1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Paint Repair

While working on the V-berth joinery, I’ve been getting up close and personal with the porthole openings there. And the more I saw, the more I didn’t like.

It turns out that when the guys sandblasted the exterior, they didn’t do a stellar job on the porthole openings. The fairing crew did a reasonable clean-up on the flat surfaces of the aft porthole openings, and I’d cleaned up all of the aft stateroom porthole edges and primed them with AwlGrip Max Cor CF before painting. But we all screwed the pooch on the ones in the V-berth, and it was starting to show.

Ancient corrosion on the edges

That discoloration on the porthole opening edge is aluminum oxide, and it’s the last thing you want to see creeping under new paint. A rotary tool with a sanding drum cleaned up the edge just fine.

More ancient corrosion

That paint just popped off.

Sanding it back to solid aluminum

The entire edge in this area was thick with corrosion, and a bubble extended 1-1/2″ under the new paint. As I was sanding it back to where there was no more corrosion, I found orange barrier coat under the Awlgrip primer, and corrosion under the orange coat. Which means that was more ancient corrosion from before the boat was sandblasted. Everybody just missed these spots.

Filler in the round porthole opening…and what appears to be a crack on the right edge

There’s supposed to be a step all the way around this opening for the porthole to fit into. But the fairing crew loaded it full of filler and never cleaned up the excess on the inside. As it is in the picture, there’s no way to install the porthole with that excess filler there. The closer I looked, the more it appeared as if there’s a crack in the paint.

Sanding it back very carefully

Still looking for the aluminum step edge, and I’m getting closer to the crack

Just a bit more and I’ll be at the thing that sure looks like a little crack

 

HELLO!

As soon as the sanding drum hit the edge of what looked like a crack, the filler popped off, confirming that it was, in fact, a crack. The corrosion here wasn’t too bad, but it definitely would have spread once the boat is put into service.

The starboard side isn’t as bad

But there was corrosion under OE orange barrier coat right at the step

Cleaned up and ready for primer

Max Cor CF coats the aluminum and seals the paint edge

Done!

Dry fitting the porthole

That looks great with the porthole dry fitted. There are a few spots where the Matterhorn white exterior paint needs to be touched up, and we’ll spray blue in these spots at the same time. I hope to have that done this fall, once the temperature drops to a more reasonable level. By then, the V-berth joinery should be done and the room will get sanded with 320 grit and sprayed with ICA top coat. Then it will be ready for the final porthole installation.

It was unfortunate that I had to dig into the paint, but it’s better to find it now than to have much bigger trouble years down the road.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Even More V-berth Cabinetry III

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Main Raw Water Inlets

With the exhaust system almost done (the high temp resin finally arrived for the insulation hard shell), I’ve started doing the prep work to replace the original 1-1/2″ raw water inlets with 2″ inlets that my Cummins 6CTAs require.

Starboard engine raw water standpipe

Chris Craft used dielectric unions to separate the bronze fittings they used on the inside of the metal (steel and aluminum) Roamer boats from the raw water standpipes that are welded to the hull. I was able to remove the dielectric on the starboard side with a pipe wrench but not the one on the port side. Fortunately, the new standpipes require a hole big enough for the dielectric to slide right out.

Port side standpipe and dielectric, with the genset raw water seacock below

New raw water standpipes have been waiting around since 2014

Hole saw for the new pipe is big enough to fit over the dielectric

First, knock off the strainer, then knock in a block of wood

Center the pilot drill on the wood and pull the trigger

Hull breach

Standpipe with dielectric

New port standpipe test fit

Repeat on the starboard side

OE standpipe and strainer

Lotsa gunk packed into the strainer

Bad design

The back side of the original strainers, which appear to be a Groco product, can’t be epoxy coated after they were welded in, and the hull in this area was bare aluminum, too. Add a bunch of dirt packed into the lee side of the strainer, and it’s a recipe for corrosion. Fortunately, there was only one deep pit on each side, and I positioned the hole saw to cut through it. My new strainers are also from Groco, but they’re hinged. Once they’re welded in, I’ll open the hinges and put an epoxy barrier coat on them inside and out. Plus, when I periodically haul the boat for bottom paint I’ll be able to clean out any accumulated gunk.

Interesting comparison

On the left we have the welded area where Chris Craft joined 5052 aluminum hull plating to 6061 aluminum pipe. Even though there was no barrier coat here and the boat ran for a while in salt water, there’s very little corrosion in this area in spite of the different alloys. On the right, we have badly corroded pipe where the steel part of the dielectric threaded on. The green suggests that copper from the bronze fitting attached to the other end of the dielectric was playing havoc with the aluminum. I’m glad I decided on Marelon seacocks for the refit!

The view from inside

Port side raw water component test fit

I’m still deciding where to place everything. I want to maintain ease of access to the outboard side of each engine, but the inside strainers need to also be accessible for maintenance. I think this arrangement is a pretty good compromise.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: My Life Is An Old-School Country Western Song.