BIG oops

[Redneck_Randy]

Had a family emergency Sunday and had to get off the lake fast and get home, in doing so I had forgot to fold up the bimini top and put the sock on. As you can see from the pic the frame is bent (both sides).

[redbeard]

Maybe this will help, there not hard to work on just some bolts and nuts and a few screws to remove.
http://www.overtons.com/modperl/product ... rchID=4006
http://www.overtons.com/modperl/product ... rchID=4006
PS
Hope everyone is OK
PSS
It looks like your bars are 1 piece, maybe you can bend them back by pulling down on then. The after market ones are in pieces with a piece of conduit as a splice with screws to hold them in place

[wrd1972]

I spliced the broken pieces of square tubing back together with the 1-1/16" square steel rather easily. However the broken seam looked really bad so something had to be done. I got some 3" long aluminum angle pieces and machined them down to make cladding to cover the seam. To button everything together I used large rivets for a factory finish.

One day my bimini broke loose at 30MPH and broke a main bow in half. I machined some square steel tubing and that was used to couple the two pieces back together much stronger than before how ever there was still an ugly scar. I concealed the scar with thin aluminum cladding.

I also decided to go for the homerun by machining the small grooves into the cladding to match the appearance of the factory square tubing. All in all, the repair looks very factory like.

The ugly seam with the two pieces joined:


The cladding and the final appearance:


Total cost of repair was less than $15.00
Very happy with the final results.



Top is till holding up well to this day.

[curtiscapk]

I knew someone did an awesome job repairing theirs! I was trying to find it to post. That is awesome work wrd!

[Redneck_Randy]

Nice job there wrd

I emailed the Silverwave factory and they said they can get me a new one for $127.84. Problem is they can't ship via UPS or Fedex and said it would have to be sent by freight costing $125 for the freight alone. OUCH

[cwag911]

Question, did that happen while riding on the lake at speed? If so it seems like a poor design.

[wrd1972]

Question, did that happen while riding on the lake at speed? If so it seems like a poor design.

Yes the boat was at about 30MPH and a wind gust popped a front pole mount out and it flew back violently which broke the front large bow.

The original pole mounts located on the rails were made of plastic and they would fatigue to the point where they could not properly capture the poles. When I got the boat, the one pole would not even remain captured. I bought replacement plastic ones from the dealer but over a short period of time, they failed too. Of course its the front mounts that get the most abuse when the boat is at speed. I saw on a different brand of boat at the dealer that these same mounts were available in aluminum but the dealer wanted insane money for them.

I found the aluminum mounts on line much much cheaper and I replaced the plastic mounts with these much better and robust mounts plus I now have a clip on buckle buckle that attaches at each mount just as a back up in case a pole were to pop out. All in all, I have much more confidence in these stronger aluminum mounts.

All that said, if I am top speed and its very windy, the top will start to whip and when this happens, I slow down as to no tempt fate.