Does anyone know if the aluminum seat hanger on an ultralight layup wenonah can be removed by only drilling the 3 to 4 obvious pop rivets, or does it require removal of the whole or a significant amount of gunwale?

I ask because I have a Spirit II set up with both a sliding bow seat and accompanying hardware, as well as a hanger for a traditional web bow seat. I would like to remove the hangers for the front bow web seat and place them in the middle of the boat for an easily removable middle seat. If its as simple as drilling a few pop rivets no big deal, but if the hangers fit over top of hull edge and are covered by gunwale requiring removal of the whole thing I don't guess I would bother.

Anyone have an answer?

It seems like no one has an answer. If I were doing what you describe I too would wand an answer to your question. On the other hand, the worst thing that could happen if you went ahead and drilled out the pop rivets would be to have to replace them if you found that it did not allow you to remove the brackets.

I'm pretty sure they're just pop-riveted between the gunnels. Brian from Wenonah frequents this forum, so he could give you the final answer. Until he responds, you could slip a thin blade (thinking maybe a feeler gauge) on the outside of the gunnel to see if there's anything out there. Considering the thinness of layups, and the width of the female part of the gunnel extrusion, I strongly doubt there's anything other than a sandwich.

Thanks, thats a good idea, I imagine if it folds over I would be able to feel it, and yes, the worse that could happen is I just need to replace a few pop rivets.

I replaced the gunwales on a Itasca which had the hangers for the 3rd seat. The hanger didn’t go over the top of the hull and could be removed by drilling the rivets.
Carl

Hi TnVol,

Brian here from Wenonah,

Strange your boat has both hangers and sliders. Wonder how it ended up like that??

The hangers are easily removed by drilling out the three rivets with a 3/16" bit. They'll slide right out.

Hope this helps,

Brian