www.iFourWinns.com

My old '88 has the OE ladder and the way they mounted it, inside the swim platform there were some T-nuts glassed into the underside, with machine screws holding the bracket for the ladder on. On one side these t-nuts rotted out and there was no way to get inside the inner recess of the swim platform to re-install anything similar. The inner recess of the swim platform between the lower hull and the top cap is about 1"-1.5". You could not use a toggle bolt because there is not enough room for it to rotate into place. Wanna know how I did it???

Took a flashlight and looked in there, had to remove the rear engine bulkhead and batt on the port side to bend my self in there to see. Then snaked a tape measure to see how far in the holes were from the end of the engine compartment (about 16").
Got a piece of 1/2" wide angle aluminum from another project. Drilled two holes in the right part of it 2" apart to match up with the mounting holes. Took the toggle bolt retainer piece off the plastic stalk you use to snake them through holes. Had to shorten one because they were just a bit too long to fit in line with each other with a 2" on center dimension. Drilled holes through the side of the toggle bolt anchor so I could pop rivet them to the angle side of the aluminum, with the hole I drilled in the aluminum lined up with the threaded opening in the toggle bolt retainer. Took this in the engine compartment, slid it in while my patient son put in the machine screws trying to line em up. Took a while but we got it. Had to peek in that tiny space with a real bright LED flashlight to direct him to line up the machine screws with the holes. I really tried not to use bad language. But only partially successful, son laughed. I can't believe how patient he is.....
Now instead of the t-nuts there is a piece of 16"x1/2" wide aluminum as a backing piece for the mount on that side. This job was simple in concept but difficult in execution.

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88 Four Winns 200 Horizon
4.3 OMC Cobra-4bbl
2002 Walker Bay 10/2012 Suzuki 2.5
2008 Walker Bay 8

1998 Jeep Grand Cherokee 4.0/Selectrac
2007 Jeep Grand Cherokee 5.7 Hemi/Quadradrive II

Outstanding, I had a tight space situation as well when mounting our swim platform. I duct taped a wrench on to a 5 gallon jug paint stir stick. I then used 3M Command strip to adhere the nut to the wrench. The stir stick gave me leverage, and the command strip released the nut one I got the threads started.

I love a good solution story, the way my boating goes, I need these for future reference....

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1994 235 Sundowner w/351 Ford

I like your solution as well. The first time I fixed this I used something similar to hold the toggle bolt, the reason I used the angle aluminum was that
I wanted something very strong to spread the load out from the ladder. There is a lot of force pulling on those 4 machine screws. The hard part was getting the machine screws started, fabbing this up was very easy, took maybe 45 min.

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88 Four Winns 200 Horizon
4.3 OMC Cobra-4bbl
2002 Walker Bay 10/2012 Suzuki 2.5
2008 Walker Bay 8

1998 Jeep Grand Cherokee 4.0/Selectrac
2007 Jeep Grand Cherokee 5.7 Hemi/Quadradrive II