TEE NUTS cracking

I think I read on here or another forum about tee nuts cracking, anyone know which brand?
By chance I looked at mine today and 3 are cracked and are only a couple of months old.

The brass ones can crack. I use brass because if I run aground I want the nut to fail not the box.Haven't seen any SS ones crack

Hard to tell from the pics but if it's a gold colored material (probably brass), all of mine have cracked in the same way as well. Never cracked a stainless one yet though. I keep the the new gold ones I have around for emergency use and then would only use them in the front position.

I doubt they would break though. They crack only up to the thicker area. We used to use a threaded nylon plate for windsurf fins so the fin tab didn't break off, but then surf style fins would chop into the board behind the box when the plate broke.

i read somewhere ages ago that this can be caused by the bolt not going through the nut sufficiently...to make sure it pretrudes the other side

i checked my brass ones and 2 out of 4 had small hairline cracks
I now have S/S nuts - but also changed my bolts to be 5mm longer - i think i swapped the std f-one 25mm for 30mm bolts

But obv you need to ensure they are not too long and bottom out on the botton of the track!

I blame the board builders who took the lazy way and used SURFBOARD boxes for tracks and stuck windsurfer mast track nuts in them. They did not fit, so the windsurfer track nuts got trimmed a tiny bit narrower to fit the crap surfboard boxes.

Windsurfer tracks are WIDER by a small amount and original brass T-Nuts are THICKER. So they never, ever, failed in 40 years of use on windsurfers. Jumping 30 feet and held in by ONE t nut.

Ever try windsurf fin in a surfboard. It does not fit. Too thick. Too deep. Yeah, windsurf boxes were built stronger for a reason 40 years ago. They stopped using crap surfboard boxes because they failed.

Put calipers on your brass T-nuts and toss the ones made dangerously thin. I've found the Axis nuts to be consistently thick enough. Many other brass ones I measured, had a few too many under sized mixed it.

Oh, while I'm ranting.haha. Ever have your over tightened T-nut stop sliding in the tracks because you dented the plastic. Yeah, that's your board builder using crap surfboard tracks, lacking the high glass fill content in the plastic molding process, like windsurf tracks use, without ever denting the plastic. Use Chinook tracks to be sure it's a real windsurf track.

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Mark _australia said..
^^ bloody spot on

No excuse for the nuts ripping through tracks that we have seen - in some cases for a few years - by some brands.

No excuse for thin walled t-nuts.

Unfortunately with a new sport every man and his dog jumps in making stuff..... the same happened with kiteboard fails for a while (30yrs ago) and SUP fails (20yrs ago) and sorry foilers if you want quality you get a board made by an old windsurf guy... its gonna be better than your eggshells board.

Mark and/or DWF, any boards in particular you would call out in both the "old windsurf guy," and the "eggshell" categories?

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robbo1111 said..
The brass ones can crack. I use brass because if I run aground I want the nut to fail not the box.Haven't seen any SS ones crack

Brass is used because it is one of the metals less prone to galling.
This is quite important as not many people are conscious of the risk of galling, as they discover when using titanium screws, which extremely prone to galling and must be screwed with care.

PS: I guess if you run aground and the nuts break, the damage will be substantial, as only some of the nuts will break, the foil will rotate around the remaining ones and the leverage will destroy the boxes anyways.

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choosywinger said..

Mark _australia said..
^^ bloody spot on

No excuse for the nuts ripping through tracks that we have seen - in some cases for a few years - by some brands.

No excuse for thin walled t-nuts.

Unfortunately with a new sport every man and his dog jumps in making stuff..... the same happened with kiteboard fails for a while (30yrs ago) and SUP fails (20yrs ago) and sorry foilers if you want quality you get a board made by an old windsurf guy... its gonna be better than your eggshells board.

Mark and/or DWF, any boards in particular you would call out in both the "old windsurf guy," and the "eggshell" categories?

Yeah. Naish Hover and Konrad tracks are a joke
to be fair, Naish learned.

Eggshell varies but if it's not full sandwich and it's rubbed thru carbon it will be a candidate.
let's just say I now have a surcharge for repairs on a certain brand it's such a disgrace you can't sand next to a repair without creating another one.

As for old windsurf builders well I do know one really well

The 8mm hole in the T nut does come very close to the edge, still should not really crack unless it's drilled off-centre. Here are some pics of new ones that you can see how close they are drilled, I have used these same bolts for over a year and no cracks.
You can also use them upside down which in some ways makes more sense anyway but you will need to run at least a 30mm bolt if you do this.

T-nuts are cracking when the screws are too short / not fully engaged into the lower portion of the T-nut before you pull them tight. Load comes when the screws are tightened and the screws are just in the upper portion of the T-nut with really no sidewall thickness. The upper portion of the T-Nut can't handle the load and cracks. (Which normal nuts do you know that work where someone cut the sides off like on T-nuts? It just can't work if they are not fully engaged in the part that has a thicker sidewall. See if you get some SS316 of Ti nuts and the right screw length that fully engages into the T-nuts before you pull them tight and this will be sorted.

What is the recommended orientation of T nuts in the tracks ?
Is it T or _|_ ?

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warwickl said..

camerongraham said..
What is the recommended orientation of T nuts in the tracks ?
Is it T or _|_ ?

No advice in the instructions.
I am off the water atm so time to do some checking.

Narrow bit up, otherwise, the threads of the screws will eat in the sidewalls of the track. The narrow bit of the N-nuts is there to guide the screws in the track to prevent this.

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warwickl said..

paul.j said..
The 8mm hole in the T nut does come very close to the edge, still should not really crack unless it's drilled off-centre. Here are some pics of new ones that you can see how close they are drilled, I have used these same bolts for over a year and no cracks.
You can also use them upside down which in some ways makes more sense anyway but you will need to run at least a 30mm bolt if you do this.

Hi Paul
Do you sell 316 stainless steel tee nuts?
I bought some from you years ago however, sold them with a mast.

Yeah here is a link to them www.oneoceansportsaustralia.com/accessories/p/8mm-bolts-foil-board

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UliSommerlatt said..

warwickl said..

camerongraham said..
What is the recommended orientation of T nuts in the tracks ?
Is it T or _|_ ?

No advice in the instructions.
I am off the water atm so time to do some checking.

Narrow bit up, otherwise, the threads of the screws will eat in the sidewalls of the track. The narrow bit of the N-nuts is there to guide the screws in the track to prevent this.

You would hope there was no movement at that point. AFS just use a plate and I have seen not evidence of thread eating into the tracks.

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patronus said..

Unfortunately, you can't assume same brand mast bolts and boards fit. I had two Fanatic boards, one had deeper boxes and I needed longer 35mm bolts to go fully into nuts, in the other board the supplied 30mm were fine.

Yes!,this is very important and a mess for me.
I use different foil brands,board brands plus different shims for winging vs supfoiling.

Different foilboxes have different inner dimensions,same with mastplate thicknesses.

Always good to check that screws are not too long/short when messing around with new gear.
I put the mastplate on the track with shim if any (no insert under it) and put the screw in, it should have at least 1mm or more distance from bottom of box.
If you crank the mastplate down and the screw is too long you might crack the box.
I would risk saying that modern 100% carbon foilboxes will be more brittle and prone to cracking from this,plus the inside dims might be totally different from plastic boxes.

M6 bloody bends. There is a reason we went away from it in windfoil years ago. Just use M8, properly. ie: with a decent t-nut and long enough bolt.

So much fluffing around and 'what if' in this thread. Its really easy. Again, use decent hardware properly.