Emergency Repair On My Epic V7 – 2/4/2023

Since I’m planning to use my Epic V7 in the MR340 this year, I figured it was time to make sure it was up to the task. I’ll be making more updates and documenting them here.

Today’s job was to put a more robust hatch cover on to help keep water out. I went to Epic’s site and looked at what was available. There was a note saying if you had a generation 1 or 2 V7 to email or call. I sent an email to the address (with pictures of my boat). Within a few hours,  I received a reply letting me know that I have a generation1 V7. The part that I wanted was available and I purchased it for a very reasonable $54.90 with shipping. I’m not sure why they don’t offer it directly on their website, but I did appreciate being able to get it.  I also ordered rudder line and a hardware kit to update at a later date.

First step was to lower the boat from the ceiling to a working height and keep it level. See the two red ropes the boat is hanging from.

Here is my new hatch cover. Its hard plastic to go over the soft cover and keep things in place. The packaging ensured that it wouldn’t break in transit even if the delivery person got angry.

All new hardware was included. I put it in the bucket seat of the boat to ensure that I wouldn’t loose it.

First step was to remove the current guides that were going to be replaced. To make this work easier, I propped my cell phone up on a glove and put it on selfie mode. This let me get the sweet selfie below and see what my hands were doing while I removed the guide.

Somewhere during this process of using my cell phone for selfies and seeing where my hands were, I made a small mistake. I wanted more light and tried to turn on the flashlight on m phone. I pushed what felt like a random sequence of buttons fast and ended up dialing 911 via an Android emergency call. There was a cancel screen, but my hands were wet and wouldn’t cancel on the screen. I stayed on to tell the dispatcher of my mistake. If you made it this far, you now know the why I have the click bait style title. I hope to not do that again.

The new screws were a bit larger than the original. I did the wrong thing initially and used a pair of needle nose pliers to make the hole bigger. While this worked, the hole was off center and caused problems I had to re-work when the bolt was too close to the edge of the boat. Take your time and get out a drill.

Fixing my bad hole with the drill. Was much easier going forward with the correct tool.

I learned that the nuts provided in the kit are 8mm in size. I didn’t have a socket small/thin enough to use, so I resorted to an open ended wrench to help tighten the bolts. When I ws done, I had nice silver loops on top.

It helps to pay attention as there are no instructions. I forgot to put the loop on before tightening everything and got to do this one a second time.

When the project is all said and done, you have a cool cover on the hatch that helps keep your gear safe and dry.

Now I’ll have to cross my fingers that the next upgrades go this well!

Hogan Haake

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