Good Bad News

Today I moved on to the next section of the cockpit seats, with the intention of removing the gasoline tanks. However, I found that the ply used is completely different from the last section I had to replace and is in fact in very sound condition - almost like new. That's great, it means I don't have to replace it all. But I did want to get rid of those gasoline tanks, and that's the bad news. The tanks are huge, and when they were installed they must have completely disassembled the seats to put them in place. There is simply no way of removing them without either taking the seats apart completely, or getting in there with a disk grinder and cutting them up.

I have elected to leave them be. I'll reassemble everything, then we can paint the cockpit out.

No way I'm just popping that out of there. Note the old edge of the seat and the newer extended edge,

We Return To Regularly Scheduled Programming

Having made the new locker lid on the port side of the cockpit I found the ply around it was pretty tired. Previously the cockpit seats had been enlarged (made deeper and slightly longer) and the ply used on on top was pretty crap and has not lasted. Seems to be a theme here: the inside woodwork modifications were mostly very well done, but the exterior work was not. Fortunately it's not hard to correct.

So, I decided to replace all the top wood. I am doing it in sections, and today did the port side, next I will do the port and starboard quarters and in doing so will also remove the outboard motor fuel tanks that were installed and revert the space to storage. The fuel tank installations were never finished and the tanks have never been used. Personally I prefer not to sit on top 200 liters of gasoline.

Finding and extracting fasteners.

Top ply removed.

 

The hose is connected to the fuel tank, but goes nowhere.

Test fitting everything.

Once I have fitted all the replacement wood I will pull it all apart again, epoxy saturate, etc, etc, and then we will paint out the whole cockpit area.

A Short Interlude

I've been away on a work trip to Bali (seriously) and Europe for a couple of weeks. It was terrible. So glad to be back.