[TowerTalk] Adjustments to Tower Base Pier J-Bolts

[Richard (Rick) Karlquist]

Two suggestions based on my experience:

1.  Protect the threads of your 1 7/8 inch rods by
slipping a Schedule 80 PVC pipe over them.  This
pipe has a rated 1.936" inner diameter.  This allows
1/32" inch of a gap between the threads and the
PVC.  Then a 2 1/2 inch schedule 40 iron pipe goes over the
PVC pipe as a sleeve.  This has a rated 2.469" inner diameter,
which allows 3/64" gap between the two pipes.
Now you push on the iron pipe sleeve.

I recently used this technique to bend a
J bolt back into alignment that shifted because
there was only one template, just as happened
to Paul.

2.  I successfully used a 20 ton hydraulic jack to
bend the 1" braces on my HDX5106 tower that were
rubbing on the crank up cable.  It worked really
well.  I didn't have a lot of trouble with overshoot
because I moved it a little at a time.  I think
the 20 ton jack was actually overkill, but it
was cheap enough at HFT.

Rick N6RK