Hello all,

I recently bought an old hobiecat 16 (1983) and noticed that there is lost of flex in the frame. I attached an image of the boat. It is possible to move the frame up and down about one centimetre at both the rear pylons. I've read about epoxying or welding the frame. Is this the way to go for this problem or is there more to it?

Henk.

I have not heard of sailers welding the frame... somehow this might be difficult to weld the bars to the cast aluminum corner castings. Especially the problem that your pics show could not be fixed by welding since the heat involved in the welding process would cause damage to the hulls. (IMO)
Glueing the frame with epoxi seems to be pretty common. Search the forum and the rest of the web for How to instructions - there are many - some even with pics.
Useing epoxi is IMO kind of hard core and difficult to reverse, especially if it includes the pylon/cornercasting joint.
As a first attempt I would recommend shiming. First seperate the hulls from the frame - should be easy since it seems to fall apart there anyway. Check for corrosion. Also check the holes for the bolt (WS 19)in the corner casting/pylon conection - those might be oval. Also check the bolts (WS 19mm) that tighen this particular joint. My Hobie (85) came with wite plasic nuts, which three ot them had cracked. Try to messure the gap in your joint by sticking some kind of scrap sheet metall in it. Then cut and bend some shims out of the right size aluminum sheetmetall. The
shiming should not take to long; it will be reversible; and it should not cost more than $10.00

Check out this link ... http://www.thebeachcats.com/modules...&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

Thanks for the quick response. I am going to take the frame apart next week. You're probably right about the holes in the pylons being oval, so I hope your solution works.
By the way are you suggesting I use the sheetmetal to make to oval hole round again or to use it to wrap around the bolt so it fits in the oval hole?

Thanks again,
Henk

i glued my frame together and i put a film of grease (vaseline)in the female parts, put epoxy paste on the male parts then reassembled. good thing i used the grease, i recently holed the starboard hull (ouch!) and had to replace it. the epoxy 'shims' came out almost intact, they varied in thickness between 1/8 and 1/16". no wonder there was so much movement in the hulls before i glued them, thats a lot of slop.

This week I removed one of the hulls and inspected the pylon. As the attachment shows the hole has become a bit large for the bolt. This is probably the case with all four pylons. I'm still not sure how to apply the aluminium sheet metal to fix this problem.

I bet if you clean up the hole you could close it up with JB Weld and then drill a new hole. JB Weld is amazing stuff. Once it drys it works like metal.

Thanks for the reply. I applied JB Weld and drilled new holes.
I haven't sailed it yet but I hope this JB weld stuff will hold. If it doesn't I'll probably drill new holes in the casting as well as the pylon.

If you have to, you can enlarge the hole to 3/4", instead of the current 1/2". Just be sure to drill the hole through the castings any risers at the same time to maintain allignment. Make sure the boat is sitting level at the time.
Good luck,
Jack

I've laced the trampoline extra tight last weekend and sailed the boat with the wind blowing at 4 Beaufort. The boat felt much better then previously. Thanks for all the hints.

Henk.