Pontoon Boat & Deck Boat Forum

Hi all, I have a bent front bimini top bow on my 2002 Crestliner 2485LSI. Can anyone tell me who makes/made them for crestliner? I'm having a heck of a time finding a replacement, and I can't find a fab shop in my area (N. Calif.) that can bend 1" square tube with the correct radius. Any help very much appreciated.

Search for "Boaters Dream" on eBay, they bought the old crestliner pontoon building and had a lot of leftover parts for sale.

fowledup wrote:Hi all, I have a bent front bimini top bow on my 2002 Crestliner 2485LSI. Can anyone tell me who makes/made them for crestliner? I'm having a heck of a time finding a replacement, and I can't find a fab shop in my area (N. Calif.) that can bend 1" square tube with the correct radius. Any help very much appreciated.

Finding a replacement will likely amount to similarly finding a needle in a haystack. By being bent just how bad is it? Often it is quite possible to straiten them back out to acceptable standards relatively easy with some common materials, tools and applied ingenuity. And I've seen some pretty badly bent ones straightened out pretty darn near perfect.

Be careful with bending it back. I'm no scientist but I have to suspect that once it's bent it's structurally compromised forever and bending it back would only make it worse and you'll end up with something like this:

If its bent on a straight section (as in the picture above), any competent fab shop should be able to sleeve and weld in a replacement chunk to get it to 'as-good-as-new' condition. Find out where you local auto racers go. They should be able to help.

Tim

Thank you very much for the replay. I've taken it to a fab shop who is doing just what was suggested. Cutting out bad, sectioning in new and inserting a doubler on the inside of the tube.