Hobie 18 Traveler Deadeye Pulled Out

The traveler deadeye recently pulled out of the rear cross bar.
Unfortunately, the rivet holes in the rear cross bar where the deadeye mounts are corroded wallowed out. So, remounting the deadeye in the same rivet holes may not be possible.

Does anyone have experience or suggestions for re-mounting the deadeye in a situation like this when the crossbar is corroded.

You can move it to the side 3/4" (or so) and redrill and rerivet. Should not make much difference when your traveler is cleated. I have also moved it forward or backward and added a hole to the deadeye bracket.

My two 18s have 3 rivets each as I have added 1 to ensure them secure.

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H18 '85
H18 '89 "Knotty Passion"
H20 '96 "20/20 Vision"
Fleet 259 Central Coast California

Thanks for the info @wscotterwin!

I don't own a rivet gun yet...
Does anyone out there have any recommendations for an affordable rivet gun??
For this repair, should I use aluminum or stainless steel rivets?

Don't bother with a rivet gun from a hardware store! They're over-priced and don't do well with anything but aluminum rivets. Get a heavy duty rivet gun from Harbor Freight:

http://www.harborfreight.com/hand-tools ... 66422.html

You're going to want to use either stainless steel or monel rivets. Monel has similar strength to stainless steel with greater corrosion resistance/less galvanic corrosion against the aluminum extrusions. 3/16" diameter rivets are more or less standard on Hobie Cats. You could also try using 1/4" rivets in the existing holes.

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Mike

'79 H18 standard 'Rocketman II' sail #14921 RIP
'78 H18 (unnamed) sail #14921
'08 H16 sail #114312
'97 H21SC sail #238

Ditto wscotterwin. Just move over one side or the other.and use stainless rivets. Jim.

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ADDICTION
1989 HOBIE 18 SE/sx wings
HOBIE ALTER SIGNATURE MODEL

I had the same issue happen with the traveler dead eye on my boat - after years of use, corrosion caused the holes in the crossbar to wallow out and the aft rivets became ineffective. I would offer an alternate solution to relocating the bracket. The other option is to drill through to the top surface of the crossbar and then thru-bolt the bracket. The advantage of repairing this way is that, first off, the bracket remains in the same location. More importantly, you don't have a cluster of eight holes in the bottom of the crossbar that are close together. An excessive amount of holes could potentially lead to damage or failure of the crossbar. Plus, if you re-rivet the bracket, it's likely that you will eventually run into the same corrosion issue in the future forcing you to relocate and drill even more holes in your crossbar. The thru-bolting provides a very secure connection for the bracket. I used #10 machine screws with a round head to avoid any sharp edges on the top of the crossbar. A flat washer helps to distribute the load across the rounded crossbar surface.

The other thing I did was to bed the dead eye bracket in epoxy where it contacts the crossbar. The epoxy acts as a galvanic barrier to help prevent corrosion from the stainless steel contacting the aluminum. I used West Six-10 epoxy which worked quite well.



sm

I picked one of those up on Saturday. The only issue I have had so far is that the supplied wrench doesn't fit the nosepieces very well, and all of the nose pieces seem to have been installed with an impact wrench. Other than that, the tool seems well made. It has 3 jaws to pull the rivet shank.

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Jeff
1986 Hobie 18 #13031

go to the local airport and get a sheet metal guy to put in oversize cherry-max rivets. They are made to replace standard sized worn/oversize rivet holes. They are a incredibly strong structural rivet.

I just replaced the deadeye traveler on my recently acquired H18. My rivet holes were similarly enlarged/corroded. I filled the holes and bedded with MarineTex Gray, But I realized I may never be able to get the deadeye off now and I am sort of questioning my repair. My OCD really wants the deadeye dead-center. How hard do you guys think it will be to remove the deadeye from the MarineTex and start over? I like the through-bolt idea.

EDIT - I should add that after filling the holes and bedding with Marine Tex I also re-riveted it.