What is the best strategy for rejuvenating my mainsheet cars?

[Chotu]

Brilliant responses!

Thank you!

I will do a combination of these.

[sailjumanji]

Jet the traveler car bearings with liberal amounts of fresh water. Lubricate with Harken One Drop, which is made specifically for traveler and jib car bearings.

[fox9988]

https://store.drakeplastics.com/prod...n-4203l-balls/

$.38 each if you buy 100. 6.4mm

[Chotu]

Originally Posted by fox9988

https://store.drakeplastics.com/prod...n-4203l-balls/

$.38 each if you buy 100. 6.4mm

Whoa! That’s quite a find. Thank you.

Are you sure they aren’t just selling canned peas? Ha ha.

I’ll definitely get them here.

[Chotu]

Looks like I’m in pretty good shape for this part of the rigging project. Thanks for all the information and the source. This should be a piece of cake.

[Chotu]

Have been working on this part of the project this afternoon. Yes. I am very ADHD when it comes to mad scientist mode. I have to bounce around to make the best progress.

Got all the old wires out of the mast. Sanded the sheave pins and those dividing pieces that are between some sheaves here and there. Everything is cleaned up really nicely and working great in that department. Zephywerks sheaves are flawless. I’m going to write up a little review on that

But I have some interesting issues with my cars.

I forget what they are called. There are some bigger main cars that are nicer and move really well and they hold the main attachment points for the sails.

Then there are some intermediate cars. I remember what those are called. For some reason, my intermediate cars suck.

The main cars have open box so you can see the bearings moving and they are great. I can go to the top of the mast and push one with my hand as fast as I can down the track with the mast laying on sawhorses and it goes almost all the way down to the bottom with one big push. It’s fantastic!

But these other intermediate cars are terrible.

In the main cars, you can see the bearings circulating around as it moves. But in the intermediate cars they’re not moving. They’re scraping along the track and not moving within the car like they should be.

I was trying to do a video but very difficult to hold the phone and drag the cars along the track and catch the bearings circulating or not. So I had to go with still pictures.

Here are a couple of pictures. The second picture shows the inside of one of the intermediate cars. And it looks kind of scuffed up in there. And it just sucks. It doesn’t feed the bearings through it like it should. Now maybe I have to take a Q-tip and go in there and clean. I hope not. I didn’t have to do that with the main cars I just ran them underwater to clean out stuff. And they were great.

The car with the number 42 on it is an intermediate car. The car with the number 48 on it is one of the main cars. Those numbers are just how many bearings are in each. Thank God I don’t have 48 cars total but I do have a lot


Any tips on this?

By the way, that shaving cream trick? Priceless. Wow that made it a lot easier. Also I took off that bottom piece of track as instructed and it’s great. I have no trouble getting these on and off and changing them around and putting them back on. It’s super easy to take these on and off. Doesn’t even matter what orientation the track is in. It just works. It’s really really not hard as long as you use the shaving cream.

But anyway, the main question here is why do the intermediate cars suck so much and the main cars work so well? I can’t quite figure it out. I have the same type of very good Toralon balls in all of these cars I am testing. I picked the best few out of the bunch. And for some reason the intermediate cars don’t circulate the balls well.

What could be causing that?



Any tips on what to do? Other than buying new cars which is incredibly blisteringly expensive and I probably cannot actually afford it?

PS: when I pulled all of these cars off there was a mixture of three types of bearings. What a mess. There were the Torlon ones and many of those were wrecked. There were white Delrin ones which mostly were in fairly good shape surprisingly. And then there were these gray ones that were just terrible. A Mack Sails special. That’s who last serviced these

[Chotu]

Curious if there are any theories as to why this behavior is happening. This is one of my responsibilities in the project. Not sure why the two types of cars would behave so differently.

[stormalong]

Are you sure you have the right size ball bearings? Metric vs Imperial? Do you have a micrometer to check the old vs new?

[HeinSdL]

Originally Posted by Chotu

Curious if there are any theories as to why this behavior is happening. This is one of my responsibilities in the project. Not sure why the two types of cars would behave so differently.

Well, I just had my main serviced and the cars needed to be replaced because of wear and tear: the bearings were worn, no longer spherical and some were lost completely. You may need to consider replacements.

EDIT: you replaced the bearings. In that case, yes agreed with the earlier post, bearing size?

[Tupaia]

Personally I would ditch the intermediates altogether. They are prone to twisting and the webbing becomes stiff and set in one position when the sail is down. They also increase the stack height nearly double. With full battens and good articulated batten box/cars intermediates don't really serve any purpose. If you look at the various and numerous methods manufacturers have come up with to solve the twisting issue you will understand the problem.





Against my instructions and specifications this particular prima dona of a sailmaker included intermediates, insisting they always did it like this. The sail was a nightmare, to raise, to reef and was a lousy shape. The sail was rejected and I got a full refund.

[Chotu]

Originally Posted by stormalong

Are you sure you have the right size ball bearings? Metric vs Imperial? Do you have a micrometer to check the old vs new?

This is a possibility.

There are three different types of bearings in these cars. I just grabbed the Torlon bearings because they are supposed to be the best ones. The most sturdy. Because I was going order this kind only for replacement.

There are no new bearings yet. I picked the best ones that I already had to test some things out and the main cars worked well. But the intermediate cars did not.

I have only use the Torlon bearings. Maybe I should put all these different types of bearings under a micrometer to try to see if there is a difference.

There are greenish colored ones like in the picture. Those are Torlon. There are white ones. Those are Delrin from what I can tell. And then there are these gray ones that are just falling apart and awful. I’m not even sure what those are made of. But not a good material.

I will double check the sizing on all of these to make sure. Luckily I have a nice new micrometer that I can use which I needed to size the sheaves to the pins in another part of the project.

[Chotu]

Originally Posted by HeinSdL

Well, I just had my main serviced and the cars needed to be replaced because of wear and tear: the bearings were worn, no longer spherical and some were lost completely. You may need to consider replacements.

EDIT: you replaced the bearings. In that case, yes agreed with the earlier post, bearing size?

As you see in the last post I made I did not replace the bearings. I took the best ones that I still had in the Torlon material. I was testing things out with these. To determine how many new bearings I needed to order.

[Chotu]

Originally Posted by Tupaia

Personally I would ditch the intermediates altogether. They are prone to twisting and the webbing becomes stiff and set in one position when the sail is down. They also increase the stack height nearly double. With full battens and good articulated batten box/cars intermediates don't really serve any purpose. If you look at the various and numerous methods manufacturers have come up with to solve the twisting issue you will understand the problem.


Attachment 276219


Against my instructions and specifications this particular prima dona of a sailmaker included intermediates, insisting they always did it like this. The sail was a nightmare, to raise, to reef and was a lousy shape. The sail was rejected and I got a full refund.

Now this plan I REALLY like!

What would you consider to be good batten cars and boxes?

I have Facnor F20s. They are both the main cars and the intermediates. The main cars are just slightly larger F20s.

Your approach is an interesting one and I would think it adds more force and twist to the main cars but apparently not. It actually works a lot better?

How many of the main cars do you have in total? I’m wondering if I have the right amount. I will run this by my sail maker and Rigger. Because this is a great plan. If it works better and is more simple I am all for it. Reducing the stack size is just another bonus.

[Tupaia]

I have 7 battens with 7 bat-cars and a head-board that uses 2 tandem bat-cars.
They are Bainbridge Sailman 5000.

The cars themselves are not much different to yours except they use Teflon slides instead of balls. You will find that balls require regular jet-washing to clear the salt otherwise they bind and develop flats whereas slides are maintenance free.

[Chotu]

Originally Posted by Tupaia

I have 7 battens with 7 bat-cars and a head-board that uses 2 tandem bat-cars.
They are Bainbridge Sailman 5000.

The cars themselves are not much different to yours except they use Teflon slides instead of balls. You will find that balls require regular jet-washing to clear the salt otherwise they bind and develop flats whereas slides are maintenance free.

Thank you! If I were to buy new I would probably go for a system like yours. Everywhere on the boat I have opted for bushings instead of bearings. They just last longer. These are what was already on the mast. So I’m kind of stuck with them.

I’m going to go out and count the number of main cars see if I’m somewhere similar or if I have less of them by design due to all the intermediates.

Even as a purely temporary option just to try it out, I may go with your configuration of no intermediates. It will sure save time and I can always add intermediates back in later.

And yes. These cars were filled with sandy, muddy grime. Like dried out mud. Almost clay. Once I washed them out and put the bearings back in they worked beautifully.

Similar to yours, I have a pair of them at the headboard and then one for each batten.