Alpha z tower broke at base

[Ewok]

can you make an insurance claim for any of it? It was obviously a hit of some sort, it might be worth asking your insurance company, worst they can say is no.

[H20SKIER14]

I have a 2009 RZ2 with 500 hours and for the last 150 hours it has had a small crack in the same location on both port and starboard sides. This last weekend the crack started to grow, luckily it's growing horizontally and hasn't turned up vertically. The tower is still very solid. I'll post pictures of it tonight, I'm going to keep an eye on it and run it as is the rest of the summer and make it a winter replacement job. Definitely a bummer, my dealer did mention in 2010 or 2011 Tige went to a different manufacture for the towers and bases.....

[Wickedcummins]

its just sad its not recalled like cars.. Maybe someone needs to sue a manafacture over stuff like this and hold there feet to the fire so they will take pride in the products and replace things like this which are a huge risk to someone getting seriously hurt or killed from a tower. Its obvious its not from HITTING something just a bad cast and defect in product. There have been TONS of tower bases that have done this. On this note there rear swim platforms from prior to the 12 brackets had the same issue with poor material or cast. We had a friend standing out our swim deck when they broke off sending him to the ground injuring him. I can tell you if he was hurt worse I would of been in a court room. Lucky for me my deal gave me another set on there own dime and they broke a short time after again while it was in the water. So dealer sold me NEW 2013 brackets for cost and I installed them. Never having another issue. But the old brackets should be recalled and replaced with the new ones as someone is going to get hurt one day maybe even killed..

[Ewok]

Wicked, I'm curious where are all these tower defects that need to be recalled? I have a 2009 tower with 200 hrs on the boat and I haven't had any cracks yet. Since I've been a member of TO I've seen 2 alpha Z tower cracks, both from this thread, and since I would be directly affected by a crack in my tower, I'd like to know if I should be worried, are there lots of cracks? Or are these the only 2 known at this time?

[boardman74]

I know from my dealer I only know of 2. One is the one in this thread and the history of that boat was questionable. The other was a guy who drove most of the summer without his front pins in. So that one was neglect for sure. I would also suspect the one in this thread could very well have been owner caused.

[robert theisen]

My platform bracket broke off today. I only weigh 168 and my wife is even less. We have never had anyone over 240 lbs ride with us. The bracket is made of a cheap cast aluminum material.

[pzbilly]

3 Hrs are the maximum to change both base and removing and reinstall the tower............

[H20SKIER14]

Sorry it took so long, here are the pictures of the cracks. I know I've already been called out for not maintaining my tower but that is not true!! I'm very thorough about maintenance and tightening my tower bolts before every outing, and before trailering long distances. I've contacted my local dealer a couple times in the last 3 weeks and Tige has not gotten back to them on pricing or availability for new bases. I bought and replaced the inserts, set screws, handles and bushings hoping to tighten it up to make it through the year. I believe between the trailering I do and the 500+ hours on the boat this is a stress failure.

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[Ewok]

Are the cracks only on the inboard side of both tower bases?

[IDBoating]

Wow, that is worse than I ever imagined. I would not use a tower that looked like that.

[dmbisbest]

FYI - that is exactly what mine looked like on my old boat. I had it welded at my dock for around $250 as I was waiting for the new tower. My dealer quoted around $1500 for the new base. I ended up trading in the boat before it was installed.

If you do look at welding, make sure you check the wires on the inside of the tower, the heat snapped one of mine.

[JLG]

Find a local shop that can tig weld it and get it re powder coated. Shouldn't run You more than $200.00 and will hold up just fine. They will grind it down a bit or v the area out and lay a nice bead in it smooth it down you will never know it was there.

[H20SKIER14]

I ended up getting the cracks Tig welded over the weekend since I have no idea how long until Tige can get me replacements. I ground it down so it's a little more visually pleasing but didn't want to go to far and take away from the integrity of the weld. I just spray painted it for now, I'm not going to spend half a day pulling my tower off to get the bases re-powder coated... Overall I'm very dissapointed as I thought the Alpha Z would be a great tower (coming from a '01 21i with a metcraft that had to be replaced). I will keep everyone updated on what I end up doing/ what replacement Tige can find for me.

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[Ewok]

Glad you are able to get them fixed. I'm asking about the interior only cracks because it looks to me like metal fatigue from the bolts squeezing the tower base. I still haven't switched from the original pins to the newer bolts because I don't see a problem with my tower that needs the "upgrade", but looking at these cracks makes me wonder if the engineers at Tige looked at the stress the threaded pins put on the tower where these cracks are developing. The pins on my tower don't squeeze the base, they just lock in the top of the tower to the base and prevent it from folding back, and that's how the tower was originally designed. Are the tower bases any thicker or made of a different material on the newer boats that came with the threaded pins vs the 2009-2010 towers that used the original pins? Just some thoughts that pop into my head looking at these stress/fatigue cracks. If I'm right, and I hope I'm not, we might start to see more of these cracks develop.

[H20SKIER14]

Ewok, about 75% of the crack was both sides and the rest was only on one side. I also upgraded 2 seasons ago to the newer ones when I had one of the original pins shear in half. When I pulled the new style ones out the tip was completely stripped so I don't know what to think...

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