Flute Anchor question / SuperTrapp sealant

[mabbore]

I just picked up a Flut style Anchor at a garage sale rated for 20-24ft. I have read online that they work way better when you use them with a little lenght of chain to help weight down the handle. I have 10 ft of 7/16 chain? too much? Feel like overkill. I have alos been told that the Super traps on my 87 Sunsport should be scraped and sealed to make sure I do not have any leaks that would damage the transom. Any recomendations on doing this? Selaeant recomendations?

Thanks for all your help.

[wotan2525]

The chain helps secure a Fluke anchor because the anchor needs to be pulled laterally in order to set. The chain sits on the bottom of the lake/river bed to pull it sideways and help the fins dig into the sand. A general rule is 1ft of chain for every 6ft of rope. 10ft of chain should be ok unless you are anchoring in very deep water. You usually want to let out 5x as much line as the depth where you are anchoring.

Oh also -- they're really only effective in sand/dirt bottoms. Rocky bottoms don't tend to work well with this style of anchor. Good luck!

[mabbore]

The chain helps secure a Fluke anchor because the anchor needs to be pulled laterally in order to set. The chain sits on the bottom of the lake/river bed to pull it sideways and help the fins dig into the sand. A general rule is 1ft of chain for every 6ft of rope. 10ft of chain should be ok unless you are anchoring in very deep water. You usually want to let out 5x as much line as the depth where you are anchoring.

Oh also -- they're really only effective in sand/dirt bottoms. Rocky bottoms don't tend to work well with this style of anchor. Good luck!

Thanks for the help, yeah I am pretty much boating only in an area that is sand/silt/mud. Any ideas on how to serivce the super trapps?

[wotan2525]

Yep! Pull them off, wire brush/grind away the gasket material left on your transom. Make sure you have a fresh/clean surface to adhere them back to on to.

Clean the mating surface on the supertrapps, too.

If any of the screw holes seemed loose or stripped coming out, now would be a good time to fill those old holes with MarineTex (or 3M 5200). Let those cure and when you reinstall the supertrapps, drill out new holes that are offset from the original (now repaired) holes.

Whenever I do something like this, I always make sure that all of the screws are the exact same size (and stainless steel) so that when I reinstall it looks nice and is easy to service. I used Permatex Black to seal my exhaust but others on here use 3M 5200. (The permatex is good to 500F unlike 5200 that is only good to 190F.) I also don't like 5200 as it's SOOOOOOO hard to remove if you ever have to do this again.

Be sure to apply sealant to the inside edge of the exhaust mating flange as well. Once you start taking them apart, this will make sense.

Button it all back up and let cure for 24 hours.

It's an easy project.

[mabbore]

Thanks for the tutorial; I am going to have at it tomorrow night. I have heard that alot of people have started to put in flappers instead. What is better about that option?

[wotan2525]

People tend to think that the flappers won't leak like the supertrapps are known to do. Since I've never installed flappers, I couldn't speculate one way or the other. It seems like the mounting surfaces still have to be clean and properly sealed.

[jet]

Use 4200, its like rubber and can be removed later.

[Jetlink]

I'll chime in on the trapps... I pulled my trapps last week with the intention of replacing them with flappers. Needless to say, the seals for the trapps were the original from the factory and they had not sealed the screws that held the flange in. Pulled the screws and had some water come out. Allowed it to dry out as best I could while I figured out how to change over to the flappers. Took five hours but I am happy to report that the exhaust is totally sealed up now and I appear to have fixed a leak that was causing my boat to list to starboard and be heavy in the stern. I know I have a cap off restoration in my future but I feel that installing the flappers has potentially bought me another season or two as I am now limited in water exposure due to a leaking trapp. Oh yeah, I used 4200 back there as well.