Tina wrote: > Will decide in the next few days whether to try to disassemble the Folbot, > after 6 or 7 years, and lug it down to Central America. If you have not disassembled the Folbot in 6 or 7 years, you probably have a frame that is stuck together. Those aluminum tubes will eventually seize up at their male/female joining points. And the aluminum sliders that are part of the connection in the middle of the boat will also likely be stuck as well. Luckily the tolerances are somewhat looser for the aluminum connections on Folbots than they are in Feathercrafts. The general rule of thumb on leaving Feathercrafts assembled is in the order of 3 months or so. People have left them assembled longer than that and been able to take them apart; the connections were well lubricated, the boats stored upside down, air let out of the sponsons, and washed with fresh water before storage periods. But I have seen too many Feathercrafts requiring blowtouching and hacksawing to suggest that you can leave them assembled for longish periods. Folbots, as I said, have looser tolerance and so you can get away with leaving them assembled longer. A half dozen years, however, is a long time. If you find that the frame will not come apart, get in touch with me and I will share the various strategies, from minor to drastic, to try to free it up. Wooden frame folding kayaks, BTW, don't have this problem. They can be left assembled for years. Your only problem then is remembering how to take them apart. :-) ralph -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Ralph Diaz . . . Folding Kayaker newsletter PO Box 0754, New York, NY 10024 Tel: 212-724-5069; E-mail: rdiaz_at_ix.netcom.com "Where's your sea kayak?"----"It's in the bag." ----------------------------------------------------------------------- *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - All postings copyright the author and not to be reproduced outside PaddleWise without author's permission Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Sat Feb 19 2000 - 05:16:48 PST
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