Replacing roller furling drum

[Orchidius]

Hi there,

The drum on my roller furler is becoming a bit brittle, and I'm contemplating replacing it. I haven't heard of this yet though, and wouldn't know how to do it. I'm pretty confident I could disassemble the whole shabang succesfully, but I'm unsure about replacing just the drum.

Is this something that is easily done? Are all drums interchangeable? Can I just get any drum and use the remaining hardware with it?

I'm unsure what the exact installation is atm, but it's one of the big brands.

[Sailmonkey]

You're going to need to know the brand of furler to replace the drum. Look at profurl, it matches your description.

[Orchidius]

You're saying that any profurl drum, old or new, will fit an existing profurl setup? Just like any harken drum will fit an existing harken setup?

[Sailmonkey]

Not saying that at all, but the best way is to find out what brand furler you have and contact the manufacturer.
For instance I have a Schaffer 1000. The drum from a Schaffer 2500, while similar in appearance is physically larger.

[Orchidius]

The actual dimension of the drum has to be more or less the same of course, but I'd say that as long as the aluminium tube with the slot for the sail fits the drum it should work, no?

I'll be in touch with the manufacturer, but you can bet your bottom dollar they'll want to sell me their newest, most expensive product. And if I don't want that, they sure as hell won't tell me I can get any second-hand drum from competitor X or Y and fit it just as easily .

[Lancerbye]

A lot of older furlers are obsolete because the companies have changed the design and no longer support the older stuff. There are also a lot of different foil types sizes etc. So to get the right drum the design is critical. Some will only work with a particular foil pattern. CDI for example went from rigid piece type foil to a plastic flexfoil and the list goes on. I had two CDIs one 49 ft and the other 56 ft They had the same foil pattern but different head and drum sets. Had the same problem as you. Things were getting brittle and breaking. Had to replace the two furlers. Installed Alado from Brazil. Drum, Drum housing, head assembly heavy duty. Cast aluminum and uses the inside Halyard (which I wanted). Easy to install.

[Ex-Calif]

I replaced my lower drum (Furlex 100) a few years back. Found a supplier - maybe Selden.

The caution is how the drum is integrated with the forestay.

In my case the forestay wire is threaded through the drum. the wire is spread out and a collet/nut arrangement clamps the forestay wire.

The old (previously flared) forestay would not pass through the precision hole of the drum and I had to buy a new forestay.

I am pretty positive you can't just use any old drum. You'll need the correct P/N.