Cracked Spreaders

[sycmcsa]

I left my mast up last winter and during spring inspection I noticed both the spreader tips looked rather fat, so we dropped the mast to find both the spreaders had water in them and about the last 4 or 5" of each tip had expanded and cracked the extrusion. The mast and spreaders where both new in the spring of 2008 from JSI, so I contacted JSI, the class mast builder, and got even more bad news.

According to Dave Johnson at JSI this has become a fairly common problem with new spreaders for the 7.9, with at least one or two a year. So my feeling was this is a design/build issue and think they should replace them since it's a known problem. The response I got was "We build the spreaders according to class design so we will not replace" but they will build a new set for $385.00! And of course they will not sell raw extrusion so I can fix them myself.

I suggested they add weep holes in the tips, like most spreaders have, and Dave said that idea had came up before but they never did it.

Not real happy with JSI and "class design" right now... anyone else had the same problem?

[BarryE]

This happened to my original 1982 spreaders. Solution; bench vice, hammer, mig welder and re-paint.
And yes, I drilled some drain holes in the tips so that they wouldn't collect water. On top of that, I pull them off the mast every winter, and store them with the shrouds still attached, coiled up in the garage.

[sycmcsa]

This happened to my original 1982 spreaders. Solution; bench vice, hammer, mig welder and re-paint.
And yes, I drilled some drain holes in the tips so that they wouldn't collect water. On top of that, I pull them off the mast every winter, and store them with the shrouds still attached, coiled up in the garage.

JSI said to send them in and they will try to repair them at $65/hr.

I take them off if the mast is down but the mast was up when this happen.