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Old 04-03-2009, 01:05 PM
Brion Toss Brion Toss is offline
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Join Date: Jun 2005
Posts: 1,180
Default It depends

Hello,
I've seen things like this before, once on a boat that had come through a hurricane. And note that, on Hayn fittings, which have the highest break test numbers of any of this type of terminal, the ends are never bent over. Having said that, what you found was not a good thing, but just a bad thing that didn't break. Given a good factor of safety in the wire size (and for all I know it might have been very high), the maximum possible sustained load on the wires might have been no more than 40% of the rated wire strength. And it is unlikely that the actual sailing loads that the rig saw were less than 20% of the wire's strength. Even if we were to discover that the terminal as you found it would pull out at 60% of break, it doesn't look like a problem.
But we have safety factors for good reason. What if the boat were to experience a shock load, or a series of shock loads that exceeded the design max? Unlike Hayn's, Norseman's are designed to be maximally efficient with the wire bent over. I don't know how much of a difference it makes to either strength or security, but I'm not about to assume it is an optional step.
As a separate point, not engaging all the threads is just another, completely different way to weaken the terminal, so we might ask how close to the edge this boat has been sailing, given the combined deficiencies you saw.
As for the absence of Loctite, there are seldom forces that act to unscrew terminals significantly; the point is that there sometimes are, so we glue those threads down.
Fair leads,
Brion Toss
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