Looks fantastic and the pontoon has a new lease on life!
PP I'm curious...
My impression is the steel pontoons were on the earlier machines and fiberglass replaced steel on later machines. Were there years where both were available, and did customers have the choice? Also which type of pontoon do you prefer (steel or fiberglass) and why?
BT, sir,
both pontoons were offered on Tuckers starting in late 1963, on 400 and 500 series and it was the customers choice, 300 series machines came only with fiberglass pontoons,
as for which is best, humm,
the biggest draw back to steel pontoons is they rust from the inside, big issue with a tucker, is they are built from miid steel and only painted the outside of pontoons and frames, so places like the inside of the square tubes used in building the frames did rust and have found far more machines suffering from badly rust out frames and the pontoons, and not painted and or had any rust preventive applied to the inside of the pontoons and frames ( and in all fairness to tucker inc, pretty sure they never envisioned their machines lasting this long to have this be an issue, surprise, they did last this long and still are far superior to snow shoes in the back country ) so, they too rust from the inside out, and every steel pontoon has this issue, some far worst than others, with rusting from the inside, it weakens the structural strength of the pontoon, there are a couple more smaller issues, all in all, the issues with a steel pontoon are really caused by the fact they have lasted so long.
so good job tucker inc! they lasted longer enough to have a second life.
so far, the only real problem i see with a fiberglass pontoon is damage to the glass from the hard life of a pontoons, cracks/holes and or a track shaving the fiberglass down to where it has worn through, these issues come from very hard use with little to no maintenance to the pontoon and tracks.
what i have seen, is the fiberglass pontoon for what ever reason seem to survive better, and as for repairing/restoring, at this point, i think it is easier to save the fiberglass pontoon, i cut them open along the factory seam joining the 2 halves together and make all the needed repairs from the inside, I think this works quite well and i like the outcome, and it is about half the time to do when compared to a steel pontoon, only real problem, tucker is orange, and the pontoons are blue
so, to anwser your question, i much prefer an early tucker, two pontoon with skis, they were built with a angle iron frame, then a few of these were fitted with all stainless steel pontoons. thats the ticket...
