staktup wrote:
Another reason why I think Hobie should create an internal frame made of carbon fiber or alloy where the seat, MD support columns, scuppers, mast column, and any other weight-bearing, high stress zones exist...
First, a bit of background in my first video above describing how the cam column's weakness (breaking) causes a delta in opposite force vectors leading to cracks was a quick video I did for a user of the facebook Hobie page where a guy who's local to me posted his 2007 Revo with cracking that he just bought. Both of his cam columns are fractured. I'm going to help him out with my modified Lightning Kayaks Click-n-Go retrofit.
Now, onto methods to reinforce high stress areas of PE hull kayaks. Hobie engineering is undoubtedly the number one in the world when it comes to kayak design maybe not for long but they've had the history and capitol to have these sorts of teams build and design for them for sometime now. Now try to think of any PE kayak that you've seen some "other" material other than PE itself that's used to reinforce structure. See, if it's not PE then it will require mechanical fastening. Not to say some block of CF with LSE adhesive would solve the issue, it's just their engineering directly attacked the problem and completely eliminated the cam locks and re-designed from the ground up and so far that has held up. Now the 360 receiving design is much different so we are in a new chapter there, but for the click-n-go, it's pretty rock solid. So far my modified click-n-go is working great, cutting the plates down to lower where the drum shaft sits by about 1/2" is the key to making this retrofit work as nearly stock/default works with the drive.