5 replies to this topic

[dinghydoc]

My boat has the older type Harken Battcar Series A system on it. For whatever reason the head of the main is attached to a plain intermediate car and not the typical headboard car assembly. All the existing cars are the ball bearing type which are no longer made. I'm getting a new main and ideally I would like to use a headboard car. The older track can only accept the new slider cars (non ball bearing) so if I want to add a proper headboard car it would have to be one of those sliders.

I'm not happy about the top car being a slider though. Seems like I would be adding the most friction to the one car that has to be hoisted the highest.

Does anyone happen to know where I might find an older Series A ball bearing headboard car assembly? For ref. the new part number is 3827. I attached a pic of the existing cars.

Even the part number of the old one would be helpful for shopping consignment shops.

Other ideas suggestions welcome (short of replacing the track because I can't afford to do that right now). Removing the existing cars is going to be a enough of a project because they did not leave enough room at the bottom between the end of the track and the goose neck.

 HarkenBattcarParts.jpg   39.97K   20 downloads

 Kinetics Battcar Detail.jpg   80.26K   24 downloads

[P2 Marine]

Hi dinghydoc,

I wouldn't worry too much about using two slider cars on the headboard carriage. There's not a lot of load on the headboard when you're raising and lowering the sail, and when the headboard cars do start to load from leech tension no bearings to wear out under load and cycling could be a good thing.

Two suggestions...

If there is not enough room under the track to remove the cars, you will need to remove the bottom piece of track. Slide all the cars up to the next track and secure them. Remove the bottom track, and while it's off shorten it just enough so that the next time you will not need to remove the track.

Also, the photo shows that the pintle on the batten car is installed upside down. The pintle should enter through the bottom of the gudgeon on the batten car. Correcting that will make it all work a lot better.

Cheers,
Rob

[dinghydoc]

UPSIDE DOWN! Ha, that's funny. I don't know if I did that when I reinstalled the main or if I just copied that from the way it was before. Thank you for pointing it out!!! I feel like a dope for that one. Won't be my last mistake I'm sure.

Just to be clear the current headboard is attached with a strap of webbing so there is no bracket. It's not just the single car thing but the fact that the halyard tends to pull the headboard towards the mast, changing the mast to luff spacing in the last few feet of the hoist. It may be more of a cosmetic thing if that small disturbance in the luff spacing is not that critical. It's one of those decisions I really need to sort out now and I'm trying to find the line between perfect and 80-90% good. I'm OK with 80-90% if it's safe and won't end up costing me double in the end. The current setup seems to have been OK as the sail is a good 15+ years old.

Trimming the bottom of the track to make it possible to remove the cars might work. I would still need to find someone with an old headboard car for sale though.

Thanks for the info Rob.

[bammiller]

Dinghydoc,

Attached are the pages from the 2003 Harken catalog. They should help.

 03-SystemABattcar.pdf   276.08K   10 downloads

Contrary to popular misconception, the 1807 headboard car is still available; it's not cheap, but it provides the solution you need. You can also use a regular headboard, instead of the special Harken one, which is really expensive, but also readily available (HBB68)

Bam Miller

[P2 Marine]

By Golly Bam's right!

I searched my database and found the old parts are still there ;-) Here are the links:

Harken 1807 Car Coupler Assembly

Harken HBB68 Headboard


Cheers,
Rob

[dinghydoc]

Sure enough. I called Harken before I saw your post and found out they still had 4 in stock. Then called our local supplier and had them place a special order. That's a competitive price Rob but my order is already placed.

Thanks for the help guys! Much appreciated.