Marinette Boat Forum

Our 1985 Marinette was dented by a garbage truck. Living in Michigan metro Detroit area I still cannot find a repair company to come look at it for an insurance quote. Any suggestions?

If you can't find an auto body shop, try an aircraft repair shop or a good welding shop. ----Ed from Hamtramack

Was the garbage truck totalled?

I'm guessing she was in dry dock! Another shop to look into would be big shops that do repairs in big trucks, semi's, fire truck and the like. The big truck shop, or like Busia says, an aircraft repair shop, may have to ability to go mobile and fix your boat on site after the estimate.

Good luck welding the hull....thanks to the black crud Marinette sprayed on the inside of the hull you or someone you pay will spend plenty of time scraping and cleaning the hull free of that stuff. Its easier when the hull is as cold as possible and you can chisel and crack the black stuff off. When its warm the stuff gets very sticky.
The welding process will suck that tar into the weld and make all kinds of problems.

-karl

With a bunch of luck you may be able to "simply" pound the dents out and epoxy fair the outside surface flat again. Hope so.

This has been done successfully on many a Marinette, including one that ended up on the rocks. As long as the metal isn't torn open, it can be "persuaded" back to where you want it with heat, hammering, and pushing with a Porta Power (ie; standard body shop techniques). Of course, you'll need to get to the interior surfaces, so a bit of disassembly will be required.

Where welding is required, one only need to clean and sand the surfaces near the weld to get a weldable area.

Jeff

PS: It goes without saying (though I will anyhow!) that an adequate fire watch, with ready extinguishers, will be required.

Can you post pic of damage?

Thank you to all of you fellow Marinette lovers. Your info really helped. My son met up with a mobile welder. Since the hull wasn't torn ,only bumped we plan to put her in the water this weekend. Im glad because I feel this great cruiser needs a family to be happy. Is that weird or what.

If you can get to the other side of the dent, put a block of wood over the dent and use a big hammer to pound it back to shape. No big deal.

Very good point about pounding out the dent.

Back in the late 1990s, I looked at a 26' 1966 Inland Seas cruiser. They were made of steel, but had wood cabins. The then current (or maybe a PO) owner did a crummy job of fiberglassing over the cabin top and I wasn't about to tackle that job. There was some minor rust scale on the inside of the hull but nothing to be concerned about. As I was walking around the outside of the hull, I ran my hand over a dimple in the port quarter. The son of the owner said: "Oh yeah, that's where the Cigarette boat hit us, he sank." He went on to say the hit took the bow off the speed boat and left a big dent in the Inland Seas boat that they pounded out.

If he can do that and end up with a half-decent job, you can pound out your .

Hey you never said what happened to the garbage truck!

Good luck.


Joe