Carver Owners Forum

Re: 1996 Carver 325
It appears that when Carver finished the interior of our boats many places were covered with a textured vinyl product that is foam backed, and it was glued to the fiberglass surface being covered. I have a couple spots where it appears the foam backing has deteriorated...more like disintegrated, causing the vinyl to come lose and hang down or fall off the wall. Has anyone else had to deal with this? If so, any thoughts on how to best correct the problem?
Attacked is a picture of he side window in the aft-cabin. As you can see the foam backing has crumbled and the attached vinyl starts to fall off the wall. My thought is to scrape the crumbling foam off the vinyl and wall as clean as possible and use spray adhesive to re attach the vinyl. Just so you know, it is not from being wet or leaks. I'm guessing what to do, and welcome input from others, please?
Thanks.

Consider the covering now is something like 26+ years old. I ran into this on a previous boat , we removed all the damaged vinyl cleaned the surface and replaced with new.

You could try to stick the old back up but may run into issues with the material not fitting without the backing, stretch/ pucker etc. Lets see what others have to say.

Bud, I don't doubt that you are correct. Perhaps someone else will post a miracle cure. Doubtful, as after all it is a boat.
Thanks for sharing your experience!

Happens to car roofs too, no other option than to clean back to surface and re-apply with new vinyl. Well, someone did use a different appproach: he simply applied buttons evenly distributed over the ceiling with screws through the thin metal sheeting. He never washed the roof again.....

You do have a great opportunity to change the surface material now. Alcantara, leather-look, stretched cloth and so on. More cloth-like surface is good for acoustics. Less great for moist/cleaning. But I don't think on my own boat I have to prepare everything for the day that a user forgets to ventilate over winter or leave a window open for a month during rainy times.

While you are at it; install (slightly over-sized) wires for everything that may arise in the future: LED lighting spots, ambient lighting, power to charge equipment, control cable for sensors (water ingress, temperature, moisture level, endless lists when you start your electronics hobby)

Obviously use water-proof spray glue (3M has great stuff but more brands around) most are but not all so check before you buy.