Swim Platform coming loose

[mswinea]

My dumb ass brother in law jumped from his boat and landed hard on the swim platform of my 1976 43 DC. Now all the bolts across the top row are coming loose. Any suggestions on how to get to the bolts behind the fuel tanks? Any fasteners out there that can be installed from the outside only and hold?

[SKYCHENEY]

If like my boat, there are aluminum plates glassed into the transom. They are threaded to receive the platform bolts. If you try to tighten them and they are stripped, you may have to redrill and tap them to a larger size.

[egaito]

My dumb ass brother in law jumped from his boat and landed hard on the swim platform of my 1976 43 DC. Now all the bolts across the top row are coming loose. Any suggestions on how to get to the bolts behind the fuel tanks? Any fasteners out there that can be installed from the outside only and hold?

In the words of Roy D Mercer, how big a'boy is he? I took a 24' sailboat up the @#$ at ramming speed last year, and it didn't move the platform.

If the screws are backed out, or you do go the route of having to retap and put new screws in, you might want to try some thread locker. Blue if you want to "turn" them out someday and red if you want to "burn" them out some day (you need heat to melt it before the screw will back out)

[Freestyle]

I have the same make, model and year boat. Three years ago I got caught in a terrible storm and the wave action detached one of my platform mounts below the water line.

You will need to take the bulkhead out of the aft locker of your master stateroom to get at the through hull boats. The platform is mounted with a backing plate on the inside. It is an extremely tight squeeze and to get it done right I had to haul the boat and let the yard re-mount the whole thing.

For a temporary repair that held for a few months until I got in the yard, I took a 5200 cap, filled it with 5200 and put it in the whole where the platform's bracket screw had pulled out. I then took a stainless wood screw of the same size and screwed the bracket into the hull. It stopped the leak and allowed us to use the platform for the remainder of the trip. The yard guys were pretty amused.

Bruce
Freestyle
1976 43 DCMY

[mstailey]

Bruce,
I'm not following your instructions. I'm going to remove the swim platform this winter along with the brackets. Are you stating there is simply a nut on the inside of the hull for the platform bracket bolt and that you have to put a wrench on it? That it is not like Sky states where it's simply a glassed in treaded plate?

I also wonder if they made any changes to the mounting system between the years of 1976 and 1978 (mine) - I doubt it.

When you talk about the aft locker in the MSR are you refering to the to lockers at the head of the beds? Or the whole dresser drawers that run across the back of the boat between the two beds?