How to anchor a seat strap? Anchor hole is missing threads!

I usually sail solo on my Tandem from the rear seat. A friend came out with me this weekend, he leaned back in his seat and the right seat strap front anchor plug popped right out!
He screwed the plug in twice more and twice more it popped out as soon as he leaned back. We ended up tying the extended seat back strap to the right front carry handle.
When I brought it out of the water, I found that the male anchor plug looked perfectly fine, with nice deep threads. However, the female anchor hole only had one half of a thread
molded into the hole. The rest of the hole was very smooth. The threads were not worn out...they never existed. Looking at the other three seat anchor plug holes, they all had
robust, deep threads extending all the way to the bottom of the holes.

I could twist the male plug into the hole and even give it quite a pull directly outward and it held. But if I gave it a good pull sternward (where the seat strap would normally tug) the plug pulled right out! It turned out that the missing half first thread was on the forward side of the hole. So the half thread would hold a direct outward tug, but if it were tugged rearward, there was no
thread on the forward side, so the plug just tilted right out of the hole.

I contacted my dealer but he never replied to my email.

I don't want to hassle Hobie about replacing a complete hull for just one defective plug hole. So I was wondering if anyone else has found such a 'threaded' hole defect and
how they solved the problem. I know that almost nothing sticks to the roto-molded plastic hulls. I thought that I might be able to use an 'expanding' plug similar to the ones
Hobie uses to anchor the seat bottoms to the hull. But the seat plugs are a different diameter.

I would appreciate any suggestions. Otherwise, I am going to have to attach the seat strap to the carry handle every time I have someone with me sailing.

This will require that a special tool tap fresh threads into the receiver - and new pad eye get screwed in. Sounds like an assembly mistake - when the fitting got threaded into the hull before the threads got tapped. The insert is not designed to self-tap - and when you do that the threads just fold over on themselves and have no strength.

This should be handled by your dealer - the tool gets shipped from Hobie and returned back after the job is done. Would take just a few minutes to fix.
Who is the dealer? (maybe we can try and contact them for you)

_________________
Jacques Bernier
http://www.hobie.com/
http://www.facebook.com/HobieCatCompany

Least we can do... is fix this simple issue. Yes, we agree that this is a defect. A replacement hull for you was a decision by the dealer on his own. This is issue is easily corrected and likely your dealer did just that and re-sold the kayak.

Can you imagine getting a new car because of some minor (even major) defect found after the purchase... getting another new car? They don't do that. They would fix it... and a car is a whole lot more money than $3,000. Warranty options are always repair first or replace if really necessary.

My dealer finally got back to me about 'thread repair'. He said that Hobie would probably ship the 'threading' tool to them...then I can haul my Tandem half way
across the state for a 1/2 hour repair. I asked him if it is possible for Hobie to ship the tool to me instead (deposit with a refund at return?). He said he doubted it.
So the repair is going to cost me gas for 300 miles and a day off from work.
I told him that if I had to come to him, I would probably just tie off the strap to the carry handle and if anyone asked about such a 'Rube Goldberg', I would explain
that's Hobie's lack of quality control.

I have never heard of a manufacturer paying petrol money for a repair under warranty. Perhsps you can arrang for the tool to be at the dealer the next time you are travelling in their direction?

_________________
Tony Stott
2012 Tandem Island "SIC EM" with Hobie spinnaker

this may work
get a new PADEYE take a small bolt insert the bolt inside the halo side of the PADEYE fill it with a strong glue,let let cure for a few days, drill a small hole at the bottom of the haul Anchor hole and put a nut at the bottom
between the small thread that the hole has and the screw it should stay on place
I hope that make sence