Tackling the upholstery... staple question

[gride]

True, but my friends have nautie's on the water as opposed to me having to trailer. Which at 3.50 a gallon(ya right) will cost me $60 round trip not counting boat gas, snacks, etc. It wouldn't bother me to not have it for 3 weeks or so.

[GoBig]

A couple of notes from my lessons-learned upholstery project:
*Agree that sun is the best heat source to stretch the vinyl. If the vinyl still has some wrinkles after install, don't fret too much, a couple of sunny days on the water will work those out naturally.
*You may want to consider recessing your speakers while you have your vinyl off. It is easy and looks much better.
*Use black for the under seat material. Mine was white and looking disheveled/moldy, swapped to black like the newer models, much better
*For the engine hatch, install a 1/8 aluminum plate under the foam for the rear hinge and re-install bolting through the plate. This will allow you to remove the hatch in the future if needed without pulling up the vinyl to get to the nuts.
*Patience is virtue, this project will require a lot of it!

Good luck!

[SoldTheBayliner]

*For the engine hatch, install a 1/8 aluminum plate under the foam for the rear hinge and re-install bolting through the plate. This will allow you to remove the hatch in the future if needed without pulling up the vinyl to get to the nuts.

Talk to me about this. There was aluminum plate in there, but the holes in the plate are bigger than the nuts, allowing the nuts to spin. the plate just served as a spacer so the nuts couldn't be felt through the vinyl. All of the bolts were loose (especially on the side with the lift motor) and just spun when I tried to tighten them. I want to do something permanent that will allow me to tighten the bolts 10 years from now, but I'm not following you on how a plate will accomplish this. Did you inset the nuts into small holes in a plate so that they couldn't spin? I had already planned on using heavy duty automotive loc-tite on the threads... working on a plan to hold the bolts so I can tighten if I ever need to.

[GoBig]

Talk to me about this...

You have the 1-piece hatch so your hinge design may be slightly different than my 3-piece, I don't know for sure. I just went through all of my install photos from two years ago and of course, I don't have a single pic of that plate or hatch install. I had the same issue with the nuts spinning and had to cut the old upholstery off to get to the nuts to remove the deck lid. Mine didn't have the plate so I had one made. I used stainless screws instead of bolts so I eliminated the nuts altogether. I just screwed into the plate, works great! Two seasons, no issues, no loose screws. I don't recall the size of the screws or hole dimensions in the plate. I wouldn't mind pulling one to get the dimension but my boat is in storage for the winter. If this can wait, let me know if you need more help.

If you plan to re-upholster the hatch while removed (which you probably should) you need a solution for this or you may not be able to re-install the hatch --- I still can't figure out how they did this in the factory --- the vinyl is tucked under the hinge so the hinge has to go on last, but once the vinyl is on you can't get a wrench on the nuts to install the hinge. Odd one.

[crobi2]

Whoa, I thought the screws on the hinges just screwed into the fiberglass. I didn't realize the factory had nuts installed under there.

[SoldTheBayliner]

I hadn't thought of the vinyl-under-hinge when you re-install conundrum... huh.
I couldn't get the hatch side of the hinge off of the deck, because the little bolts just spun (I had thought they were screws too...phillips head bolts, who knew?) so I took the hinges off of the boat side. You can reach the nuts from the engine compartment...it's the same nuts on the deck side. They are the ny-lock type that are not supposed to loosen over time, but they do.

I get what you did with screwing into aluminum plate. I might switch to a steel plate, and just tack weld the nuts into place on (in) the plate, so they are forever tighten-able without having to get a grip on them. That's the simplest solution I can come up with. That would also (maybe) let you get the bolts started, and leave you enough room to pull the vinyl under the hinge before you tightened it all the way down. A few coats of rustoleum and it should be OK to use steel there...

The other solution on the hinges is to start the vinyl on that side...tack it down, then tighten the hinges into place before you flop the vinyl over the rest of the cover and stretch towards the other side.

[crobi2]

Your idea about tack welding them to a steel plate occurred to me also but with all the water I get on that back deck I bet it would rust something nasty no matter what we did to try to stop it.

Now if you could punch out holes to fit the stainless nylock nuts through the aluminum plate so you could tighten them in place - that would be something else.

If none of that is possible, can you just use a lockwasher on the nut? Those will usually hold without turning if they are kept tight or you turn the bolt really fast...

[GoBig]

I thought about that option of pressing nylocks or nutserts into the aluminum plate. But screws into predrilled holes through the plate are plenty strong enough and a straightforward simple install. It is stronger than factory and you can remove/reinstall the deck lid if necessary.

[SoldTheBayliner]

I have this fear of stripping a screw threaded into aluminum... probably illogical but I like the nut/bolt option for strength.

Another option is JB-Welding the factory nuts into place inside the factory aluminum plate. Another rust-free possibility....

[crobi2]

@GoBig - what do you do about the pointed ends of the screws? Do you cover them with something?

[SoldTheBayliner]

We went with Garysupholstery.com

I went backed and looked at the estimate from nautiqueskins... $3300 for the whole boat. We're doing all of the seats in the rear area (not the bow, not the driver's seat, not the backrests), and the rear deck for $380. That's ALL materials, piping, thread, etc.

[wake_fun]

We went with Garysupholstery.com

I went backed and looked at the estimate from nautiqueskins... $3300 for the whole boat. We're doing all of the seats in the rear area (not the bow, not the driver's seat, not the backrests), and the rear deck for $380. That's ALL materials, piping, thread, etc.

So how does this work? Are you ordering sheets of vinyl and having a local place do the work? Or does this place make the covers already like Nautiqueskins?

[SoldTheBayliner]

We're ordering vinyl by the yard, the 'hidem' that covers the staples, piping, etc, etc, and my wife is making the skins herself. She sews as a hobby, and after taking one of the factory ones apart, she was not intimidated by it. When you consider that you still have to do all of the removal/install when you order the full skins, the "simple" act of sewing the skins together is apparently valued at around $2500. That's a lot of money.
We are using the same vinyl in terms of quality that you get from Nautiqueskins (couldn't really upgrade to the newer stuff becuase we need to match some of the factory colors, and the newer '4 way stretch' vinyl doesn't come in all of the colors from our 2000 boat. These guys were great to work with, answered all of our questions, etc.
When we first looked into it, I assumed that if Nautiqueskins was going to charge $3300 for the whole boat, you'd be spending $2000 or so on materials to do it yourself... turns out, they just charge a LOT for the labor of sewing the skins together for you. When we bought this boat, we negotiated with the seller and knocked the price way down largely because the vinyl was so bad... we're going to make it like new for a fraction of that amount.

[cjreents]

Nice! Glad to see that you aren't the only one tackling this project. We're re-doing the entire interior of a 98 Air Nautique, my wife is sewing and I keep harassing her Been using the stainless T50 staples and they're working just fine. Found all of my vinyl online and am probably into it for around $400 once you factor in the staples, the vinyl, the root-proof piping (aka flex-welt) and the exterior nylon thread. Good luck finishing up your project - post some pics!

- Chris

[SoldTheBayliner]

Ok, My wife is busy making the skins and all is going well... about to start installing. I bought the Harbor Freight stapler, which shoots the very common 'T50' size staples. they are very slightly narrower crown than the staples we pulled out of the seats. I ordered some stainless T50 staples in the same length (3/8") that we pulled out of the seats....and was surprised to find "Not For Marine Applications" printed on the box when they got here. Does anyone know why they say this? I'm assuming they mean "underwater" applications........? It seems odd though. One side of the box says "stainless steel" and the other side says "not for marine applications". Why would they say that?