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Cutting pontoons down


Snowking

Question

I have a buddy that needs to lose 6 inches off his pontoon boat and he was thinking he could cut it out of the toons and make them flat instead of round. Do you think it would work. He's trying to fit it into a stacker trailer on the top of the lift. Thanks chad

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Just knowing the amount of work involved would make me run from it. But that aside, I assume this is off the bow? Cutting 6 inches may not seem like a lot but the could throw off the entire weight balance of the boat and make it plow water. Also making the front of the pontoons flat would greatly increase drag and would most likely throw a tremendous amount of water over the bow. If I were doing it I would cut the round part off, then cut off 6“, and reweld the round back on.

Also remember when welding on the pontoons they should be pressure tested afterward to ensure there are no leaks. Just a couple pounds of air pressure and some soapy water will do the trick.

Good luck, but if it were me I'd find another option.

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This cutting the tube the length of it so lets say the tube is 24 inch tall it would be 18. The only other thing I can think of is to lower the council and all the railings and the backs of all the seats. I know it's a lot of work but the best part of it is I'm not doing any of it !!

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Seriously!?! The entire length of it? And I thought just cutting them down in length would be a PITA!!

First off cutting the bottoms off would allow the pontoons to deform and flatten out. Getting them back into shape so you can weld them would be a struggle.

Second removing that much flotation would compromise the seaworthyness of the boat, and it would definitely not be up to specs on the coastguard plate. Lets say you have a pontoon that is 24" in diameter and 20 feet long, the internal air volume would be about 62 cubic feet. If you cut off the bottom 6" you would end up with a pontoon of about 50 cubic feet. That is around 20% loss.

So calculating the buoyancy of everything, the original pontoons together had about 7900lbs of buoyancy, the new pontoons would now have 6400 lbs of buoyancy. (Buoyancy meaning amount of force required to COMPLETELY submerge the pontoons.

Third, if you remove 6" from the height of the pontoons, it will now ride around 6" lower in the water, and any decent wave will now swamp the boat.

Doing this could also quite possibly negatively affect the handling of the boat at all speeds.

If it were me I would either find a different boat, get a different trailer, or if cutting the pontoon was my ONLY option I'd also add a third pontoon to the center and also rotate the pontoons 180* so the flat spot is now on top to reduce the possibility of the handling being affected.

Thinking about it now, could the mounts that connect the pontoon to the floor be modified? Maybe cut them down and inset it kinda like wheels getting pushed into the wheel wells of a low-rider?

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