Albin Build Quality

[psneeld]

For all those in love with Albin build quality...

This is what I found when trying to convert the galley icebox on my 1988 40 tri-cabin to a fridge/freezer unit with the Dometic ColdMachine CS-NC-15 power compressor fridge unit.

The entire outboard side of the icebox was just large chunks of foam..none attached to the actual icebox...just randomly thrown in there providing almost no insulation value at all...yet over a garbage bag full of foam (over 18" thick in one place) doing virtually nothing.

[Moby Nick]

Foam cores mean one will never find Balsa rot in an Albin deck.

I would take exception that the chunks of foam "doing virtually nothing".

[Billyfeet]

"Foam cores mean one will never find Balsa rot in an Albin deck.

I would take exception that the chunks of foam "doing virtually nothing"-----NOW THAT"S FUNNY RIGHT THERE! I DON'T CARE WHO YOU ARE!

[psneeld]

the chunks were just filling a void...not attached to the glass icebox liner and major air spaces between them....so pretty much doing nothing.

It had nothing to do with the decks....

[Nomad Willy]

Flotation?

[Donsan]

Originally Posted by manyboats

Flotation?

Are fridges supposed to float???

[Moby Nick]

I'm out'ta here. I've got my Albin. If psneed doesn't like them, he can go find a better brand, with my blessing. My boat is 38 years old. I wonder how his choice will be at the same age?

[psneeld]

Originally Posted by Moby Nick

I'm out'ta here. I've got my Albin. If psneed doesn't like them, he can go find a better brand, with my blessing. My boat is 38 years old. I wonder how his choice will be at the same age?

If I had only known...but I believed the pack like so many..."Albins are great"

I have learned along the way that until you take a boat apart to nuts and bolts...public opinion is a really bad judgment of build quality.

I will say that certain models and certain years are WAY different in build quality.

I have heard good things about Albin 25's...but then again I heard good things about Albins in general till I found out the truth the hard way.

Worse than others? Maybe not for many but that doesn't make them built well either.

[O C Diver]

Originally Posted by psneeld

I have learned along the way that until you take a boat apart to nuts and bolts...public opinion is a really bad judgment of build quality.

Exactly!

Have spent countless hours grinding out bondo (fairing puddy) because the manufactuer didn't glass the joints close enough to the final level, filled the voids with bondo which cracked. Have been fixing a lot of short cuts this summer.

Ted

[SaltyDawg86]

I'm eyeing an Albin 48.... Don't tell me they suck!

[psneeld]

Originally Posted by SaltyDawg86

I'm eyeing an Albin 48.... Don't tell me they suck!

The trouble with boats that were built in Taiwan is that there is a huge difference in build quality all the way from yard to yard, make to make, model to model and even boat to boat. Any boat is worth looking at...but like a fne home with a lot of nice woodwork...you really don't know what is in the walls till you tear into them.

Sure there are a lot of common problems to a particular construction technique that really showed how much care owners took of their boats..but the point about stuffing a cavity with random blocks of foam just shows that certain points of even a "decent reputation" boat were totally overlooked by a competent ANYBODY....so what else was??????

[alormaria]

HA HA. I have found some shockingly bad construction in my Marine Trader too. Then again, most of that poor construction has hung together for 15, 20, 25, 30 and now almost 40 years before I found it and 'corrected' it. So how bad could it have been?

[psneeld]

Originally Posted by alormaria

HA HA. I have found some shockingly bad construction in my Marine Trader too. Then again, most of that poor construction has hung together for 15, 20, 25, 30 and now almost 40 years before I found it and 'corrected' it. So how bad could it have been?

Yep...my boat's not on the market, I'm still going to Florida in it this year and I'm planning on living aboard for the next 20 years or so.

So I hope I DON"T find out how bad it could be.....

MY post is just another in a long line of posts by people who really get to know their boat as opposed to the other end of the spectrum that let yards do all the work while they sit around the club and say how well their boat is built....

[Underway]

Originally Posted by psneeld

The trouble with boats that were built in Taiwan is that there is a huge difference in build quality all the way from yard to yard, make to make, model to model and even boat to boat. Any boat is worth looking at...but like a fne home with a lot of nice woodwork...you really don't know what is in the walls till you tear into them.

The very few Taiwan yards that actually paid attention to build quality are still in business. Alexander Chueh, for example, started Ocean Alexander with the express intent to address the build quality problem he noted in other yards.

[Moby Nick]

Getting back to the "not really doing anything" part of the OP, the firmly appearing chunks are doing one thing fairly, REDUCING CONVECTION IN THE AIRSPACE SURROUNDING THE COLD FOOD CHAMBER, which is the big bugaboo when it comes to ice boxes and refrigerators. Sure, poured-in-place Urethane foam would do that more efficiently, but that is only a question of degree. Pouring in bushels of Styrofoam packing peanuts would have also worked.

[psneeld]

If there's a pretty large air gap between the ice box and the first few inches of foam that can drain cold air all the way to the bilge...do you honestly think the next 17 inches of foam was really doing anything???? Where do you see that the blocks were firmly anything? I could put my boroscope around most of the box suggesting over an inch air gap in many places where the foam just shifted away from it...it wasn't even glued to the ice box.

It was like some kid was told to fill a toy box with random sized chunks of foam..and he was in a hurry to get to the playground. Maybe that's where the idea came from...they saw how well it worked with chunks of teak sorta thrown together and poured poly resin over them to make the flying bridge deck...

Let me put it another way...I realized the icebox was useless when it wouldn't hold ice a couple days in moderate temps...then to find they wasted over 2 cubic feet of foam to do nothing just makes me shake my head.

[rwidman]

I have yet to find any shoddy construction on my Camano. It's a well thought out and well built boat. It was built in Canada.

[psneeld]

Taken a sawzall or crowbar to it yet? That's the real test.

[N4712]

Originally Posted by rwidman

I have yet to find any shoddy construction on my Camano. It's a well thought out and well built boat. It was built in Canada.

Yep!

[psneeld]

Originally Posted by N4712

Yep!

Have you taken a sawzall or crowbar to one?

And while I know its a better built boat than many...my point is till you rip into one seriously..ya can't go by what the crowd thinks.....

And I've owned/run boats that go both ways in my opinion.

Cheaper boats that had building details that rivaled "better names"...and good ones that just kept disappointing me the further I dug.

So far MY Albin has fallen the furthest from it's "boatshow" reputation. Notice how I said "MY" as there are other models and years that are a lot different.