WillH Posted May 18, 2009 Report Share Posted May 18, 2009 I recently bought a Caper cat that had a gudgeon that had been ripped out. It has the original cast aluminium rudders, so I guess that would be a common problem. Anyway, when I drilled what was left of the old rivets that attached the gudgeon, I found the holes in the alloy plate inside the hull were pretty big, so i was thinking the hole might be too big for the rivets. So i thought I'd cut a little hole in the top of the hull to allow me to get a washer and a nut on the back of plate and then put a stainless screw through from the front. No problems doing this, but then I thought maybe it's better having a rivet there so if you do hit something hard that's where it breaks and is simple to repair rather than something else breaking like a rudder casting or whatever that would be hard to fix. Any thoughts / suggestions? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
darcy1945 Posted May 24, 2009 Report Share Posted May 24, 2009 What you have done is the way to go if the boat is just for a casual sail, Kick up rudders of a mari or similar would be the best way to go and would be a vast improvement over plate alloy rudders. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WillH Posted May 25, 2009 Author Report Share Posted May 25, 2009 Agree the kick up rudders would be good - might be a project for further down the track if the cast ones cause too many problems. I ended up putting sealed aluminium rivets in. Just figured drilling out an SS screw would be hard and would have to cut the hull again to replace. I put a SS washer behind the alloy plate so the rivet has a correctly sized hole to grab onto. Seems to be solid, so we'll see. Might use nylon gudgeon pins for the lower gudgeon (and carry spares) and SS for the top. Figure bottom ones could break, but would want the top ones to hold so rudders don't end up at bottom of the ocean Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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