Furler Secrets
Sooner or later your furler will get hard to turn, and you will need to lubricate it. You need to take the furler partially apart to do this properly. The problem is, it’s not obvious how a furler works, and if you’re not careful, you can end up losing some tiny ball bearings, leaving you with a furler that won’t work. But you can lubricate the furler, with minimal risk.
With the furler off the boat, remove the pin that holds the forestay, then remove the circlip [Figure 1(1)] from the furler shaft. There is a special tool for doing this, which you probably won't have, so carefully pry the two ends of the circlip apart by twisting a small screw driver between the ends, and use a second screw driver blade to gently lever the circlip off the shaft (2). Now you can remove the furler line and take out the three Phillips head screws that hold the two parts of the furler wheel together (3).
Now pull the lower part of the furler wheel off the shaft, as shown in Figure 2. Leave the upper part of the furler wheel on the furler body for now.
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Figure 1 |
Figure 2 |
Take a look at Figure 3. It shows the shaft, which you grip in your fingers. The blue outline shows how the head on this shaft rotates on ball bearings inside the furler body. Push the upper part of the furler wheel up, in the direction of the blue arrow in Figure 3, off the furler body. You may have to tap the furler wheel with a hammer to get it off the furler body..
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Figure 3 |
Figure 4 |
Once the top part of the furler wheel is off the furler body, you can see the head of the shaft, as shown in Figure 4. Make sure you keep a good grip on the shaft, and keep the head pulled down firmly into the body of the furler.
Next, you want to carefully lift the shaft a little way out of the furler body, until the head is just clear of the body, as shown by the blue arrow in Figure 5. Do NOT take the shaft right out, as shown in Figure 6! If you do, the chances are very high that some of the ball bearings will come out of their groove in the furler body, and you will have to be very smart, or very lucky, or both, to get all of them back in again.
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Figure 5 |
Figure 6 |
I have a block of wood with a 7/16" (11mm) hole, in which the shaft is an easy fit. This lets me keep the shaft pushed firmly down into the furler body while I lower the shaft into the hole in the wooden block. When there is about 3mm of clearance under the furler body, I lower the furler body, so the head of the shaft appears above the furler body, as shown in figure 5. Remember you want a gap of only 1or 2 mm between the head of the shaft and the furler body.
Now you can spray in some WD40 to lubricate the ball bearings. Be careful! The first time I tried it, the blast from the spray can blew some of the bearings right out of the furler body. Lifting the head of the shaft just clear of the furler body, as shown in Figure 5, will prevent this. (Some of the ball bearings will probably defy gravity and stick to the underside of the head of the shaft. This is one reason why the WD40 can blast them out if the head is lifted too far out of the body.)
When you have sprayed in some WD40, lift the furler body and make sure it turns smoothly and easily on the shaft. Now lower the furler body down on to the wooden block, then push the shaft down until it is seated on the ball bearings. Now you can slide the upper part of the furler wheel back on to the furler body, lift the assembled wheel, furler body and shaft out of the block, and breathe a sigh of relief. With the upper furler wheel back on the furler body, the shaft can't come out, and the bearings can't either.
Replace the bottom part of the furler wheel, put in the three screws, then put the furler line back on and replace the circlip, put the pin for the forestay back in, and you're all done.
Richard Spencer
Posted 2004-05-14
Maintenance>Furler