Hey Scott- That's my e27 in the photo Loren showed. Soon to be de-listed from the brokerage and back in regular use by us.
If you have reason to suspect that your boat has been mistreated in the past, and you find significant core damage and chainplate leakage you might consider doing this job, especially if its been in salt water. There are reports of failures, but they are rare. Although when they do happen it can by pretty devastating. You can find some accounts on this website if you search. With this in mind, and finding that my boat had egged out holes in the chainplates from undersized pins, terrible core damage all around the chainplates and rust stains where the chainplates met the hull, I was very concerned about this. Given how bad the overall condition of the boat was I decided to go for it. When I actually cut them off, though they seemed in pretty good shape, so I maybe didn't need to do it (the boat had been in freshwater for some time). Oh well.
As for cost, I think I spent ~600 on the chainplates (John Justin I think was the guys name of Custom Marine in CA) and under $2000 on the rigging (
www.riggingonly.com). Since the chainplates changed the length of the rigging, I had to use Hayn Hi-Mod lower terminals (except for the forestaty so the furler wouldn't unscrew it) and fit them as the mast was stepped.
One word of advice that I got from Brion Toss (rigger from Port Townsend area) when he inspected the chainplate arrangement. He mentioned that he would have reduced the overall length of unsupported chainplate above the toe-rail a little to reduce flexing and twisting, but he felt that the overall design was robust.
You can find a lot more detail of how I did this job at
www.plasticclassicforum.com/forum under Projects, Ericson 27 Project. Feel free to contact me back channel if you have questions.
Doug