Hi all
I have a chinook uni (pictured below, sorry about the poor quality). I need to know If I can unscrew the silver pin from the tenon joint. I've seen other joints and they seem to have a threaded insert. I'm guessing I need to put it in a vice to get it undone but I don't want to destroy the fitting to see if it works. Has anyone removed these successfully? Thanks
yes and yes, i put the rubber in the vise, there is a steel plate the rubber is molded around and use multigrips on the stainless or you could use a hex bolt in the end and hold that with multi grips..
It's probably been put in with "locktite".
If it doesn't want to come undone, heating the bolt up will weaken the locktite, use a soldering iron, heat gun or hair dryer, don't get too much heat on the rubber of course.
Probably don't want to hear this but when the bulge joint broke on mine I had a mechanical engineer friend do just that, heat and unscrew. Then went and purchased the replacement parts and the new pin just snapped at the end of my first sail.
In hind sight felt like a lot of messing around when I was able to replace it all for $60 from Surf Sail Australia website.
But if you still want to save a buck, the heating thing and clamps seems to work.
The silver "pin" is just a threaded bolt with the head of the bolt having its sides grinded down to a hex shape. I think I paid $9 from SHQ for a replacement one when I made up a new unijoint to replace my broken one. I think its safer to just get a new one (hex headed bolt), once you heat it and forcibly unscrew it, you will probably weaken the bolt and like Leman says, it might possibly only last a short while...
Thanks for that everyone, I'll charge ahead. I'm actually using the pin for a different project that requires the removal of the uni joint and replacing with a chinook mechanical one but you can't seem to get them with the pin. Thanks again
