink and also how the boat performed. Loick Peyron is something of a hero/genius to me, as he apparently lost his boat's keel in the South Atlantic but finished the race in the north.. either the UK or Europe. I recall watching his progress as the race was finishing.

[er9]

what about carefully slicing the sides of the nuts 3/4 of the way through the sides with a dremel and a small cutoff wheel then carefully tapping a small, thin cold chisel in the cut to pop them off. looks like they may come off easy.

[barnakiel]

Yep. At leas two others did. Last time VD started, Safran lost her keel on the start day. She came back to port as if nothing happened. And another one was the Pindar that I think sailed the last 100 miles or so, keel-less.


The trickery is these racing boats are so flat that they will sail like an Optimist dinghy. As long as you do not tip it over, she is fine.


However, a more cslassic hull will capsize immediately. Remember Chikirafiki.


barnakiel

[vpbarkley]

Just pour Coca Cola on them and they will be as new! Sorry, couldn't resist.

A nut splitter is probably the best approach.

[Mike Banks]

Use a nut splitter to remove break apart any nuts that do not come off easily. They SHOULD have been out on using white water pump or tap grease--to facilitate their safe removal--but common sense if a scarce commodity in some quarters. Considering that keel bolts need to be sequentially drawn every five years or so, one might imagine it was standard procedure. In years gone by, white lead paint was often used, or "French Putty" as a mixture of white lead and boiled Linseed oil was often termed.

When you get a nut off, I put an O ring on the hull surface inside, about 3mm gauge, and diameter so it is about double the bolt diameter. Put some tap grease on it to tack it in place, cover it with a heavy oversize washer, then use waterproof grease on the threads and top of the washer where the new nut will come home. This will make the connections waterproof and secure as far as bilge water is concerned..

Once you have fixed the nut problem, it might pay you to take the vessel out of the water or lash it to a pole on a tidal careening grid. There you can pull the bolts and check them one at a time, looking for crevice corrosion. I do NOT like stainless steel bolts at all under water and for a lead keel I like Monel or silicon bronze. For an iron keel, strangely enough, I like Sheridized iron bolts. That is a kind of galvanizing used for the most severe weather and ice conditions. Just get used to the idea of replacing them every few years--five or so if they look rusty at all.

[Dougtiff]

The idea of PULLING the keel bolt's are generally not praticle[i don't know of anyone, including my self that does] it, Most keel bolt's CANNOT be PULLED, because they are not threaded into the ballast keel, but have a hook on the bottom, or are threaded into a nut, located in a pocket, and there is nothing wrong with S.S., as long as part of it is exposed to oxygen, indeed, even S.S. that is not exposed to oxygen if 316 will live quite happily with out crevis corrosion, I.E., my Mahogany planked Sail boat, which is 30 year's old and surveyed every 2 year's for insurance coverage, we pull a half a dozen from stem to stern, and the fastenings have very little corrrosion.

[RaymondR]

You will have trouble getting a nut splitter in there and driving the studs side ways is not a good idea anyway.

The way to remove the nuts is to drill down through them vertically either side of the stud then use a cold chisel to drive down vertically through the drilled holes to split the nuts. Do them one at a time and coat everything liberally with Sikaflex and she's good for another twenty years.

[jimbunyard]

What kind of 'nut splitter' do you have, how does it 'drive the stud sideways' and why will it be 'difficult to get in there'? You must be using some kind of esoteric, Australian, make-things-difficult nutsplitter...

This is what we use over here...don't see the difficulty, at least none as hard as accurately drilling down through rusted nuts and then splitting them with a chisel, seems pretty obvious to me which has a better chance of screwing up (haha) threads.

I'd call 'drill and split' more a method of last resort, but hey, I like to do things the fast easy way if I can...
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[RaymondR]

Originally Posted by jimbunyard

What kind of 'nut splitter' do you have, how does it 'drive the stud sideways' and why will it be 'difficult to get in there'? You must be using some kind of esoteric, Australian, make-things-difficult nutsplitter...

This is what we use over here...don't see the difficulty, at least none as hard as accurately drilling down through rusted nuts and then splitting them with a chisel, seems pretty obvious to me which has a better chance of screwing up (haha) threads.

I'd call 'drill and split' more a method of last resort, but hey, I like to do things the fast easy way if I can...
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As a permanent live-aboard I find it inconvenient to carry every tool in the catalogue however when I did use a nut splitter decades ago I recollect you fastened it onto the nut from the side and beat it with a hammer to split the nut through the flat.

However I have removed corroded on nuts in some pretty tight places, and of a size you would never split with a splitter, short of one beating it with a 14 pound sledge hammer.

Using the drill down through and chisel technique I have successfully split large nuts in deep recesses into six pieces to remove them. Sort of thing us old timers in the bush used to do when we only had a small toolbox of tools to get by with rather than a warehouse full.