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: Sparkly Shiny Helm Windshield Frame

It’s nice when I make actual progress on this boat. Since the windshield frame extrusions and a bunch of other stuff were stolen by bastard thieves back in May 2014, a lot of what I’ve been doing has been playing catch-up, trying to get back to where I was before the burglars cleaned me out. Before the theft, I had spent a bunch of time, money, and effort getting the original windshield back into good condition.  I’d made the last of the new connector pieces and machined and welded together a new opening center windshield, since the original had been removed by a previous owner and replaced with a sheet of acrylic plastic. All I had to do was reassemble the windshield frame and install it…but then half of the extrusions were stolen. So I had to rebuild the tent into a spray booth (again) and do some fiberglass and fairing work all around the hardtop, since the thieves took my drip rails, too. I eventually got a new windshield frame welded together, though the fit wasn’t quite as good as it needed to be. So that necessitated breaking open my brand new Awlgrip paint job to modify the hardtop and cabin top to fit the new windshield frame. All of this effort wasn’t really making progress, it was just getting me back to where I was the day before the thieves ripped me off.

Well…I’ve now gotten past that point (on the windshield frame, at least). In the whirl of activity to get the windshield primed and painted, I forgot to snap pix along the way. But the frame got a couple coats of Awlgrip Max Cor CF aluminum primer. We sanded that and gave it a couple coats of Awl Grip 545 primer, then final sanded that with 320 grit and basically turned the aft deck into  a spray booth. The new windshield frame is all sparkly and shiny!

et voila! Shiny!

Check out that reflection!

The paint is surprisingly dirt and blemish-free

What looks like hazy nastiness in the pic above is actually the reflection of the plastic walls of the “spray booth,” perfectly reflected in the mirror-like finish of the paint. My Boatamalan painter has got serious skills when it comes to laying down Awlgrip.

Sparkly black metallic Awl Grip

The metallic black is subtle inside the tent…I wonder what it’ll look like out in the sun?

Shiny on the interior side, too

Spray booth disassembled in 3 minutes flat

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Shiny Matterhorn White on the Hard Top (again)

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Installing the Transom Steps

The transom steps are anodized cast aluminum, but the anodizing started to go off and, as I understand it, re-anodizing never turns out as nice as the first time around. So, I opted to blast them, prime with Awlgrip Max Cor CF, then hot coat with 545 and Awlgrip Matterhorn White leftover from when we painted the nonskid. Having gotten the aluminum portholes,  hatch, and transom steps back from the paint shop, and with the hatch reassembled, next I installed the transom steps.

Transom steps in the upper right corner when goodies came back after painting

As always, I ran a tap down the 1/4″-20 holes in the transom to clear the paint residue, then coated the hole and the new stainless bolts with Tefgel. Next, I loosely installed the steps so I could tape off the surrounding paint. Then I ran a bead of Sikaflex 291 LOT on the step base and reinstalled.

Good squeeze-out all around

Three down, one to go

Et Voila!

This job really highlighted how deceptive some work can be. I had four steps to install, with a dozen or so bolts holding them in place. Sounds like a 20 minute job, right? But with the tapping, dry fit, taping, gooping, and clean up, it took a few hours. Ah well, that’s one more job done and a bunch of holes on the exterior that have been plugged.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Gantry Time

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: (previously) Hateful Portlights and Bow Hatch Out and Back from the Paint Shop

Things have been busy, so I haven’t been posting as much as I probably should. But lots of stuff has been going on behind the scenes, including some excellent progress on the hateful portlights and bow hatch.

Old portlights with lots of busted, evil screws

It wasn’t just the hundreds of stainless screws that broke off in the cast aluminum frames that were a pain, the gooey butyl they used to seal the portlights (sort of) to the hull added to the challenge. Once the screws were out and the butyl removed, I sent the whole shebang out to be blasted in preparation for paint.

Box o’ blasted portlights

The old cast aluminum cleaned up pretty good. Turns out the hardest thing to remove was that DAP-like window sealant that had hardened. The blaster called and said the aluminum was softer than the hard sealant. I thought about it for a while and remembered that some of the old sealants were oil-based…linseed or some such. So I recommended putting some vegetable oil on the stuff that just wasn’t coming off. The blaster called back two days later to report that the oil did the trick, softening up the rick-hard sealant.

V-berth portholes were galvanized steel!

I wasn’t sure what material the V-berth round portholes were made of, though it was obvious from the weight they weren’t aluminum. I also knew paint didn’t stick to them at all. Turned out they were heavily galvanized steel. We’ll find out if modern epoxy and urethane coatings work and look better than the ol’ zinc on steel.

Shiny bow hatch bits n’ pieces are ready for coating

We used the same process on all of these aluminum parts as the rest of the boat: mechanically prep the surface with blasting, then Alumaprep and Alodine, followed by Awlgrip Max Cor CF, 545, and then Awlcraft 2000.

Et voila! Shiny portholes!

Unhateful portlights!

The interior-facing parts are white, while the exterior screen flanges match the blue of the exterior accent stripe.

Scha—-weeet!

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Reassembling the Bow Hatch.

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Disassembling the Bow Hatch

Consistent with the theme of getting the boat ready for splashing later this year, I dug into the original, cast aluminum bow deck hatch to get it ready for paint. These hatches, which were were used on Chris Craft Cruisers from the 1960s and ’70s and manufactured by Bomar, I believe, have a shape that’s reminiscent of hood scoops used on muscle cars of the same era. I could have gone with a new hatch, but I like the period-correct parts. But like the original portlights and other old boat parts I’m keeping through this refit, this hatch was a real piece of work to get apart.

Your basic 1969 Chris Craft bow deck hatch

About half of the screws came out willingly, but only after weeks of applying penetrating oil to each one.

Lotsa busted screws that came out with the help of some welding

To remove: weld nuts to screw heads

The combination of heat from welding and a blast of electricity coming through the aluminum hatch body, where the ground was attached, and into the threads of the screws effectively breaks the bond that holds the screws and kept them from loosening up.

The first three screws to come out

Everywhere you see black soot, it’s from a little zap with the welder to attach a nut. With the screws out, the pieces come right apart.

The grill casting looks really good

What surprised me right away was that the hatch component parts were not primed or painted except for the areas that are visible. This is the same approach Chris Craft/Bomar used with the original portlights, and I think it encourages corrosion.

With the grill removed, the hatch top piece comes off easily

Again, there’s no paint or primer on the underside of the casting. While aluminum oxide is super tough stuff, I feel the component needs to either be fully bare or fully barrier coated. When the outside is coated but the inside isn’t, the paint line provides a path for aluminum oxide to creep under the exterior coating and make a mess of things.

Threads in the cast housing looks surprisingly good

Next, drive out roll pins and separate the hatch halves

Glass out from the underside of the hatch top

You can see some of the original DAP-like window sealant that remains. The fact that it’s only adhered in a few spots tells me water had no trouble seeping between the hatch and glass.

Again, window sealant only adheres in a few spots

That DAP-like sealant is hard as a [sedimentary] rock

Dirt on the glass retainer ring shows water was getting in.

Sealant? What sealant?

The vent that never moves!

I’ve had three big Chris Craft cruisers with this style of hatch, and not one of them had a functioning vent. The sheet metal vent closer thingies on all of them were stuck in place. Now I know why: they were each held in place with four plain steel screws. Just a wee bit of corrosion and they’d stick solid. But there’s more…

Not exactly a smooth surface for a vent closer thingy to slide on

Again, the parts you can’t see get no primer or paint…it’s just bare cast aluminum. BUT when they coated the outside, some of that primer and paint ran inside between the hatch and the vent closer thingy, effectively gluing them together.

My plan is to remove the excess paint from the outside, then sandblast and treat all of the hatch components with Alumiprep. Then I’ll send them over to the Boatamalan painter for Awlgrip Max Cor aluminum primer and AwlCraft 2000 paint to match the exterior. Once I get them back, I’ll apply Slick Strips to separate the cast aluminum hatch from the vent closer thingy. Slick Strip is an HDPE tape that makes parts slide very smoothly. I’ve used it before to solve a grinding salon slider door on my Commander 42. It should work perfectly here, too.

50 grit on a sander removes three layers of paint

Minor pitting in the casting, which should fill just fine with Awlquik

Casting imperfection

It’s a bit surprising how many casting imperfections Chris Craft and Bomar tolerated back in the day. This was an air bubble, by the looks of it, and it was just painted over.

With the hatch disassembled, the next step is sandblasting. I’ve been holding off on blasting because I wanted to do it all in one go, but it was just too cold over the winter. Now, with the portlights and hatch all disassembled, I’m almost ready to get ‘er done.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Aft Cabin Floors

Oh, and please check out the page where I post all of my items For Sale: Refit Parts, Tools, Supplies & Leftovers.

 

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Aft Stateroom Windows II

With the plywood porthole surrounds finished, next I had to deal with the primer around the aluminum lip of  the aft window openings. When I removed the plywood, it became clear that there was bedding compound around each of the window openings that was now coated with primer. When the plywood came off, it took some of the bedding compound and primer with it, revealing some places where the primer wasn’t properly adhered to the aluminum.

See the little chip out of the primer?

That little chip came off with the bedding compound. Obviously, we didn’t do the prep work right in these areas when we first primed the boat in 2009. Better to catch it now than to have the paint fail in a few years.

Bedding compound was adhered well.

The tar-like bedding compound was hard stuff but peeled off of the aluminum with a scraper without too much work.

Another spot where the primer popped off

Peeling off more porthole sealants

This sealant was different than the tar-like stuff and came off very easily. The primer had adhered to the sealant very well, but underneath the sealant there was white powder on the aluminum lip. The paint at this joint would have probably failed pretty quickly.

Another chip that started out as just a crack at the edge of the aluminum

I put a razor blade to the crack and the chip above popped off. There was a dusting of aluminum oxide under the primer here. I’m guessing it got wet when the boat lay fallow after the paperwork SNAFU, and corrosion started to grow unseen.

Ground back to remove all corrosion.

The little crack that turned into a chip actually had primer failing around it for several inches. I found several of these while cleaning up the ten window openings. While I was working the grinder to get back to clean metal, I touched all of the edges of the aluminum window openings all the way around and also on the interior surfaces back to where the original primer and bitumastic coating were in good condition.

Next, I brushed on some Awlgrip Max Cor CF aluminum primer.

Per the Max Cor instructions, alumaprep and alodine treatment is not required in these areas when the aluminum is freshly prepped.

Another former chip coated with Max Cor CF

Max Cor primer outside, on the edge, and inside the window opening

It took me a whole day to remove the bedding compounds, fix the chips and apply primer, but it was well worth the effort. Now there is a monolithic layer of well adhered modern epoxy primer from the exterior of the boat over every surface where I’ll be bedding the portholes. Hopefully, this effort will pay off with many years of service from the shiny hull paint that’s going to be sprayed soon.

Next up on our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Final Prime Coat on the Hull