g'day.

I've have 3 engima wave booms 140-190. Always loved them, stiff, light with great fittings.
Its come time to shim the head, as it's starting to feel a little sloppy on the boom.
Ive tried tonight, but the nut keeps spinning in the plastic head of the clamp.
It's either corroded or too much thread locker !, or both !
Any secrets for getting it undone without damaging the red plastic hinge??
ive tried, a small flat blade screw driver to
wedge the nut no luck so far, WD-40. I can't remember ever having this problem before ??, any advise ??

How do you shim the head? Ive got a Gaastra head thats very loose.

If the nut is spinning, then fill with around edge of nut with araldite, wait, then remove bolt.

Hope that the head shim is worn not the actual carbon head.

The red clamp lever is already damaged so why not replace for $5 or so?

Then either:
a) buy new head shim and new clamp lever, or
b) buy new clamp lever and add thickness to boom head with bicycle tube
c) buy new clamp lever and add thickness to boom head like this ..

regal1 said..
I've rung severne in wa and they sent me new boom bolts & parts next day.

Same. Great service as usual from Paul

I usually deal with the issue of the nut-bolt spinning by grabbing the plastic around the nut with a set of vice grips to tighten or loosen. The plastic will deform, maybe bruise slightly, but I've never had it break or cause issue while sailing.


I replace the entire plastic head every couple of years. Recently the new head arrangement sat loosely over the carbon when fully tightened, its a sign the carbon underneath the head was excessively worn. Image below indicates wearing of 1.5 & up to 3mm in some areas, in my book thats too much missing carbon. So I bit the bullet & cut back the grip, sanded+prepped the area & rebuilt this zone with carbon.



This can be fixed by rebuilding the carbon and your good to go again. Images below are after laminating then sanded and head refitted with no more sloppy alignment. Structurally good as new again

Wonder if the "galvonic corrision " applies to coke cans ?
Surprisingly my shonky push bike tube is still going strong , I had to laugh when wind012 suggested it as a second option- maybe it's not so shonky after all , at least there's no more clamp reaming

HotBodMon said..
Surprisingly my shonky push bike tube is still going strong , I had to laugh when wind012 suggested it as a second option- maybe it's not so shonky after all , at least there's no more clamp reaming

I think your idea was great (although I have never tested)

The movement of the head must be minimal whilst sailing, so I think it will work well .. and afterall, the bushings on many booms are similarly just made of a similar flexible 'rubber' type product - take a look at the streamlined boom head for example.

Pain in the ass getting the recessed hex bolt to stop spinning. I ended up carefully cutting the bolt in half with a Dremel tool.

I have a loose boom head on a used enigma boom and have both glass cloth and carbon to repair the worn spots. I was going to use glass as it seems to resist wear better than carbon. Is there any reason I should stick with the carbon over the glass?

i just stick the screw driver next to the nut like Zubby did, usually holds enough to undo it.