Cracked Weld on our Tower

Today one of the welds on our tower cracked... whats the best and/or cheapest way to make it safe again... i'm thinking just a local welder re-do it all, or does anyone have any idea's?

**its and older FCT**

break is on the bar over the top of the boat, passanger side

as a welder/fabricator/wakeboarder, i can tell you that your tower is probably cast aluminum and a good welding shop can fix it good as new, shouldn't break your wallet either

Aluminum is great for repairing. Most welders should be able to do it well. Some specialize in aluminum.
That, by the way is not a normal place for a weld to break. It must have not had good penetration when done the first time. Normally a weld breaks right beside the bead. Not through the middle of it.

Same thing happened on our 99 Pro Air. Had it welded, then it broke again in same spot. Had it welded for a second time....broke again and the weld broke on the other side. The shop that did it was certified so I know it wasn't the welder...just a bad tower design.

I ended up clamping my speaker mounts over the broken welds to fix it. Eventually I had to upgrade to the Generation 2 FCT.

well that sucks to know

The broken weld has a bolt hole through it, either it has been repaired before or that is a really poor engineering design. Since there are 4 weld seems in the picture I believe it has been broken before. Having a bolt hole through the weld joint makes the repair much more difficult. I would want to cut out all of the weld joints and splice in a new reinforce section with a solid center core extending through the area with the bolt holes.

Being a welder I can safely say that the bolt going through the weld is what caused the crack. As george said I would have a piece spliced is there.

We test a boat with this tower and the welds broke on both sides of the tower. If you can change the design or beef it up you should. Good luck

I had the same thing happen on my 99 super air. IF I remeber right it was about $70.00 to fix. I just taped it up where they welded it and used spray paint and you cant even tell. IT sucks but not a big deal.

From the looks of it, that tower has been repaired more than once. I know you don't want to hear this but it may be time to upgrade to a new tower. All the aluminum around those joints is stressed and will continue to crack. Repairing the welds will only be a temporary fix. The original FCT towers are notorious for this. good luck

is fluid concepts going to give me a deal ???

oops...didn't really mean to plug fluid here. I was just trying throw my 2 cents based on my experience.

Now that you called me out on this, I have no choice but to give a fellow WW'er a deal on a tower.

thats what I'm talking about

I think we're going to get it welded up and hope it holds if not, I'm sure I'll be calling you guys up

it looks like a p.o.s. design from what i can see. is there anyway you can get rid of the section where the bolts are? the weld looks brittle, like they welded it and cooled it off with water?

We're going to have the it welded, and add triangle sections from the rear up and over back bar to one of the front/back connecting bars... that should give it enough strength to hold... nautique deffinately choked on that design.

We'll see what happens