Outboard visits the beauty shop

This post will briefly highlight the cosmetic enhancements we made to our auxillary outboard. As previously mentioned, the motor cowling fell off on the highway while the previous owner was towing his boat. During the tumble down the highway, the cowling sustained cracks, scrapes and broken corners.

I start the repairs by filling in the hollow spaces between the fiberglass outer-cowling and the foam insulation with styrofoam. Then I used hand moldable "metal" epoxy putty from PC Products (similar to the PC-11 marine epoxy used on the hull) to pactch the cracks and holes in the cowling. The epoxy sets really fast, so you need to be quick with shaping it. Unfortunately, this epoxy doesn't sand down very nicely, so you're mostly stuck with whatever shape the epoxy sets in.

Next, I cleaned the cowling and sanded it with fine grit sanding sponges to remove grime and painted decals. I then used 3 coats of an exterior latex paint with ceramic additives to finish the job. All in all, the cowling came out looking much better than when I started. After we settle on a bootstripe color for the sailboat, we may come back and add a decorative stripe to the motor cowling to break-up the generic looking white.