My new vang just failed

Cindy Taylor

Cindy Taylor

Member
Last night I pulled on my new style vang to release it and I saw a ball bearing fall from it. I just upgraded my laser to the new controls about 3 months ago. Upon investigation I noticed that the screw and nut were missing from the cam cleat on one side. The nut is not a locking nut. The cam cleat is now missing bearings and the spring on that side. Has this happened to anyone else? If not, then it is a good idea to periodically inspect your cam cleat and tighten as necessary. BTW, this is the Harken vang.

Cindy Taylor
 
it hasnt happened to me, and i've never herd of it happening. then again, ima freak and check over my equiptment all the time. its NEVER a bad idea to look over your rigging.... loose parts, broken parts, missing parts, it can b dangerous. is it under warenty?
 
Cindy Taylor said:
Last night I pulled on my new style vang to release it and I saw a ball bearing fall from it. ... The nut is not a locking nut.
Click to expand...
Wow. I hope Harken will stand behind their product properly. I just checked their warranty and it sure sounds like it should be covered. Good luck. Thanks also for pointing out the factory-installed nuts aren't locking; I'm going to check my vang tomorrow and probably replace the nuts with nylocks.

Cheers,

Geoff S.
 
I'm not sure how I lost the screw and nut on the right side of the cam cleat. After thinking about it, it is possible that I lost it the previous week when it was blowing about 20 mph and I was doing beam reaches. Sometimes my vang gets caught on my outhaul line when I go down wind or on a beam reach. Perhaps this sheared off the screw, I don't know. I do remember hearing a loud sound and not knowing exactly what it was. I thought that the vang popped off of the outhaul line. I am going to change my outhaul blocks near the gooseneck so that my outhaul line goes closer to the mast. It's a mystery ...
 
Harken should take care of it. They sent me some ball bearings many years ago to fix a 150 cam cleat (the original one they came out with.) It wasn't hard to replace the ball bearings, you just needed patience!

Mine Harken vang did not come with lock nuts, either. When they assembled it, they used a thread-locking compound to lock the nuts on. I upgraded the cleat to the aluminum one, and at that time I replaced their screws/nuts with a locknut.
 
Cindy, I remember from a former TLF-thread that Shevy, drLaser, has good contact to Harken. If you get problems with warranty, try to contact Shevy via email. I think he can maybe help you.
Good Luck
LooserLu
 
I just got a replacement cam cleat from Vanguard, replaced under warranty. I guess it came from Vanguard because they assembled the vang.
 
I finally got around to replacing the clam cleat and when I took the old one off I realized that it was okay. It just seemed like the clam cleat was missing the spring when it was attached to the vang. The small round object that fell off must of been the nut. It was hard to tell what fell off since it landed in the water.

So, it appears that the nuts can fall off. I now have locking nuts which I hope will work better.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top