SERVICING THE PROFURL

The Profurl furler was in decent shape. There are bearings in the furler unit and top swivel that moved freely and had no play, so I opted to leave them as they were. There was some wear on some of the connector’s plastic bearing inserts, so I bought four sets of them and replaced as needed. The biggest job was to replace all of the original set screws with longer set screws with a post below the threads, an upgrade recommended by Rigpro. The idea is that the stud would keep the connectors in place more effectively than the original friction-reliant, cupped set screws did (photo 11).

In order to accurately drill a hole in the connector to receive the stud on the new set screws, I had to make a guide. This was done by drilling out the center of an original set screw with a bit sized to the post on the new set screws. This allowed me to screw in the guide using an Allen wrench, perfectly centering the bit without damaging the foil’s existing set screw threads. The center measurements between holes drilled by the factory are not all the same, so it was important to keep each insert in place and oriented—easily