Boom Adjustment


by Ken Smith Jr. - US4303 - February 1988

When faced with almost a hundred dollars to put a track and three cars on my boom, I went looking for a cheaper way to make the boom adjustable. I did not want to pop rivet a sheet metal channel to the boom and hang the blocks from pins. I've been there and found it too hard to adjust in the cold. This system also loads the pop rivets in tension, which I do not trust. I've also scratched up my helmet ducking under the boom on jibes. The real kicker, though, was that the bales on the blocks need to hang from something running fore and aft. Any other system meant buying two twelve dollar blocks.

In my goodie-shelf, I found a pile of . . . (see figure). No two People can agree on their name, but eight or nine of them every 2-1/2 inches and a piece of 1/4 in tubing makes a dandy system. Hang tubing past the end and bend the end over. This end will stay in a small hole in your boom, or take a small piece of sheet metal and make a small clip to hold the tubing.

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