Hello!

Has anyone else experienced this issue? I have noticed small fractures in the plastic of the foil box around where the nuts have been tightened. Taking a screwdriver tip to it resulted in small pieces falling off. This is a Futures box on a Reedin Featherwing board.

Something I just noticed now once I removed the quick release plate I had sitting permanently over the box. Causes? I am thinking most likely culprit is #1 / over tightening of the screws, or #2 - localised damage on impact from jumping.

Would be interested to hear if others are having the same issues and how to prevent such damage in the future / eg. torque screw settings? some sort of early warning that screws are sufficiently tight?

thanks!

I can't make heads or tails out of your photos, so this might not be relevant.

But for the load, I've always thought the standard brass surf-fin T nuts do not have enough surface area. These smaller brass T nuts concentrates the stress in the track more than necessary.

I like the way these Stainless steal type look because they have a bigger base to distribute the load over more area inside the track.

Hard to tell from the add, but to my eye they seem to have maybe 30% more base surface area. I'm surprised nobody yet has made a T nut with a even bigger base.

foilmount.com/products/m6-replacement-t-nuts-each

MProject04 said..
I found a minute long strip of plastic that came off from inside one of the boxes. Nothing serious it seems. But it's such a critical part of the entire foiling exercise.

As for overtightening.. I wish more foil producers would supply their foils with a 1 mm (or half mm) rubber plate pad. As this grips the board the foil isn't moving anymore and you never have to overtighten.. sure some small % of energy will be lost in the connection but better than overtightening.

I added some duct tape to bottom of Naish mast as a bit of padding

@Fishdude - makes a lot of sense to get wider nuts for the inserts. I?ll look out for that when I get my new foil set up shortly!

@DWF: pity that most brands don't use them!

Are people having their foils come loose & move while out foiling to be tightening them to the point the boxes are getting damaged?
I appreciate some of the boxes may have flaws in the moulding which can cause failure
When tightening remember you are putting the pressure ultimately on a relatively thin piece of plastic held in by a glued, carbon/fiberglass material joint
Agree if your foil & board are not flat then a small gasket will help to distribute the pressure to prevent them coming loose but ultimately it shouldn't take too much pressure to make it secure.

I had a board a couple of years ago where using the track nuts the normal way caused damage to the tracks. IIRC, the tracks were a bit too wide, so the nuts could rotate and "bite" at the edges. The manufacturer seemed to be aware of the issue, and suggested to put the nuts in the wrong way round (the flat side up). I did not keep the board long enough to see if this would cause problems, and don't know if the manufacturer changed tracks since then. They seemed to have a bit of a QC problem - the store was selling a board that was labelled as a SUP foil board, but was completely unusable for foiling since it had only a single center fin track.

Tightening is not really relevant as when you use the board, pumping tries to rip the rear t-nuts out of the box more than your tightening ever will.

DWF is onto it - so many **** tracks out there. Many are using 2 piece longboard tracks that are barely sufficient for a surfboard and they just break. I repair a lot and its clear when the plastic is brittle rubbish.

I use the Chinook long tracks in boards I build and they are brilliant. Some little install tricks can make it essentially unbreakable