Sigma 362 boom gas strut

cagey

cagey

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Advice please, want to fit gas strut on boat, boom is 4 m long Selden , kicker Selden rodkicker. No idea of weight of sail and boom
What gas force/ travel length etc would you recomend. I wont be buying from Selden, will use one of products recomended on here over the years.
Thanks
 
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I have had a gas strut for years and found it a pain. Now have a Barton Boomstrut, which is a far superior way of achieving the same thing. Easy to fit and works brilliantly.
 
patrigo said:
I have had a gas strut for years and found it a pain. Now have a Barton Boomstrut, which is a far superior way of achieving the same thing. Easy to fit and works brilliantly.
Click to expand...

Why did you find the gas strut a pain? There are thousands of boats using gas strut Selene kickers, and I for one thought it was a brilliant solution (other than the idiotic ferrous metal strut inside, easily replaced with an S/s one).

For the OP, is there a Sigma class association? They would know what pressure of strut is in most of their kickers
 
If it is of use, I attach a picture of the insides of our Selden kicker from a previous boat, an Elan 36 so probably similar.

The text on the original strut said G28 250 1200N - 02 - which helped me secure a s/s replacement from www.sgs-engineering.com, who were excellent.
I think I went for a slightly higher Newton rating, but an adjustable one for a couple quid extra.

The challenge might be getting the two bits of plastic needed for either end, without paying Selden for the priviledge
 

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The boom probably weighs around 60-80kgs. (guessing this from the difficulty in carrying one on a Sigma 38 I owned) the mainsail almost as much, it could be considered as an evenly divided load (UDL) along its length, the boom is around 4m. long and the strut supports it about 1.5m???? from the end so ------
aaaaw what am I doing????? ask Selden or one of their main dealers, most 362 have a Selden strut and they will have supplied them to Marine Projects, (under Kemp branding) surely they will tell you what you need.

The Sigma 33 I had, which we raced quite successfully, came with a kicker strut which was a length of X section mainsheet track bolted along under the boom with a rigid alloy tube running from near the mast foot to the traveller car, a tackle pulled the car back to force the boom down and a another the other way to support the boom in light airs or when at rest. Both tackles ran under the boom to the mast then back to the cockpit, the 'down' control was double ended so we could play the kicker from either side of the deck. Very strong, powerful, positive, precise and easily controlled with not to much effort, fast to dump in a gust, close reaching in strong winds we used the halyard winch on the weather side for extra power.
Never understood why the system did not catch on.
 
dunedin said:
If it is of use, I attach a picture of the insides of our Selden kicker from a previous boat, an Elan 36 so probably similar.

The text on the original strut said G28 250 1200N - 02 - which helped me secure a s/s replacement from www.sgs-engineering.com, who were excellent.
I think I went for a slightly higher Newton rating, but an adjustable one for a couple quid extra.

The challenge might be getting the two bits of plastic needed for either end, without paying Selden for the priviledge
Click to expand...

We bought ours from Struts Direct and believe it was also 1200N. The boom is probably longer than OPs and certainly longer than one for an Elan 36. It sounds as if something in region of 1200N would be in the right ballpark, best to measure boom weight and calculate based on intended fixing points. Ours model was also higher than 1200N and adjusted to the correct value by Struts Direct.

EDIT: Just looked at records for purchase. I think you will get all the dimensions for our strut here:
https://strutsdirect.metrol.com/variable-force-stainless-steel-gas-strut-sdss-04-682.html

It's worth buying all stainless model, Selden version only has a stainless rod (despite being about 2.5xcost).
 
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I got a replacement gas strut for my own Sigma362 in 2016. Dismantling the vang unit (a standard one - by Kemp I think) was a challenge - I ended up removing the entire end fitting. After a bit of measuring and googling I bought a fixed force strut from Metrol Springs Ltd. in Northampton. Their part number is F-SD03-250 (250mm stroke, 305mm tube, 550ml overall length, 10mm rod diameter, 21mm tube diameter) with a 1200n charge pressure. Although a 10mm rod it comes with M8 threaded ends so I fitted some M8 to M10 thread adapters. It all seems to work.
 
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