I have an aluminum 12' boat up at my cabin that leaks like a friggin sieve. In about 2 hours of fishing, I'm ankle deep in water. No obvious holes, so it must be the seams and rivets.

Anyone ever fix this problem? What do you recommend?

I think hardware store still has aluminium solder/welding rod that can be applied with a propane torque. I bought some long time ago and it worked very well. You can use it on the leaking spot.

Buy mine :D

Do you have the aluminum ribs under the boat? Mine leaks from there....mainly because we have used it to explore rocky bottom creeks and such up in N. Wis and MN....the rocks take their toll!

We just used a silicone calk type stuff and filled up every rib, and then each and every joint. Its been holding for 5+ years now....and this is an old boat!!

Fellow I know has an old aluminum canoe that had a big hole in it. He brought it in here to our body shop & we filled it with panel bonding adhesive. That stuff will fix anything, stick to most anything.

Cool, thanks for the suggestions! Someone else suggested JB Weld, too.

It's somewhat challenging, not having running water at the cabin...I'll be taking the boat to a remote bridge on a gravel road, retrieving buckets of water from below the bridge and filling the boat up with water, then I'll look for the leak.

I have a feeling that it's a whole lot of leaks along seams and stuff. I like the silicone idea, in that application is fairly easy. JB Weld would probably rock, but would be a pain in the ass to apply if it's more than a leak from just one area.

I have an aluminum 12' boat up at my cabin that leaks like a friggin sieve. In about 2 hours of fishing, I'm ankle deep in water. No obvious holes, so it must be the seams and rivets.

Anyone ever fix this problem? What do you recommend?

I was thinking the same befor reading the post, won't work for this.

Loue, you need to get it clean and dry and then get it in the water and WATCH.

You might use a flour seive and coat the seams with a coating of flour so a leak will show easy.

Once you find it a plan of attack will be more obvious. if it is a seam, you might caulk it with RTV. If its a rivit, it might be re-peened.

well my usual response would be copious amounts of duct tape, some well placed metal epoxy would also do the trick.

Look on Bass Pro Shops they sell (at least used to) an epoxy stick like stuff that comes with a little torch, you heat up the place you wanna patch and then rub the stick on it. It was for fixing aluminum boats especially an worked on mine when I patched it years and years ago.

Do you have the aluminum ribs under the boat? Mine leaks from there....mainly because we have used it to explore rocky bottom creeks and such up in N. Wis and MN....the rocks take their toll!

We just used a silicone calk type stuff and filled up every rib, and then each and every joint. Its been holding for 5+ years now....and this is an old boat!!
I agree, this will do the trick. Fixed a leaky canoe this way several years ago and no leaks.