2012 R20 swim platform bracket woes

[freeheel4life]

Okay so we're probably just going to get the brackets from Redline, and they have a refurbished R20 platform (in the same colour too!) for $300. I think that's gonna be our solution, as $5600 for a brand new one is utterly ridiculous.

Glad those guys could take care of you and get you back on the water it sounds like before its all over. Once parts are in hand its a pretty easy job to do

[tigemech]

Is it the same style brackets as what came on the boat in the first place or an updated/stronger version?

Also I couldn't find the spot it came off even if I tried. There's a current at that lake so we drifted a bit, and as we were attempting to get it there were boaters coming by us so we moved all over the place. Tried diving down but couldn't see/feel a thing. It's 20-30 feet down in the middle of Lake Windermere somewhere if anyone wants to go hunting for a free platform though.

If you know any fisherman with a good side imaging transducer, there is a good chance you could find it. I know people that have found their boat motors that way.

[aambn421]

Strength difference between low carbon steel and 3xx stainless? Holy cow… I doubt any engineer would spend much time calculating the load on those pins because it’s such a non issue, but two 5/16” dia pins in double shear would have a combined cross sectional area of ~.307 in^2. A 500 lb person standing directly over the brackets would induce ~815 psi of stress in each pin. That’s a FoS of ridiculousness. Now move that 500 lb person to the end of the swim platform where the bending moment is high and you could put some strain on that bracket. And all those pits in the corroded pins are stress concentrations that cyclical loading would love to exploit. And fatigue loads are definitely present in this application. Party because there is clearance between the pin and holes. So every time someone steps on that platform or the water pushes it up and down (even when it’s tied up at the dock) the steel pins are working the holes in the cast aluminum. Sometimes you end up with a fracture (like cluesblues) that possibly propagated through those pin connection holes that have been point loaded. The stainless steel used in this application is cold worked so it actually has higher strength than a low carbon steel replacement. I’d have a hard time not believing plated steel pins were used based on; 1) cost savings (the steel pins are about 1/3 the cost of stainless), 2) ignorance or 3) just an oversight, but certainly not science.