Hi Fran, I installed a bow pulpit on LEPPO.
We're back to the old problem. Do you have tools? Do you have experience doing these kinds of modifications? Basically, assuming a YES to both of the above questions, it's a relatively simple matter of picking a location for the pulpit. Then you have to drill the holes for the mounting bolts, and because of the angles of the legs of the pulpit this is where it gets tricky. You won't be able to get a drill lined up the way you want to drill the three mounting holes in each of the pads. I drilled one hole, inserted a bolt and finger tightened it. Now the bow pulpit was relatively fixed, but you could still rotate it a bit to get it where you want it - i.e., centered and with even spacing of pads to toe rails. Then I drilled the second hole in a pad on the opposite side from the first one, which now locked me firmly in place. Put a bolt in there as well so that the pulpit doesn't move. Now you can mark the holes in the remaining pads on the surface of the deck. Remove the bolts, remove the pulpit and check the hole locations you marked using the backup plates that Bob Eeg provided as a template. If you put a bolt through the already drilled hole and tighten the nut finger tight, you can use the backup plate as a drill jig for drilling the remaining holes at each location. Once all the holes were drilled, I removed about an 1/8th inch of the balsa core inside the deck at each hole. I used a dental tool for the operation but a bent, cut off nail in a drill will remove the balsa. Then I mixed epoxy with microballons, put some masking tape over the bottoms of the holes inside the cabin to keep the epoxy from dripping down, and filled the holes with the epoxy mixture. When the epoxy had hardened, I re drilled all the holes. The reason for doing this is to keep any water that may seep down a bolt out of the balsa deck core. At this point try an assembly of the pulpit again; You may find that you have a hard time fitting the bolts in the holes and you'll then have to use a rat tail file to ease the holes a bit till it all goes together, and the backing plates fit on the protruding bolts in the cabin ceiling. If it all fits properly, ..... Then put some bedding compound under the pads of the bow pulpit and - you'll need a helper for this - carefully place it in position on deck and put a bolt in one of the holes. You need the helper to hold the other side so that it doesn't slide around and leave bedding compound smeared on the deck. Now you put a bolt in a hole on the opposite side and the pulpit is located and can't slide anymore. Once it's located, then insert the bolts in the pad holes, climb inside the boat and with your helper holding a screwdriver in the bolt head on the outside, you can now put the backing plate in place and tighten the nuts. You'll have to tell him / her where you are screwing on the next nut: Outside aft: Inside aft; Forward. It requires a bit of coordination, but by the time you get to the 4th pad, you'll both be experts at it! "Gently" tighten the bolts. You don't want to apply a lot of pressure to them. What you are striving for is a gentle oozing of the bedding compound from under each pad on deck. Then have a beer and wait for a day or two till the bedding compound cures. Now you can re tighten the nuts on the mounting bolts, and you will have a good seal between pulpit pad and deck, and no chance of a leak either. The bedding compound will squeeze out a little more, and than can be trimmed off using any sort of sharp knife. ....and the job is done. ....and you did it. Have fun. Connie _______________________________________________ http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/montgomery_boats
