Vlog 342: Transom Devil

I have long suspected that the transom on my fibreglass cabin cruiser “Twiggy” (a 1975-ish Microplus 600) might need to be replaced due to various cracks and holes in the fibreglass which would have been letting water in and rotting the wood core. Therefore I decided to investigate by drilling some holes, which first required me to remove the outboard motor.

This proved rather more fiddly than I’d imagined because although the gearbox control cable came off easily enough (once I’d worked out that the bolts holding it were just rotating and I needed to grip the ones underneath with pliers so as to ensure the top ones were actually unscrewing), the throttle cable went into the engine housing and connected to a spring-loaded piece of metal underneath part of the engine block. In order to remove the cable, I needed to take out a split pin with bent legs and in order to do that, I had to unbolt the spring-loaded bracket!

Even then there was trouble because refitting the bracket later required fighting against the spring and in the kerfuffle, a washer was dropped down the inside of the engine, never to be seen again, at least not without taking the entire engine apart which I do not plan on doing.

In fact, the engine – a Honda B100L 9.9hp from the 1980s – is for sale and I am open to offers but you’ll need to collect it from Worcestershire.

The last thing holding up removal of the engine was the ignition wire (more accurately, the safety wire that cuts the ignition if the driver falls overboard) and this was wired in directly so I just had to snip the cable.

Finally, I could lift the outboard motor off and get at the transom in order to drill some test holes. These revealed horribly rotten wood in the transom so now I need to cut the back off the boat and rebuild it. Simple!