How do you know if your toon has chambers?

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taylorjm
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How do you know if your toon has chambers?

#1 Post by taylorjm » Fri Aug 18, 2017 6:17 pm

So I pulled the boat out after a week in the water, thought I'd listen to it and see if I heard anything. Heard some sloshing in the port tube, but now that I thought about it, I was listening right by the fuel tank while the wife pulled forward and stopped on the trailer. Heard the same sloshing on the starboard side. Brought the boat to the storage yard, figured I'd try and pull the plastic plugs. Found they weren't in very tight at all. The port side, all I got was a puff of air when I pulled the plug. The starboard side had some water, maybe 2-4 gallons or so. I'm not really sure there's a leak, or the plug was just leaking over the years, since it's a 2007 Bentley and new to me this year.

So I'm going to replace the plugs with some brass ones and put on a few wraps of teflon tape. So, how do you know if your tube has chambers? Or do all of them? I didn't see any kind of plugs on top of the tubes, but didn't feel around between every bracket. Or do they have chambers but space at the top to allow pressurizing the entire tube?

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Re: How do you know if your toon has chambers?

#2 Post by DWRAT » Fri Aug 18, 2017 7:41 pm

If it's chambered like "I think" all are, you will see welds going around the toon where each chamber is.
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Re: How do you know if your toon has chambers?

#3 Post by ron nh » Sat Aug 19, 2017 9:25 am

Many are "semi chambered" there chambered but open on the bottom, so they get the strength from being chambered but the water flows through.
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Re: How do you know if your toon has chambers?

#4 Post by Bamaman » Sat Aug 19, 2017 1:18 pm

You really need to take the time to find that tiny leak. You can use a hair dryer or weak air source to barely pressure the toon and then go over all seams and welds with soapy water. Chances you will find some bubbles.
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Re: How do you know if your toon has chambers?

#5 Post by ralph » Mon Aug 21, 2017 4:22 am

"So I'm going to replace the plugs with some brass ones"

I'm not a metallurgist but is brass compatible with aluminum?
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Re: How do you know if your toon has chambers?

#6 Post by Jake_Daddy » Mon Aug 21, 2017 5:01 am

I would stick with a PVC or another plastic plug. There is not a huge gap between aluminum and brass on the galvanic chart, at least not like stainless and aluminum, but if you do any boating on saltwater I wouldn't use the brass. I have seen aluminum get ate up around bronze before sitting at a marina, granted these were in the salt water and not on top of a toon but I wouldn't risk it.
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Re: How do you know if your toon has chambers?

#7 Post by teecro » Mon Aug 21, 2017 6:50 am

I'd use plastic or Alum plugs. Use a good quality sticky liquid pipe dope such as Gasoila Soft-Set....
Last edited by teecro on Mon Aug 21, 2017 7:53 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: How do you know if your toon has chambers?

#8 Post by Jake_Daddy » Mon Aug 21, 2017 7:21 am

What ever you do don't do stainless and aluminum together that is much worse than brass/bronze and aluminum, I am not trying to sound condescending but I work with this stuff quite a bit. I have done a lot of engineering for marine components and that is about the worst combination you can have metal to metal contact between. It's one of those things a lot of people don't know a lot about, even those who work with marine components and I will provide you a good example of that now!

A buddy of mine here at work has a "saltwater package" trailer which means the trailer frame is all aluminum and not the standard galvanized frame and it has all stainless hardware on it. One day one of his bunks collapsed in the frame and it turns out there is no isolation between the stainless and aluminum and the aluminum frame was completely eaten away. After taking off all the bunk supports there were no isolators to be found and at every location the aluminum was almost all gone. Go to the dealership to ask if they had any isolators, this could be a thin shim of teflon or non water absorbent plastic, and they had no idea what he was talking about. When they went to look at all the "saltwater" trailers none of them had isoloators between any of the dissimilar parts, also turns out its a pretty common repair for those trailers! It amazes me that someone in the marine industry charging big bucks for a such a common upgrade wouldn't add $20 (or less) worth of shims to make it a truley good product, they either want the repair or replacement $$ or really have no idea that you shouldn't put aluminum and stainless together.

You might get some years out of it on fresh water but its a huge mistake on any kind saltwater. Save the money and buy plastic!
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Re: How do you know if your toon has chambers?

#9 Post by teecro » Mon Aug 21, 2017 7:52 am

Indeed this sounds strange... But don't pontoon manf use stainless hardware when bolting them together?

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Re: How do you know if your toon has chambers?

#10 Post by willy13 » Mon Aug 21, 2017 10:40 am

Use plastic. You can have galling issues with aluminum on aluminum threads. Galling is also common on stainless threads when using the same alloy. That is why you are suppose to use 18-8 bolts with 316 nuts or vice-versa.

All of this stuff is certainly confusing... I just built a custom pontoon boat and used stainless hardware... what else are you suppose to use... lol

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Re: How do you know if your toon has chambers?

#11 Post by Jake_Daddy » Mon Aug 21, 2017 11:00 am

Yes I believe that many manufacturers do. The two key factors is having electrically conductive liquid between them and area ratio's have a big effect on how much corrosion occurs. If you had aluminum and stainless in a bubble with dry air the aluminum would never corrode. In perfectly, 100%, fresh water, with no impurities in the form of ions, you would not get corrosion of the aluminum either. In what we boaters consider fresh water there are still impurities in the water, different minerals and so on, but they are much much lower than in saltwater so the corrosion rate is much slower in fresh water but will still occur over time.

The other factor is the ratio of metals used together. If you have a couple large plates of aluminum, your anode, being bolted together buy some stainless, your cathode, fasteners the corrosion will be slower and only really eat up the aluminum around the fasteners but flip that around put some aluminum fasteners through some stainless plates and they will get ate up really quick. This is how manufacturers can get away with using stainless hardware on all the aluminum. Using galvanized or cadmium plated fasteners would work better in a lot of areas but people are straying away from cadmium for environmental reasons and from a sales point everyone wants to hear that their boat is made with all stainless this or that!

Some saltwater boats use aluminum for their anodes where we would use magniesum or zinc for cathodic protection.
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teecro
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Re: How do you know if your toon has chambers?

#12 Post by teecro » Mon Aug 21, 2017 2:52 pm

[quote="willy13"]Use plastic. You can have galling issues with aluminum on aluminum threads. Galling is also common on stainless threads when using the same alloy. That is why you are suppose to use 18-8 bolts with 316 nuts or vice-versa.

All of this stuff is certainly confusing... I just built a custom pontoon boat and used stainless hardware... what else are you suppose to use... lol[/quote]

I've never heard of mixing stainless alloys to prevent or reduce galling but then again there are many things I've never heard of... My pontoon has alum plugs of this I'm sure and no matter I'd be using Gasoila Soft-Set as it is just our favorite aboard ship...
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Re: How do you know if your toon has chambers?

#13 Post by willy13 » Mon Aug 21, 2017 7:23 pm

I was told by Fire and Marine, the manufacturer of my custom pontoons, to not use aluminum NPT plugs, they use plastic, because of galling. I would of never guessed that this would be an issue...

I experienced stainless galling issues with a dock project I did a couple years ago. I had bought 18-8 nuts and bolts. Since then I always use 18-8 with 316, so far no issues.

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Re: How do you know if your toon has chambers?

#14 Post by Jake_Daddy » Tue Aug 22, 2017 5:16 am

There is always going to be a trade of on what you use for fasteners. From a corrosion standpoint everything on our boats would be stainless including the toons and be so expensive we could never afford one! Aluminum is cheap and pretty strong but for corrosion issues it would be best to have matching materials as in aluminum fasteners except aluminum is generally not strong enough for use as a fastener and they are not very common so probably expensive so we use stainless fasteners. For along time a good combination was stainless fasteners with a cadmium plating that would greatly reduce galvanic corrosion but for environmental reasons they are being phased out. The next best thing is to use an isolating washer between the stainless fasteners and aluminum.

Your not going to have any issues using stainless hardware bolting a deck down or similar, the only problem you will ever see in that situation would be oxidation between the stainless washer and the aluminum cross members your bolting too, that is of course unless you used a isolating washer between the two then you would most likely never see anything. If your in freshwater and there is a decent thickness on crossmemebr (I'm sure there is) then you wouldn't notice any bad corrosion for a very long time. Even in saltwater you will get some years before you see anything bad but its one of those things that you wont notice until you take a fastener off or something breaks, the thicker the aluminum the longer the life. An example of this was a couple of years ago we had a decent little storm at the house and all the aluminum panels on our porch ripped off and not because any of the aluminum members structurally failed but underneath every single stainless screw it had corroded the aluminum 90% of the way through and a good gust of wind lifted them all off.
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Re: How do you know if your toon has chambers?

#15 Post by willy13 » Tue Aug 22, 2017 6:10 am

what would the isolating washers need to be made of?

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