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How much stress is on the tower


vlx wakesetter

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I've always wondered how much strain we're actually putting on our towers with the weight of the tower, 4 boards, bimini top, speakers, and lets say a wakeboarder thats 150-200lbs. Any thoughts!!!

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That would be a lot less stress in the downward direction than compared to a 250# dude trying to get up on a wakeboard for the first time and just draggin in the water causing a lot of pressure on the front legs of any tower in the upward direction.

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We have had people sitting on top of the tower, 250 pounders in a sling off the side of the tower, plenty of speakers and boards hanging off it - all while pulling a boarder or surfer. No problems.

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I'd be more concerned about strain on the gunnels, which essentially boils down to tower design.

This is what I was more into as far as the stress issue. And no the tower has not broke but where it's mounted I have a few stress cracks in the gel coat.

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We have had people sitting on top of the tower, 250 pounders in a sling off the side of the tower, plenty of speakers and boards hanging off it - all while pulling a boarder or surfer. No problems.

I can attest to the sturdiness of the Godfather's tower!!! We've loaded that thing up with boards and people + his speakers and it keeps holding everything up.

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I'd be more concerned about strain on the gunnels, which essentially boils down to tower design.

This is what I was more into as far as the stress issue. And no the tower has not broke but where it's mounted I have a few stress cracks in the gel coat.

ECI Skylons were notorious for that. If you decide to get it fixed, add some backing plates to the inside of the hull where your tower mounts. Make sure that the holes for the bolts are chamfered at the gel, & when the legs are reinstalled don't torque them down too much. The fundamental flaw with that tower is that the contour of the feet don't match the contour of many of the hulls that the tower was used on. So having a good backing plate as support for each leg in addition to the other things is almost essential to keeping it from happening again.

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We have had people sitting on top of the tower, 250 pounders in a sling off the side of the tower, plenty of speakers and boards hanging off it - all while pulling a boarder or surfer. No problems.

I can attest to the sturdiness of the Godfather's tower!!! We've loaded that thing up with boards and people + his speakers and it keeps holding everything up.

Yep - no problems with the Skylon Swoop here. But the feet on mine match the contour of the hull exactly.

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We have had people sitting on top of the tower, 250 pounders in a sling off the side of the tower, plenty of speakers and boards hanging off it - all while pulling a boarder or surfer. No problems.

I can attest to the sturdiness of the Godfather's tower!!! We've loaded that thing up with boards and people + his speakers and it keeps holding everything up.

Yep - no problems with the Skylon Swoop here. But the feet on mine match the contour of the hull exactly.

Yeah, it seems like they didn't have so many difficulties with your hull. It was a bad deal on many other boats though.

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It looks like it matches up perfectly but I'm still interested in knowing how much approximate weight is on each mounting point when wakeboarding. Is there a way to fix a couple of hairline cracks around the mounting plate that would look original again or is too much work to even think about?

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I just made four adaptor plates for my tower bases that match the contour of the hull right above the rub rail, it took two different radiuses (two front/two back).

I took two pieces of 1/4in x 4 x 9 aluminum (for two bases each) and etched the radius onto the side after tracing it from a contour gauge formed by the curve of the hull. Then clamped it in the mill with a ball end bit installed, set the depth differently each pass back and forth to touch the etched line on the side, and kept the passes close enough that the lines were easily removed by a small 90deg air tool with a 1-1/2in sanding head on it.

After cutting them to the same shape as the outline of the base mounts and drilling the screw holes, the plates fit behind them perfectly matching the contour of the boat, and by using the 1/8in rubber gasket that came with the bases between the adaptors and the hull, I don’t see any reason why my tower should cause any cracking or stress problems at all.

If I had installed the bases without such a contour match, there would have been an issue on mine for sure.

My contour adaptor plates only added about 1/8in to 3/16in to the stand off of the base and I think they blend in very well, looking head on from the side you can’t even see them.

I took some progressive pics to share but haven’t created a photo bucket account yet or downloaded them on my computer, --that whole time thing.

If someone would be interested, I’ll post some when I’m able to.

Edited by lakewaterjunky
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It looks like it matches up perfectly but I'm still interested in knowing how much approximate weight is on each mounting point when wakeboarding. Is there a way to fix a couple of hairline cracks around the mounting plate that would look original again or is too much work to even think about?

I couldn't even guess at the stress numbers since I'm no engineer. But as far as fixing the stress cracks in the gel, yes it can be done. Ours had cracks around 2 of the 4 feet & you had to really look (& know exactly where to look) for the fix after it was done. A good gel guy can make those things disappear.

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