My 1990 Grady Gulfstream has developed serious gel coat issues on the outboard motor bracket. There are a lot of cracks and chips in the gel coat. I'm pulling the boat this weekend so I want to fix the problem. Any advice? Looks like the bracket is aluminum, is there a specific primer I should use? Do I just sand out the bad spots, prime, then apply gel coat? Thanks
Outboard Motor Bracket Gel Coat
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Fishtales
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I would spend some time and do a full transom analysis. Get access to the inside of the transom and check out the glass and bolts. Look for signs of leakage or stains. If you can get a moisture meter and see if the transom is wet. If ok, you may be able to get away with some minor glass repair and then gelcoat over. Sounds like something is going on and if so you don't want to just cover it up.
The bracket is aluminum, and I would bet the chips have nothing to do with the transom. Mine had chipped as well. I removed the bracket, sandblasted the entire thing down to aluminum, and recoated with primer and paint. I don't believe there is any gelcoat on the aluminum bracket. It was a common problem for those brackets. If you don't have any water inside the bracket, then you could probably get away with re-coating it on the boat. You certainly can just patch the areas that have chipped. This will probably be a yearly, on-going maintainence item unless you were to spend the time to remove it and re-coat the whole thing. I did that and got about 10 years out of it before it started to chip again.
wrxhoon
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As above the bracket is made from marine alloy and she is painted from factory ( 2 pack paint ) paint lasts for many years if looked after, yours is 23 yo, anything that lasts 23 yers in the sea has to be good. You can patch up like you said , sand it down to metal , prime with aluminum primer then paint but you will never get a good finish. You have to lift the engines and remove the bracket , then you can check the condition of the transom , check for water ingress where the bracket bolts on. If you want a professional finish, like when it was new, have it sandblasted and take it to a panel shop ( cheaper than marine) and let them spay with two pack paint, they will be able to colour match as well.
Thanks to all for the help. I think georgemjr and wrxhoon are spot on; it isn't gel coat but marine epoxy paint. I'm not going to remove the motors at this point but will sand, prime and paint. I think the trick is to find the color match, hopefully Grady can help with that. Worst case I paint the entire top side so that any color variation is not obvious. If this is something I have to do once a year then that's not so bad. My diver/bottom cleaner said it was gel coat but now I'm sure that's wrong. Again, thanks to all.
Paint that is on it is a powder coat and more than likely once one little spot was comprimised the auminum under it starts to corrode and lift the powder coat causing it to blister. Awlgrip makes the almost identical color match cause I had looked into redoing mine eventually probably when I was going to repower in a year or 2. I planned on pulling off motors removing bracking sand down to bare aluminim etch the aluminum than prime and finally spray with awlgrip before mounting new motors. That atleast was my plan before Sandy came into the picture. Mine was still in real good condition but I can see there where some blisters forming under the powder coat and it was starting to drive me nuts.
Good luck
Good luck
Well now boat is out of the water and the issue is easy to spot. It is definitely a heavy paint, probably epoxy, over aluminum. The amount of chipping and corrosion is worse than I expected but I'm scraping and sanding to get down to bare metal. I've learned enough to know I'll then use a mild acidic solution solution on the bare metal, use a good aluminum primer, and then apply a couple of coats of epoxy paint. Now I wonder if it makes sense to add a zinc or two to the bracket as you might on an aluminum boat. Maybe to the trim tabs also. Any thoughts on this?