Opening the rear cabin doors daily....sometimes several times a day has exposed all the weaknesses in the design...well the mounting of the hinges anyway.

A few self tappers into the glassfibre and a few woodscrews into the end grain of the plywood is all that is used to attach the hinges to the door and frame so it's no surprise that they've all but fallen off their hinges. Previous owners have obviously had the same problems and tried to remedy it with oversize screws, matches (yes matches) and plastic plugs to plug the holes but all this has done is destroyed the hinges and delayed the inevitable.

What we've tried to do is address the problem properly by grinding out the loose gelcoat and glassfibre and put it back together properly.



Additionally teak wedges have been shaped to fill the void behind the door frame in the proximity of the hinges such that the hinges can be bolted to the frame. A good coat of thickened epoxy holds the wedges nicely in place.





As for the door, unfortunately one of the previous owners has replaced the screws with steel screws so no surprise that most of these sheared off as soon as any pressure was applied with a screwdriver. Nothing for it then but to drill the old screws out and plug with teak plugs and epoxy.




Ideally we would have liked to fit some M4 insert screws (they are now on order from the UK - http://theinsertcompany.com/index.shtml) but for the time being we've settled on some long and very course threaded stainless steel screws (I've not seen them in the UK) and they appear to be ideal for end grain use. We will see how they fair in due course and replace them with the insert screws if necessary.



All completed.....now let's do the same with the port hand door - that's the problem with cat's, everything comes in pairs!