Battcar System installed.
Bart and Cheri,
The entire car system cost me $1,500.00 and change bought from a supplier in Florida, the name of which I can't remember but Syd Millman at Harken hooked me up with them. I bought the webbing, needle and thread from a local sail loft for $9.40 and attached 12 Delrin intermediate sliders, four Battcars, one at each batten, with two more cars as a part of the headboard assembly. The loft wanted three weeks and $300.00 to do the sewing that took me a total of three hours over two or three visits to the boat. I removed the almost new and recently installed batten end fittings at the luff rope from my brand new main sail and replaced them with the Harken supplied (actually Sheaffer parts) batten end pieces that the Harken Totolon bearing cars screw into using an ice pick heated with a propane torch to punch the new holes in the main. Greg Ross and I fitted four and a fraction tracks to the 32 foot existing track which took about four (Greg ?) hours or so. We gave each of 100 slugs a dab of Loctite blue as we lined them up with the holes in the dedicated Harken track using 25mm long, 4mm flathead screws loosely threaded. As each section was fitted with slugs, it was slid up (the shortest one at the top) and the bottom slug temporarily tightened to prevent it from falling down in order to make room for the next track section. I had to bring an eight foot ladder from home, well padded and tied against the mast to get proper access to the upper screw holes in the almost 7 foot track sections. Once they were all in, we hoisted Marilyn up to the top with that electric screwdriver and she tightened every screw all the way down. By the way Marty, she loves going up in the chair. Trust me that it would have been about a quarter of the work and time installing the track if it had been horizontal on saw horses. As it was each slug had to be slid up with a putty knife between the old and new tracks with Greg handing the knife off to me on the ladder. More times than I care to remember the knife slipped off the slug and we needed to start that one all over again. Why didn't I do it when we had just had our mast off the boat and repainted? Well along with the mast rebuild and all new electronic stuff at the top hooked up to the new internal wiring harness, I had a new main sail made. It wasn't until it was up that we discovered that Marilyn couldn't hoist the heavier and stiffer sail without the assistance of a winch almost all the way up. This would not do as she single hands the boat a lot hence the Battcar System AFTER the mast went back on. We had all the canvas redone at the same time and the new sail cover allows for the slightly greater stack height. If I were to decide some day to replace the intermedate Delrin sliders with more Torolon ball cars, the stack height would increase enough to have to remake the sail cover. I think this pretty much covers it other than to say that I'm glad I did it for everyones sake. Regards, Glyn Judson E31 hull #55, Marina del Rey CA
I don't even know if this is something that our boat will need or not, but just out of curiosity, what did it run to get the components to install the system and where did you buy it?