Rutgerson clutch mounting plate removal

[elias]

Hi to all!
The mounting plate of the clutch is corroded and I decided to change . The thing is that I can’t understand where is the nuts holding the plate underneath . I eased the ceiling but I can’t spot them !
The boat is BV 44 2004. I am attaching pics . Any ideas ? Maybe the nuts are covered on the hull grp?

[Markus]

Bavarias' have aluminum plates inside the laminate at the areas where equipment is mounted. So there are no through-holes just a tapped hole in the aluminum plate. Very good system!

So the screws should just come off by turning them. If not, apply some WD40 or equivalent and wait for a few hours before trying again.

[elias]

Not good news... one screw turns freely, the rest stuck, impact screwdriver cant be used cause the middle channel cannot slip out... Project on hold

[Salty]

Quote from Markus - “ So the screws should just come off by turning them. If not, apply some WD40 or equivalent and wait for a few hours before trying again.”

You might be lucky and the bolts undo easily, or as in my case the bolts were already broken off before I agreed to buy the secondhand boat. Several years passed before I attempted to fit a new clutch, mainly because the old bolts had sheared off just above the external gel coating on the cabin top, and which meant that a hand held drill would not stay exactly in place through the process of attempting to drill out the remnants
To get around this problem I made up a mild steel drilling jig from some thick mild steel plate that could be secured exactly in place over the stumps of the old bolts. A third hole had been drilled through the jig to enable a bolt hole to be drilled through the grp cabin top and just through the embedded aluminium plate referred to in other postings above. This was then tapped and a bolt inserted and tightened into place to ensure that the drilling jig would stay exactly where it was needed. One side of the drilling jig was located immediately next to the nearest remaining clutch which also helped the drilling drug to stay exactly in place. The jig was of a thickness that ensured both that the old bolt stumps remained below the upper surface of the jig and that the drill bit on my hand held electric drill would remain exactly on target.
The two old bolt stumps were then drilled out, but this action destroyed the original threads tapped into the embedded aluminium plate. The embedded aluminium plate holes were drilled over size to enable an aluminium rivet nut or rivnut to be inserted and the new replacement Rutgerson clutch was then secured to the rivet nuts using stainless bolts and a liberal coating of a yellow chromate paste.
Finally the third hole was filled with white gel coat before the new clutch was put into place.

[Jake]

Elias,

What a timely subject.  I removed and replaced all of my Rutgerson clutches just last week.  Many of the screws were stubborn and wouldn't come out.  Fortunately, stainless is fairly soft and I was able to drill through the screw heads and remove the clutch.  The 1/2" stub was able to be gripped with a vice-grip and then removed.  I was not completely successful, as several screws snapped off nearly flush with the gelcoat.

I filled the old holes and ground the old screws flush with the gelcoat, sealing all of them with epoxy.  I mounted new Spinlock XTS clutches, which I am very happy with now.  The screw spacing on the Spinlock clutches is much different than the original Rutgerson's, so new holes were drilled and tapped.  Problems solved!

Cheers,

Jake

[elias]

Salty and Jake thanks a lot for the info. I ll stay for this season with this project undone, depending also from the COVID restrictions. I was thinking to purchase again the same Rutgerson clutch to be symmetric with the rest of the boat clutches. By the way i would like to buy just the base of the Rutgerson 3ple clutch so if you have in your wharehouse an old i m open to offers!