Good morning and Happy Holidays all!
Looking for some advice in helping me choose the style and material for replacing the sheaves for my Main Halyard, Jib halyard, and topping lift. The boat is a 1989 Hunter33.5 with a fractional (3/4 or so) rig. The spar is a Z-spar 400 section as far as I can tell. Z-spar drawings suggest that all of the original sheaves were acetal (Delrin), but Rig-Rite offers sheaves in acetal, aluminum with no bushing, and aluminum with a composite bushing (can't find additional info on composite material). My gut says go with aluminum since, in use, they are not easily accessible for replacement. The sheave axles are 316 stainless. Would you do plain anodized aluminum? Or aluminum with the composite bearing? Or, am I overthinking this, so should stay with acetal? The aluminum sheaves are about 4x the price of acetal, but that's not the decision driver.
Thoughts?
TIA,
Ken
Looking for some advice in helping me choose the style and material for replacing the sheaves for my Main Halyard, Jib halyard, and topping lift. The boat is a 1989 Hunter33.5 with a fractional (3/4 or so) rig. The spar is a Z-spar 400 section as far as I can tell. Z-spar drawings suggest that all of the original sheaves were acetal (Delrin), but Rig-Rite offers sheaves in acetal, aluminum with no bushing, and aluminum with a composite bushing (can't find additional info on composite material). My gut says go with aluminum since, in use, they are not easily accessible for replacement. The sheave axles are 316 stainless. Would you do plain anodized aluminum? Or aluminum with the composite bearing? Or, am I overthinking this, so should stay with acetal? The aluminum sheaves are about 4x the price of acetal, but that's not the decision driver.
Thoughts?
TIA,
Ken