09 January 2011: Damage Assessment

The first thing I had to do was to strip the boat down and wash her out good. A good scrub-down with Simple Green went a long way towards removing the nasty odors left behind by the mice! Once that was complete, a thorough inspection of the internals revealed a number of significant issues. The hull itself looked pretty sound, with just a little bit of minor delamination between the hull and sub-deck on the port side. A few of the CO2 lines have been chewed through, but that is a bit of a non-issue as I plan on replacing all the tubing anyway to prevent age-related blowouts. Fortunately, the main power lines (the ones from the battery to the drive motors and pump) escaped damage. By far the most serious injuries were to the control system. Here is the run-down:

• The receiver antenna has been chewed off an inch outside the casing is to the electrical system.

• The wires for two of the firing boards have been stripped of insulation, but not completely parted.

• The receiver plug for the ESC has been gnawed off.

I'm not sure how to go about repairing some of these problems; the control boards and receiver boards are Scotchkoted, so I will have to figure out how to clean at least a little bit of that stuff off if I am going to salvage some of those components. The ESC plug replacement shouldn't be too difficult, as I just need to trim the damaged wires off and attach a new plug.

Here is the ship at the start, before disassembly and cleaning.

Here is some of the insulation damage done to some of the firing board control wires.

This came out a little blurry, but his is the damage that has some of the most worrisome damage; the insulation is stripped almost all the way to the board.

This is where the plug for the ESC used to be...

Here we are, all stripped down but before cleaning. Ewww.

What a difference a little scrubbing makes!

Well, here we are. Stripped down and ready to go for restoration!

Andy Rucker