tdonoughue
Jetboaters Admiral
- Messages
- 4,926
- Reaction score
- 4,052
- Points
- 417
- Location
- The Woodlands, TX 77381
- Boat Make
- Yamaha
- Year
- 2012
- Boat Model
- AR
- Boat Length
- 24
My Keel Guard was falling off (in the middle). Sent them a photo and they sent me a new one--no problems. Of course, that was last year during the season. So this weekend I finally put it on.
As has been previously reported, the difficulty is getting the old one off. You need to get all the adhesive off to put the new one on. Pulling the guard itself off was not too bad. The adhesive.... ugh. I experimented with a few techniques and a couple of chemicals. My findings:
- The adhesive is the consistency of half-dried rubber cement. It is stringy, but will not hold to itself enough to let you pull a length of it off--it will snap first and leave just the little bit in your fingers.
- The firm metal drywall knife worked best for me (followed by the flexible one).
- The adhesive is too thick for the chemicals to work well on it right off. You need to scrape off as much as you can first.
- The 3M general adhesive remover that they recommend worked best for me. @zipper 's Debond Marine worked, but not as well for me. The 3M stuff works best when wet. If you let it soak, you are wasting your stuff. As the remover dries, the adhesive goes back to being goo again. So work in small sections (about a foot or two at a time). Spray and scrape again to get off as much as possible.
- Once all scraped, there may be little bits and balls remaining. Re-spray with the 3M and then take a rag to it (I used painters rag) to get the last cleaned up.
Viola!
After that, I cleaned it up with acetone, let that dry, did the primer and stuck on the new one. Installation was, as normal, a breeze.
End of report.
As has been previously reported, the difficulty is getting the old one off. You need to get all the adhesive off to put the new one on. Pulling the guard itself off was not too bad. The adhesive.... ugh. I experimented with a few techniques and a couple of chemicals. My findings:
- The adhesive is the consistency of half-dried rubber cement. It is stringy, but will not hold to itself enough to let you pull a length of it off--it will snap first and leave just the little bit in your fingers.
- The firm metal drywall knife worked best for me (followed by the flexible one).
- The adhesive is too thick for the chemicals to work well on it right off. You need to scrape off as much as you can first.
- The 3M general adhesive remover that they recommend worked best for me. @zipper 's Debond Marine worked, but not as well for me. The 3M stuff works best when wet. If you let it soak, you are wasting your stuff. As the remover dries, the adhesive goes back to being goo again. So work in small sections (about a foot or two at a time). Spray and scrape again to get off as much as possible.
- Once all scraped, there may be little bits and balls remaining. Re-spray with the 3M and then take a rag to it (I used painters rag) to get the last cleaned up.
Viola!
After that, I cleaned it up with acetone, let that dry, did the primer and stuck on the new one. Installation was, as normal, a breeze.
End of report.
