My 01 Champion had a bolt hole leaking so I pulled the jackplate & motor off. Its one of the bottom engine mounting holes. It was elongated instead of round. I resiliconed it and now 3 months later is leaking again. Do I epoxy the complete hole and redrill it or just leave it covered and use 3 bolts to hold the jackplate on ? I know it will take weeks to get the transom hole dried out.
Scott, don't know if this will help but I had a similar situation with the thru-hull fittings from my livewell intake and drain. I pulled the fittings out and found some rotted wood around the holes. I dug out the soft rotted wood until I reached solid wood, then place a lamp and a fan near the holes for about a week to dry the wood out. Once it was dry, I used a product called Rot Doctor to treat and seal the wood. I then filled in the voids where I dug out the wood with Marine Tex. Once this had cured I used a round filed to smooth out the inside of the hole and reinstalled the thru-hull fittings using 3M 5200 sealant. So far so good.
I would think you could do something similar to the bolt hole if the moisture hasn't penetrated too far from the hole into the interior of the transom. May take a while to get it dried out but I believe you could fill the hole with Marine Tex and then re-drill the hole for the bolt.
Do a search on Rot Doctor CPES to see if that's something you need. If you were closer to me I'd let you use some of mine.
Good luck.
"I know something about a lot of things, and I know a lot about some things, but I don't know everything about anything." - DG
Thanks for the info. I have had a light on it for 4 days now and am taking it to a fiberglass shop tomorrow to have it filled and redrilled .
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