Inspect Baffles BEFORE Buying (FC470)

[office888]

As a favor, I did some work on a friend of mine's FC470. The boat is a 1990. I noticed that no matter what setting the IC valves were on, it inflated all chambers.

I decided to open it up and see how bad it was, hoping it was a minorly unglued edge:




I dried the inside with a blower, then did an inside-outside patch on my way out and left him with a uni-chamber boat at his request.



INSPECT THE BAFFLES BEFORE BUYING A USED BOAT

[Pete7]

Presumably you mean test baffles before buying, won't be many vendors who would b happy someone taking a stanley knife to a set of rib rutes before they had bought it. However, you raise a good point if there is any doubts.

Pete

[cgoing]

That really goes for any inflatable boat. Especially one with inter -communicating style valves.

[office888]

These pictures are from my personal boat, 1990 F470 NAVIC-P. Unfortunately, I had a pressure leak on the bow chamber over the summer...it caused a pressure differential in the tubes, and in combination with the hot South Carolina sun led to a bit of ungluing on the inside. You can see the parallel seam (the white straight line of mastic), which would have the rope lifeline above it, and clearly see the ungluing between the 10 o'clock and 2 o'clock positions. These are the stern-stbd and bow-stbd baffles. After I have reglued these and seam taped them, I will work on the port side.

Luckily, my boat has 940 dtx hyp/neo fabric baffles as opposed to my friends boat, who had a crossover year with gray PVC baffles.

Two items to note:
The red hose is the penetration for the intercommunicating valve assembly
The white mesh bag is the diffuser bag for the rapid inflation system

[jonp]

Being quite new to ribs I wasn't aware there can be issues with baffles.

With individual chambers why even have them.

My zodiac manual explains how to inflate each chamber a bit at a time which seems odd as they all inflate from one. If I deflate that chamber the others stay inflated, do I have a problem ?

Jon

[office888]

The baffles are what separate the chambers.

Mine failed due to a combination of age, heat, abuse, and "improper inflation" (one chamber would leak down, and the baffles on the adjacent chambers would become stressed.

When the boat is properly inflated, all of the chambers push on each other evenly. When you deflate one chamber, you may notice the whole boat gets a little soft... This is because there is no longer tension on the adjacent chambers, so they are deforming in to the chamber with less pressure.

[headdamage]

I maybe more careful about how I inflate the individual chambers in my non-intercommunicating hurricane now that I've seen this.

[Squid Boat]

Great pictures, it is amazing how brittle and cracked the white sealer can get in boats that were baked in the sun. At least these boats provide as cheep source for repair fabric.

Cheers