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Tower issue - Crumpled


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I pulled my 2003 VLX out of storage and I noticed that the lower support is bent and split open. I'm assuming that it occurred when I was pulling something heavy. I have been looking for a replacement part, and am not finding anything. I was wondering if anyone could point me in the right direction. I'd love to just replace the lower piece that is cracked. The rest of the tower is in good shape. 

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Could it possible that it had water trapped inside of it and it froze splitting the pipe open?

I have a titan 2 tower available for sale but its in Georgia.

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2 minutes ago, tbullard said:

Could it possible that it had water trapped inside of it and it froze splitting the pipe open?

I have a titan 2 tower available for sale but its in Georgia.

Quite possibly. It's definitely something to look at. Depending if I am able to fix this, I'll have to check into making sure the other side is free of water as well. Being up in Michigan and with the winds off the big lake, it does get cold. 

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13 minutes ago, tbullard said:

Could it possible that it had water trapped inside of it and it froze splitting the pipe open?

Thats pretty unlikely. The entire tube would have to be completely full of water, I would think. 

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One of the issues with the swoop tower was the side mounting "sandwiching" the fiberglass & gelcoat between mounting plates. This configuration caused a lot of stress cracks in gelcoat where a top-mounted foot didn't have the same issues. If there was an extreme load on the tower, I would expect that there would be some visible damage the gelcoat. The aluminum tower isn't going to bend before the gelcoat starts to crack unless something really odd happened. I would inspect the fiberglass/gelcoat very close and look at the tower damage to try to figure out what happened.

Did you store it at your own location, or was it stored in a leased space?
Is there any damage to the fiberglass/gelcoat?

...and: pictures?

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This might be your best option below.  You would probably need to buy the whole tower, but you could replace just the piece that mounts.  Still probably cheaper than any other option when you start looking at gelcoat work for a different tower.  I have seen this for sale for a few weeks now.

https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/193287569265153/

 

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6 hours ago, COOP said:

Thats pretty unlikely. The entire tube would have to be completely full of water, I would think. 

I have had fence posts split from freezing water in them and they were not full only at the ground level full.

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There are actually two sections that are split. I only noticed the split section before. Here are the photos. (Sorry, my phone has been dropped a lot) I split the paint when I was messing with the split yesterday. 

On a side note, there is not any significant spiderwebbing.

IMG_20210518_154445417_MP.jpg

IMG_20210518_161644782_HDR.jpg

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formulaben

There's no way the tower hit something while backing up?  Just asking, as you said you took it out of storage and if I had to guess, it looks like an over-stress going the opposite direction of towing something.  Perhaps this isn't your damage?

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23 minutes ago, R48138 said:

There are actually two sections that are split. I only noticed the split section before. Here are the photos. (Sorry, my phone has been dropped a lot) I split the paint when I was messing with the split yesterday. 

On a side note, there is not any significant spiderwebbing.

IMG_20210518_154445417_MP.jpg

IMG_20210518_161644782_HDR.jpg

My gut says trapped water that froze. Ive come across a number of tower with water in the legs. 

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Looks like a skylon swoop tower.  Skylon is in (or near) Perris, Ca. Large warehouse which might have older tower parts. A couple years ago I needed the hand bolts that attach to the tower for my 2002 VLX, they had them no problem. Phone # is (951) 940-9999.

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9 hours ago, MakeNWaves said:

Looks like a skylon swoop tower.  Skylon is in (or near) Perris, Ca. Large warehouse which might have older tower parts. A couple years ago I needed the hand bolts that attach to the tower for my 2002 VLX, they had them no problem. Phone # is (951) 940-9999.

Awesome. Thank you so much!! 

This forum rocks. 

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