I just purchased an 84 222 (just in last week) and it has a wooden compression post.
Is this post located directly under the mast tabernacle? If so, I would change it out and go with the bar.
Rich,
My cabin roof seems to be pretty solid when I stand on it. I have no idea why the O'Day company didn't install these tension bars in the 84s or why they thought it was necessary to install them in the later models. I remember talking to Rudy about this very thing several years ago and he didn't seem to have an answer for it either. He had a lot of calls for these tension bars and he asked me to get some measurements of my post which I did, but he never had any of these bars made up.
The problems that you can encounter in making up these bars has a lot to do with bolt spacing on the welded flange end where it bolts to the tabernacle. O'Day used about four different spar manufacturers and all the tabernacles were different. My original mast tabernacle was a cheap cast Aluminum extrusion with a sheave built into it for the Jib Halyard. These extrusions were imported from France and assembled in the states namely Z-Defusion in Bristol RI. Others were mfg by Dwyer and other companies and had stainless steel hinge plates.
I can see why Rudy didn't want to get involved in making up these bars. It's too cost prohibitive.
I've talked to three different 84 O'Day 222 owners who have made up their own bars or had them made up for their boats. One guy wasn't sure of the flange angle so he had a flange made up that could pivot on a bolt and this worked for him. It's really not rocket science.
It's possible that the pressure of the mast bearing down on the cabin top of the 84 OD 222s over a period of time, was causing the roof to sag and the stays to go slack. Why else would they start installing these bars in the 1986s and later models? My analysis is purely conjecture. I really don't know.