Evoilution 25

How often should keel bolts be inspected?

How often should they be changed?

What size and material are they made of?
I will remove one to find out but someone may know.

Someone told me there is a chandlers in Christchurch with a box of keel bolts.

Has anyone ever heard of an Evolution keel falling off?

Any comments or answers would be most welcome.

I did take out the 3 single bolts to have a look. They were perfect and were put back after regreasing. They are SS but the hex head seems to be imperial and I could only get the closest metric hex key which was 9mm but it worked fine.

I left the inner 3 pairs of bolts intact assuming they would also be good.

I also replaced the zinc anode which was bolted on using one of the bolts.

I had mine replaced this winter because the boat was new to me and the heads had nearly gone, the threads were fine but we did find i had a mixture of different types of threads but not a problem sourcing them. I was told to make sure they were all torqued down the same but the amount of torque was not critical hope this helps.nick

I forgot to say they were machine screws and not stainless .

I also gave the what i would call the shoe lots of coats of paint and then found the keel would not go all the way down, i then scraped it all off again and it was ok.

I have just had to remove the shoe from Sirenia to allow me to drop the keel out to try to repair some damage in the keel box.

Some of the bolt heads had coroded beond recognition.
they had all gone beond using an allen key.

I cut the head off the worst coroded of them and in grinding off the last bit of the head it started turning out of the thread.
I then had a go at the less corroded ones with a cold chisal and club hammer.
Some moved some where not having it so I under cut them wiyh a cut-off blade in my Dremel drill and then attached again and all apert from two finaly shifted.
I had to cut the heads of the most forward and most aft ones.
When I had the shoe off the most forward bolt had rausted off at the top of the keel its self athe the rear most is rusted into its thread.
I will have to get them out later.

The bolts are 1/2" Whitworth.
I have managed to obtained some zink plated 3" hex head set screws.
I will have to enlarge the seats in the shoe to allow me to use these.

We lifted Sirenia out of her trailer today and droped the keel out.


We have found some damage low down at the front of the Keel box