Removal of traveler track from sea hood - 32-3

[peaman]

I have removed the sea hood for re-bedding and other work, and I would like to remove the traveler track from the sea hood. I assume the track is original. I rented an impact wrench for removal of the seven Phillips head bolts, but have managed to remove only four while the other three will no budge. I tried PB Blaster and a bit of heat. I have broken two bits, with no further progress. Any thoughts on how I might be able to get this done without destroying either track or hood?

 

[Kenneth K]

You could try drilling the heads off of the screws and slipping the track over the shanks. It's pretty easy to drill them out in a straight manner because the bit stays centered in the screw slots. Just make sure you stop before drilling into the aluminum track.

Yeah, the impact driver is usually the ticket to cracking them loose. The rat-tat-tat of the bit normally frees up the fasteners much better than a straight-drive drill.

 

[bigd14]

If you haven’t already, try running the impact driver in forward, sometimes that’s enough to break the seal when reverse doesn’t work.
There is an aluminum plate buried in glass in the seahood that the traveler bolts into. It can be exposed by cutting the fiberglass away as a previous owner did in my boat, and may make it easier to drill out the traveler bolts from below. See Part II blog.

E30-3 - Seahood Leak Repair Part 1- Removal

I have suffered leaks from the screws holding the seahood down for years. I applied Gorilla tape over them which lasted a couple years but finally failed this past winter. So time to dive into it. I have wondered for years what exactly I would...

ericsonyachts.org

E30-3 - Seahood Leak Repair Part 2- Cleanup and Reinstallation

The seahood is back on and sealed up. I took the seahood home and tried to remove the traveler from it. The screws came out more easily than expected. They were only engaged about one turn in the aluminum plate embedded in the seahood. With the...

ericsonyachts.org

 

[Pete the Cat]

I had the problem on my Tartan when I replaced the track and traveller. I ended up drilling everything out because stainless into aluminum is a bugger. Since I was putting a new traveller in, I just had the new machine screw holes moved a bit and tapped some new ones. I really don't see how you can drill them out cleanly enough to retap and use the same holes. If you can't use mega heat (at least map gas) and you probably can't in this case because you will burn all the glass up, I think you are stuck with having to get a new traveller. Garhauer makes a nice one and they were precise about drilling the holes exactly where I asked them to.

 

[Christian Williams]

Yeah, several of my tapped machine screws were corrosion welded. With effort I drilled them out (several busted bits) and retapped (several broken taps, which since they're hardened, are even more difficult to drill out.).

Sometimes though, once drilled out, you can replace the tap with a bolt and nut. I was able to do that with my traveler.

 

[peaman]

Thanks for all the good suggestions. I decided to deal with the bolts from the underside. I cut away about 1/4” of glass to expose the 1/4” aluminum bar that the bolts are threaded into. Then, I cut the bolts flush with the bar and commenced drilling them out. Once drilled for the full depth of the aluminum bar, I was able to easily tap out two of the three remaining bolts. One bolt put up a real fight, requiring lots of heavy blows even after it was clearly not held by the bar. But I figured that once that final bolt released, the traveler track would fall away free. But that was not the case.

Every bolt has been removed from the track, and yet the track refuses to let go from the sea hood, even after lots of heavy hammer blows with no evidence of any movement at all. I have no idea what I will do from here.

 

[peaman]

After pounding on the traveller track from each side with no apparent movement, I later, without much thought, applied a 14" plumbing wrench to the end of the track, and without much effort at all, liberated the traveller track from the sea hood simply by twisting it. What a relief. The track had been "bedded" with a thick ridge of caulking. I probably won't be putting it all back together the same way it was done originally.

 

[Christian Williams]

Bravo. Patience is the best hammer.

 

[vanilladuck]

Sounds familiar, @peaman -- I went through a similar process, but I opted to cut the traveler track in pieces and attempted to spin off the chunks around the frozen bolts. That worked for a some but not all. Eventually, the rigger and composites expert helped me dig out the aluminum bar and re-core and glass the underside of the sea hood. More below:

Mounting the Last Resort on the E32-3 Sea Hood

I was taught to keep the FRP temp. down to where I could lay a hand on it at least briefly. Slow warming is better than too high a single-point of heat.

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