I have been looking for information on how to modify your over sized, wake disturbing swim deck that comes on older wake/surf v drives with little to no success so I decided to jump in and give it a try.
First off you need to have West System or similar epoxy, some filler/faring compound to add to epoxy, fiberglass cloth to rebuild the edge after cutting. I used automotive rage body filler to clean up the sanding marks and then Dolphin glaze to go over the top of that and then painted over finished edge with a good quality primer and top coated with rattle can paint for use on plastic metal or anything else available at your local hardware store. I also had 80, 180, 220 and 320 grit sand paper to clean things up. I used a jigsaw with a fine metal blade for corners and a Skill saw with a trim blade to cut the straight lines.
Here's the process:
Fortunately I had several newer boats to look at to see what the new decks all look like and basically the are smooth on the bottom/no lip and have rounded corners to create the least amount of wave interference. I ended up pulling our deck and laying it upside down on a 2016 Z3 and tracing the deck to see what we could start with. The Z3 deck is significantly narrower and has rounded corners. I ended up having to move the radius corners slightly out to avoid hitting the mounting brackets for the swim deck but did cut into some of the aluminum that the brackets actually mount to. Cutting was simple go slow and start cutting. Interestingly the deck had a bunch of water in it and that all drained out when I cut into the fiberglass. The interior of our deck is a transparent corrugated plastic material with about 3/16 of glass on the top and bottom. I was worried after cutting thru the lip that I would have to reinforce but it ended up being very burly with no deflection at all after it was all epoxied back together. My final measurements brought the deck in 5" on each side and got rid of the sharp corners which really negatively effected our wave.
Here are some photo's of the process.
First off you need to have West System or similar epoxy, some filler/faring compound to add to epoxy, fiberglass cloth to rebuild the edge after cutting. I used automotive rage body filler to clean up the sanding marks and then Dolphin glaze to go over the top of that and then painted over finished edge with a good quality primer and top coated with rattle can paint for use on plastic metal or anything else available at your local hardware store. I also had 80, 180, 220 and 320 grit sand paper to clean things up. I used a jigsaw with a fine metal blade for corners and a Skill saw with a trim blade to cut the straight lines.
Here's the process:
Fortunately I had several newer boats to look at to see what the new decks all look like and basically the are smooth on the bottom/no lip and have rounded corners to create the least amount of wave interference. I ended up pulling our deck and laying it upside down on a 2016 Z3 and tracing the deck to see what we could start with. The Z3 deck is significantly narrower and has rounded corners. I ended up having to move the radius corners slightly out to avoid hitting the mounting brackets for the swim deck but did cut into some of the aluminum that the brackets actually mount to. Cutting was simple go slow and start cutting. Interestingly the deck had a bunch of water in it and that all drained out when I cut into the fiberglass. The interior of our deck is a transparent corrugated plastic material with about 3/16 of glass on the top and bottom. I was worried after cutting thru the lip that I would have to reinforce but it ended up being very burly with no deflection at all after it was all epoxied back together. My final measurements brought the deck in 5" on each side and got rid of the sharp corners which really negatively effected our wave.
Here are some photo's of the process.
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