Well, I'm way too late to be first, but I did have MY first day with the Dyne today. Kids waterskied and fun was had. However, the day was not without a complication. Noticed water dripping into the bilge from under the backing plate on the inboard side of the transom. It was obvious that water was coming through the lower engine mounting holes. Alas- a downside of the wedge. For those of you who have seen the wedges, they are essentiallty hollow. Thus, you end up with no direct contact of metal to hull around the through-bolt holes. Apparently the "seal" from the 3M 5200 had broken and water was getting into the wedge and from there into the bolt holes, around the bolts, and into the boat, under the backing place on the forward side of the transom. So .... we took the boat back out at the end of the day and removed the lower engine mounting bolts to dry everything out. I will have to put silicone in there and reset the bolts. However, I am wondering if others have had this problem with the wedge. I recall reading that somebody actually filled in the wedges so that they would not be hollow, thereby allowing a direct seal to the transom. That seems like a good idea. The design of these wedges (hollow) does indeed seem like a bad idea as water can get into the voids and then can access to the through bolt openings in the transom. Has anyone else experienced this? I didn't leak last year but sure enough, this year it started to let water into the boat.
Whenever we use wedges we "glue" them in place with the bottom bolts fully through the transom. This is possible with Evinrude and Yamaha motors because they use a slot for the bottom bolts. Mercs have individual holes which makes this more difficult. I've never had a problem with water intrusion from the use of wedges.
I figured out that the water was actually coming from a small crack in the splash well, right at the splash well drain, and was dripping down the inside wall of the transom. The crack is really just a cut through where thr drill went through a little when the drain hole was drilled. It had been filled with caulk but over time the caulk loosened. Nonetheless, I pulled the lower engine mount bolks and re-installed them with silicone. I know some people have "filled" the hollow areas of the wedges with fiberglass fairing compound and then drilled out the holes for mounting the engine so that there are no voids in the wedges. I think I'll do that this winter. Otherwise, we had a great time with the boat this weekend. I'll post some pics when I can. Markbano
Finally was able to get on the water. I took a day out of my tile laying (Doing about 900sqft myself) to get out on the water. Was not able to do any skiing since the traffic on the lake made for some rough water. Daniel
Had a 5 deg wedge put on my 17.6 Dyna-Ski two weeks ago. I also forgot about the issue with the mounting bolts being porperly sealed. No leaks yet, but I think I may want to invest in an automatic bilge pump. BTW, the wedge has really made a difference in bow rise. Now I can run with a full tank of fuel and two people sitting on the back bench and keep the bow where I want it. Just more good stuff I've learned here on this site. Kevin
