Guys and Gals,
Is easiest way to find a leak in my flat bottom to fill it and see where water leaks out or is there an easier way?
has anyone ever tried to use a flex seal like product to paint the bottom of their boat? I have a floor built in it so I don’t stand on the actual boat. Any ideas would be great thanks in advance.
You can start by filling with an inch or two of water. But don’t fill too much as that can cause more harm than good.
I don’t know how well flex seal would work. I have used a high quality adhesive silicone in the past to seal a loose rivet I couldn’t get to the back of. That worked well for a couple years.
Flex seal is junk for this purpose.
I’ll have some time later today and I’ll share my recommendation.
The prep work and applying Sikaflex
I would thoroughly inspect all hoses and fittings first. Plastic hoses/coupler/fittings all can degrade/crack/loosen over time and are very common as far as leak points.
With the inside of the boat DRY, put it in the water and look for hose leaks, checking at all combinations of livewell settings. On my rig, I used an underwater camera…..just lowered it onto the bilge and scanned around. it didn’t take long to find a cracked fitting that was peeing water into the bilge. .
Flex seal is junk for this purpose.
Agree! Flex-Seal is junk for everything, even sealing gutter seams as advertised. Once the sun hits it, it starts to crumble and fall apart. Temp fix at best….
-J.
This guy likes J-B Weld!
Darkness, trouble light and crawling would be my first choice.
If not found, then add water.
Only thing that Flex Seal is good for is clogging up a persons lungs.
I’ll just say many other methods have been applied to my boat’s over the years a few come to mind: silicone caulk, JB weld, flex seal, etc. No success on cracks, Seams, or rivets.
I’ve had areas welded with success, but not without warping, that was a large gash. Have not had rivets welded, they tend to spiderweb and crank, so I’m told.
Weld works, and some areas lend themselves better to weld than others.
Here’s my suggestion if you find your leak to be in the aluminum hull.
I had a whole row of rivets loose and I stopped the leak thus far.
First, peen the outer diameter of the rivet into the hull so the rivet no longer is loose and free to move as the boat pounds through the water. Next wire brush on a drill clean all paint from rivet and immediate area. Apply Sikaflex. Let dry (I mine 4 days since i did it in March this spring.
I looked at the rivets just before I started typing this and took pictures.
Mind you, this boat was on the rainy river as the I’ve went out, and when I got back from that trip I fished constant on the ice laden sippi until spring.
I’m not nice to my boat.
I beach her often.
Ran over ice and debris umteen times since I applied Sikaflex.
The last two weeks it seems like my boat is leaking more. Today I confirmed that of all the rivets I did this spring, all but one look exactly like it did when I applied it. To my amazement, the sticky Sikaflex strings left from pulling my finger off the caulk were still there 6 months later. Only one missing the Sikaflex, and there’s a clear gash… So I’m not surprised.
I don’t know how many days on the water my boat has seen since applying, but likely an average of 5 days/week.
It’s a testament.
Btw, this was recommended to me by an outside contract fabricator who is an expert welder of aluminum, I do lots of business for him and decided to ask him if he’d be interested in welding rivets. He handed me a half used bottle of Sikaflex with an ink pen stuck in the top and mentioned he hasn’t used than bottle in quite a while. He had put it in his boat and was very happy. I put that old bottle on mine and here’s the photos taken today.
P.s., follow the guys advice on finding the leaks in hoses and such. Maybe i typed that up for nothing, but I’d consider using this stuff on anything now.
CameraZOOM-20160809162823107.jpg
CameraZOOM-20160809162754413.jpg
CameraZOOM-201608091627544131.jpg
I put a transducer on years ago and didn’t seal the holes that the screw went into very well and it took on a decent amount of water. I was amazed at how a pinhole could bring in that much water. Fixed it and it stopped leaking. So check your transducer job if you have one in it.
It sounds like a lot of work but have you ever thought about putting in new rivets, its not that hard. It can be done by removing the floor then grinding the rivet head, then take a small punch and drive whats left of the rivet out.
You can buy the small matching handheld anvil and hammer die. One is held by a friend after the rivet is put in the hole, he holds it on the rivet head and the hammer die is then put on the rivet and smacked with a 2 lb. ballpeen hammer by you. When you do it this way the rivet swells and tightens against the wall of the hole and pulls both pieces together at one time. Aluminum rivets are relatively soft and riveting isn’t so hard and its permanent and is what the factory does.
For the welded seams Jb weld does work good in my opinion, but the metal has to be clean. I tried to use Jb weld quick, it sets up quick and wasn’t satisfied so I went back to the slow cure type and its work for me several times on different things.
Got a story for ya about Jb weld and this is true. I talked to a guy who worked at a notable local small engine shop. A Wisconsin Robin 4 cylinder came in with a blown cylinder wall. They couldn’t find another block to rebuild this engine right and told the owner that the only way they could do it was Jb weld it and hope that it held, he said ok do it.
This was an old motor and on a piece of construction equipment that was used often. Well the engine blew again a couple years later so the guy took it back to the same shop and they got inside it to see what happened and if they could repair it again. They open up the crankcase and when the engine blew this time it wasn’t the Jb weld that broke, the engine broke in another spot and this time in a spot that couldn’t be repaired. Im a believer in Jb weld but it has to be on clean surfaces and it will stick and also holds good. Its my go to repair if I can’t weld it or don’t want too.
Is it a beater jon/duck hunting boat or a nice rig?
Dark and light works good and so does the fill and drain method. I normally prefer the latter. Dry shop towels and permanent markers are nice to mark stuff once it’s isolated, so you don’t forget where the leak or leaks were once you drain it and stuff dries out.
After having marginal success with most sealant products, I’d highly suggest leak proof/blind/closed end pop rivets if it is a rivet problem. There’s a company bw marine products or tenaquip that sells adthane sealant and I’ve had pretty good luck with that. It comes in 300ml silicone tubes for a normal sized caulking gun. On my older 1848 alumacraft jon boat that is used as a duck boat, I used the rods you can use with a map gas torch and tipped the boat upside down and used the rods on every rivet on the bottom of the boat. Like has been mentioned it warps the aluminum so there’s a bit of a trick to heating it up enough to melt stuff, but not to hot to warp stuff significantly but you don’t have to be a welder to use it either. On the inside used adthane to seal the inside of the rivets just for precautionary measures. It was a beat up resort boat up in the BWCA they used to haul canoes across to get to the BWCA wilderness lake portages, so it was pretty beat up when I got it. Have used adthane on some other leaks over the years and it seams to have held up very well imo. 3m’s marine sealant is pretty decent but not great at certain applications.
It could very well be as simple as a transducer screw being loose or a singular rivet that has competently wiggled its way out. Or worse case scenario a crack or ten loose rivets that look solid.
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
