I have an older Unifoil Nimitz and it has been taking on water. I had drilled a hole in bottom, let it drain, and then got it professional repaired where I thought there might had been cracks in various spots. Well it’s still taking on water and I can see that there was a large repair done to the tracks from previous owner, possibly even new tracks put in. And wondering if it’s worth getting the tracks redone a second time. It’s a nice board but friend of mine is saying it’s going to keep adding weight with repair after repair and the board is already heavy compared to the newer gen Nimitz. I don’t really want to buy a new board but I have already dumped some money into repairs and I don’t exactly know where this water in getting in from. Any feedback is appreciated
I drilled a 22m hole in the tail, glued in a 20mm locknut over the hole, threaded a plastic electrical 20mm plain to screw adaptor into it with a short piece of flex electrical conduit. I then blew up a balloon, put it on over the end of the flexible conduit & it supplied a constant pressure of air into the board while I sprayed soapy water over it to find the suspect leak.
I got the idea after watching KT blow air into teir boards through the vent plug hole to check for micro leaks. I don’t have a vent plug but you may be able to use your vent hole.
It took weeks of standing the board on its’ tail on top of newspaper to finally have no water coming out. Some of my other boards that have taken on water have never gone back to their original weight.
gravity is not going to get all the water out, you gotta vacuum it out
or spin it out
fuck yeah do this!
Can you guys let me know what you mean by vacuum or Spinning?
Vacuum means put the board in a vacuum bag, or make a hole in the board to suck the water out with a vacuum system.
Spinning means taking your leash and spinning the board until all the water is out.
I used a wet vacuum to suck the water out after making a hole in teh nose. worked well
There used to be a great thread on the old standup forum that is now gone. @Beasho might show up and repost some of his findings. But people have been figuring out how to dry out EPS foam for decades starting with when we first got epoxy windsurf boards. there is still a great writeup hosted by the board lady, which is relevant to your situation, and there are plenty of other articles about repair there which are still the standard methods.
I have personally dried out and repaired several boards. The best method has been to drill a hole, put a vacuum line in and seal it up, and put the board out in the sun for many many days until water stops coming out. You won’t believe how much water comes out at first. Weight the board regularly and it will stop loosing weight and that’s the best you will do.
Then after it is dry, put a very small amount of pressure in the same sealed up tube and spray soapy water all over the board to identify all the leak points. Be patient and you’ll find them all.
To spin it out, take it to the local playground & strap it onto the spinning thing that makes you feel sick. Wrap a rope around the shaft, pull hard & giggle at the result
somewhere in a foiling related podcast is a story about the hey-day of windsurfing board building on Maui where people were recounting the board spinner death-trap that somebody had made out of an old washing machine or something like that. Maybe it was Jimmy Lewis telling a story about one of his buddies, I can’t recall.
Click on water in board tab, plus tons of good info in proper way th repairs boards.
How to test for leaks with pics.