Ranger 373V Keel Repair

[Scrapper]

Working on AgriHawgs daddies Ranger 373V...this is a FISHING boat!! Not much telling how many miles of Lake Degray this boat has seen.

Well, along with the fishing...there is beaching..and over the 21 years of this boats life is been beached a "few" times...

Needless to say its time for some keel work. She is taking on water pretty fast now. The following pictures will follow my progress in rebuilding this keel.

I am using polyester resin...many will gripe and say use epoxy..yes its tougher...but this boat is built with polyester..and its lasted for 21 years...think this will last a while also.

This would be MUCH easier if we could flip the boat...but we do not have this option...so I'll just be bathing in actone every night...lol.

The first pics show the crack down the keel as it was when I brought the boat down to the shop.







The next pics are after about 2 hours of grinding with an old 4" griding wheel..this will take off the gel coat and rough up the underlying mat.

I went out so far because you start out with small pieces of fiberglass progressivly getting larger so each proceding piece will attach to the orginal hull....if you start with the larg piece the whole mess will be attached by that first piece only.











The next pics are of the first layer of mat...the pieces are not as big as they look...they are about 5" long by about 2" wide. I then place piece on top of piece starting at the rear and layer towards the front. This first layer was to just cover the hole and give the rest of the mat a place to attach. You will notice a slight bulge in the bottom or sag...where the hole is. I was hoping this would happen...this will give me more of a "keel" to work with...if you look in the preceding pictures you will see the keel was worn down flat. This way I can layer the mat without having to build up the center with strips. This is probably the ONLY plus to not having the boat upside down.





I will post more pics firday night...we have FFA competition tommorrow night. Will be building this up to between the original 3/8" to a 1/2". I will then coat with a few coats of resin and sand to seal. Then rough that up and finish with a few coats of Imron epoxy paint. Hopefully he'll be ready for plenty more years of fishing.

[fishmannyj]

That is a wicked scar! Looks like good work so far. I have seen a few keels badly repaired and they did peel of in a complete layer. Every boatI have owned either had a keel gaurd on it or I put one on. The sure saved me on th e river rip rap! Good work and lets see the finished photos!