Recently purchased a 2000 Tracker Pro Team 175. There is a roughly 10 inch repair to the hull directly in the middle of the boat. Currently it is patched with JB Weld. The previous owner was upfront about the repair and says that he has had no problems with. However this is my second bass boat and from prior expierences JB weld has the tendencies to flake off. Let alone JB weld cannot flex....not sure if that matters. I'm planning on putting the boat in the water to see if the repair does indeed work. My thoughts are to leave the JB weld and either rivet a piece of aluminum over it and 5200 around that....or just 5200. I've also seen a repair done with fiberglass and 100% polyurethane, does that work with aluminum? Is repairing it from the inside important, withour some deck removal I'm not sure how keen I am with that. Any suggestions would be appreciated as I'm sure many on here have more expierences with such a task. I'm pretty confident with my work and the only thing I do not have expierence is with welding. Any help would be awesome!
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Weld it. There is no other option. A good aluminum welder will give you your boat back with a glass smooth welded bead that'll be permanent. If it does ever crack open again you'd have to pull that section of decking out and find out why. If there's a structural problem inside the boat, that has to be fixed too or any repair will never hold up. Do it before you take the boat to the lake or you risk "ripping" that crack even further.
