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I am going to start a more technical discussion regarding the Genesis transom/mounting brackets/ bolts and water intrusion for any of those that want to throw this subject arround a little bit. In all the threads regarding the water issue I never once saw anyone suggest doing what I did. I took out all the electronics and then hung the boat bow up and filled the rear of the cockpit or the insides of the boat with water up to the open hatch area. In other words I put a lot of water in the boat trying to see where it came out. I was shocked. The whole back end leaked like a sieve. I expected a few drops of water perhaps but heck I could have filled up a small glass in about 3 minutes. The oddity for me was from day one I got too much water inside the boat and went the whole nine yards trying to correct the problem with the flex shaft using thick grease, shrink tubing around the nose of the strut bracket, even a piece of shrink tubing over the end of the stuffing box tube shrunk down around the flex cable at the motor end inside the boat. And what I think did the most good a relief hole drilled into the strut just forward of the bearings. All of this helped but did not eliminate the problem, just kind of made the problem more managable. I stuffed foam rubber in the bottom and after a run would squeeze out the excess water that collected in the foam. This should have been the last of that story but then lately I noticed the amount of water was increasing. There had to be a reason. Hence the filling the hull with water to see where it came out.
This is what I learned. The strut bracket if you have the provided hardware is bolted through the transom with 3mm bolts with elastic nylon lock nuts inside. Kind of a problem reaching everything much less seeing everything but there is a manufacturing flaw I think all Genesis owners will have to deal with sooner or later. After taking all the hardware off you can tell they tried to seal the bolt areas with silicon ATV sealant. My quess some of the boats shipped have a better job of this being done correctly than others. Still no matter here is my observation. The thin wooden doubler inside the transom is plywood. It is not glassed over or sealed in any way, in my case though it looks like somebody tried to reinforce the transom with fiberglass cloth but just didn't get the job done. Anyway the lock nuts ate into the wood crushing the wood and over time allowed the strut bracked to be a little loose but I don't think the bolts and nuts loosened just that the nuts through vibration crushed the tight fit until the fit was too loose. I have a theory as to why that happened as well. When you take the strut and strut bracket off the transom you will notice the gel coat is kind of rounded. In other words the flat surface that the pretty aluminum brackets should mate nicely to is not flat. In my case this rounded surface made it impossible to tighten down the brackets and not be able to rock a little. The strut as the nuts ate into the plywood doubler would rock back and forth making a bad situation worse. As this movement was allowed to progressively get worse whatever silicon sealent existed doing a fairly good job of keeping water out up to this point started being worn away. I found my bolt holes in the transom have been wallowed out and much of the water sealent worn away as well.
Okay so now the fix. I did several things. First I made a 1/8th inch aluminum plate for the inside of the transom. Second I sanded very carefully the rounded surface eating into the gel coat to make a flatter surface for the strut brackets. I reversed my bolt mounting direction and because I have an aluminum plate the included 3 mm bolts were too short. So I drilled out the holes and went with 440 by 1 inch bolts with the head of the cap screws inserted through the plate inside the boat and then the elastic lock nuts on the outside of the boat. May not be as pretty but it was easier to do for me. Also before I bolted everything up I mixed some slow cure epoxy and coated the raw wooden doubler and bolted the aluminum on top of that epoxied surface. After everything setup and the epoxy curred I took off the lock nuts and strut brackets and put a nice thick layer of new silicon sealent before tightening everything down a final time. After trimming the excess sealent I believe my transom is more water proof now than when I got the boat. Only time will tell.
Dave
This is what I learned. The strut bracket if you have the provided hardware is bolted through the transom with 3mm bolts with elastic nylon lock nuts inside. Kind of a problem reaching everything much less seeing everything but there is a manufacturing flaw I think all Genesis owners will have to deal with sooner or later. After taking all the hardware off you can tell they tried to seal the bolt areas with silicon ATV sealant. My quess some of the boats shipped have a better job of this being done correctly than others. Still no matter here is my observation. The thin wooden doubler inside the transom is plywood. It is not glassed over or sealed in any way, in my case though it looks like somebody tried to reinforce the transom with fiberglass cloth but just didn't get the job done. Anyway the lock nuts ate into the wood crushing the wood and over time allowed the strut bracked to be a little loose but I don't think the bolts and nuts loosened just that the nuts through vibration crushed the tight fit until the fit was too loose. I have a theory as to why that happened as well. When you take the strut and strut bracket off the transom you will notice the gel coat is kind of rounded. In other words the flat surface that the pretty aluminum brackets should mate nicely to is not flat. In my case this rounded surface made it impossible to tighten down the brackets and not be able to rock a little. The strut as the nuts ate into the plywood doubler would rock back and forth making a bad situation worse. As this movement was allowed to progressively get worse whatever silicon sealent existed doing a fairly good job of keeping water out up to this point started being worn away. I found my bolt holes in the transom have been wallowed out and much of the water sealent worn away as well.
Okay so now the fix. I did several things. First I made a 1/8th inch aluminum plate for the inside of the transom. Second I sanded very carefully the rounded surface eating into the gel coat to make a flatter surface for the strut brackets. I reversed my bolt mounting direction and because I have an aluminum plate the included 3 mm bolts were too short. So I drilled out the holes and went with 440 by 1 inch bolts with the head of the cap screws inserted through the plate inside the boat and then the elastic lock nuts on the outside of the boat. May not be as pretty but it was easier to do for me. Also before I bolted everything up I mixed some slow cure epoxy and coated the raw wooden doubler and bolted the aluminum on top of that epoxied surface. After everything setup and the epoxy curred I took off the lock nuts and strut brackets and put a nice thick layer of new silicon sealent before tightening everything down a final time. After trimming the excess sealent I believe my transom is more water proof now than when I got the boat. Only time will tell.
Dave