Harken Furler removal

[unbusted67]

I need to get new standing rigging and I am in a location that requires me to strip the mast and bring the rigging to the rigger myself. Not a problem until I realized that my furler is one with my headstay and that I cant really transport the headstay with the foil and furler intact.

I am not really sure of what model the furler is. The instruction manual just says "unit 1.5". It appears that the foil has been connected to the headstay with screws and adhesive and that the drum and halyard swivel are stuck on stay because they are blocked by the swage at the end of the stay.

Does anyone have any experience with the removal of these units and more importantly whether or not I can reuse this one with a new headstay?

[DeepFrz]

Ben, maybe this will help you figure it out.

http://www.harken.com/pdf/mk3-1.5-4864.pdf

[Matt Johnson]

I just changed the head stay under my harken furling unit.... It's really easy. You'll need to cut the old stay off the furling unit and use a swag less fitting on the new one. Email Harken, and they will send you the directions.

[seadrift]

I recently replaced the headstay within a Harken MkII furler - a completely new experience for me. I took a lot of measurements before disassembly, which proved to be a wise move...

You will have to cut the stay at top or bottom to get it out of the foil. Assembly by yourself will require a mechanical fastening (Sta-Lok etc) at least at one end - I suggest the top. You can have a swaged stud fitted at the bottom end off site. I happened to fit a Sta-Lok eye at the top and Sta-Lok stud at the bottom, which greatly complicated the assembly process by changing fundamental measurements, and required cutting off some of the foil at the top end.

You should spend a good bit of time examining the manual (MkIII, similar to MkII) recommended by DeepFrz.

[Thumbs Up]

I am assuming you have or are taking the entire rig off of the boat. Do not pull the wire out of the furler yet! Order the new headstay wire a little long and with the top swaged fitting and the proper swageless for the bottom, or reuse the bottom fitting that you have.
The trick here is that you have to use the old wire to pull the new wire through. Cut just below the swage of the old stay. Unravel the outer strands several inches and cut the core strand only. Unravel the strands on the bottom of the new stay and cut the same amount off of the outer strands. Now you use five minute epoxy to join the top of the old to the bottom of the new and you can pull it through. This way you don't need to get the foil sections apart. This is how my rigger taught me to do it.

[seadrift]

I guess I was lucky! I just taped the butt joint of old and new stays and pushed the old one through and out of the (horizontal) foil.

[Matt Johnson]

Harken recommends pulling out the old wire without chasing it with new. It was easy to feed the new wire through the foil and just twisting when it hits the butt pieces. It took about two minutes to run the new wire through the foil.

Remove the prefeeder and the two bottom foil screws... Pushing up the foil allows you to gain an extra two inches on the lower forestay for the swag less fitting. Once the swagless fitting is installed, you push the foil back down and install the prefeeder like it was.