35-3 New Strut [Master Thread]

[Frank Langer]

Wow, looks like a new boat!!
Frank

 

[Dave G.]

Wow, That looks marvelous ! It gives me a feeling of Zen...aaaaaahhh

 

[dhill]

Looks like I have the same repair in my future. My strut has started wobbling. @trickdhat , if you don’t mind my asking, how much did your boatyard charge for the repair?

Thanks!
Dave

 

[Nick J]

I just got the invoice today. Total was $10,300 but I haven't looked close enough to separate it out to what was what. This includes bottom paint, the strut, and installing the dripless shaft seal. It dose not include the travel lift or lay days. The actual strut was an additional $1,200.

 

[bgary]

Very nice!

 

[Dave G.]

I just got the invoice today. Total was $10,300

More than my whole boat !

 

[Nick J]

Here's a breakdown of the yard bill:

Bottom Paint	$1,630.00
Credit	-$280.00
Dripless	$962.19
Strut	$6,140.00
Transducer	$330.00
Thru hull	$660.00

Don't get me wrong, this is a lot of money and a few grand more than I thought, but looking over the line items it's fair. My 25+ was $4,100 and we bought the 35-3 for $12,500. Both had known issues at the time of purchase (the strut wasn't one of them). At the end of the day, these are 40+ year old boats and they need maintenance / repair. There's no free lunch. If I had the time to do it myself, I think all of these items are doable. I would recommend Everett Yacht services, they were fair, honest, and did a good job with all the work I asked them to do.

For those staring down the path of a strut repair I would recommend reaching out to Marine Hardware for a replacement strut if you have the time to wait. I really enjoyed working with Port Townsend Foundry. They were fantastic and a real pleasure to talk to. However, the additional work required to get the strut I chose to fit and align properly added to the amount of work the yard had to do. We ended up saving about a month of time and could have been a few weeks sooner than that if I kept the engine in. It all depends on what your constraints are (time or money).

 

[dhill]

Here's a breakdown of the yard bill:

Bottom Paint	$1,630.00
Credit	-$280.00
Dripless	$962.19
Strut	$6,140.00
Transducer	$330.00
Thru hull	$660.00

Don't get me wrong, this is a lot of money and a few grand more than I thought, but looking over the line items it's fair. My 25+ was $4,100 and we bought the 35-3 for $12,500. Both had known issues at the time of purchase (the strut wasn't one of them). At the end of the day, these are 40+ year old boats and they need maintenance / repair. There's no free lunch. If I had the time to do it myself, I think all of these items are doable. I would recommend Everett Yacht services, they were fair, honest, and did a good job with all the work I asked them to do.

For those staring down the path of a strut repair I would recommend reaching out to Marine Hardware for a replacement strut if you have the time to wait. I really enjoyed working with Port Townsend Foundry. They were fantastic and a real pleasure to talk to. However, the additional work required to get the strut I chose to fit and align properly added to the amount of work the yard had to do. We ended up saving about a month of time and could have been a few weeks sooner than that if I kept the engine in. It all depends on what your constraints are (time or money).

Thanks @trickdhat ,

If I'm reading things correctly, it was $1,200 for PTF to fabricate a replacement strut, so that would leave almost $5,000 to remove the old strut, install and adjust the new one, correct? You mentioned that there was some additional work required to fit the new strut. Do you know how much that work ended up costing?

Thanks!
Dave

 

[Nick J]

This was just the labor and minor material. I purchased the strut on my own so it's in addition to the $6,140. It's tough to separate everything. I removed the engine and glassed over the stringers, so we were essentially installing a new engine. There was about 10-15 hours for installing and aligning the engine. If you kept yours in, this would probably be a lot lower. If your strut is in good shape, it was in good alignment to begin with, and your reinstalling there would also be a lot less labor for the filling and glassing. Again, tough to tell. Hopefuly that helps out a little or at least gives you something to talk to your yard about.

 

[Nick J]

I installed the hot water heater this weekend and we were finally able to run a sea trial. Everything worked really well the exception of a low idle issue. I'm assuming the previous owner had used the throttle cable to govern the low idle instead of the set screw, so when I installed the new cable I used the set screw which essentially lowered the idle point. I didn't get a chance to look at it after we got back to the dock, but it was easy to manage around with the throttle. I didn't install the split bolt to control throttle friction, but it didn't slip during the 3 hour trip so I'm going to go without until I have a reason to reinstall. The shaft alignment seemed spot on with zero vibration or any other oddities. One small bonus of taking so long to complete this project was we got to use the sea trial as an opportunity to introduce our new puppy to sailing...or motoring. All in all, it was a great day.

Thanks for everyone's support and words of encouragement on this project. It was a tough one. We're happy to have this behind us and to be back on the water.