Today I rather stupidly dropped my new V12 off the roof of my car - had been being so careful with it, and only put it up there to avoid scratching it on the ground. The sum total of damage is one broken rudder snapped in two at the base of the shaft, one big dent in the side right at the tail and some small gelcoat chips at the bottom of the nose - could have been a lot worse I suppose (though right now I'm possibly most irritated that I didn't get the paddle I'd driven 4 hours round trip for!) Looking for any tips and comments on repairs.
Is the rudder a total write off, or is it possible to repair a broken shaft? The blade itself is absolutely fine - any chance of drilling out the existing shaft and gluing in a new one?
The big dent is right at the tail in a low stress area. Is where it landed on a small stone, hence has dented the whole sandwich, but is I think still watertight, so I'm thinking of just using some car body filler to fill the dent. Would proper epoxy resin with a bit of CSM in be a better bet? I'm thinking the body filler will be more flexible though, hence less likely to crack out.
I can do gelcoat repairs for the chips, but slightly confused about the construction of my V12 performance. According to Epic it has a polyester gel coat, which all my sources suggest doesn't bond well to the epoxy used in the layup - this might explain how the gelcoat has just chipped off right down to the weave. Should I use proper gelcoat or a bit of epoxy to seal the weave?
