Tower installation on 97 sport Nautique

[BobinIL]

I am finally thinking about replacing my fly high extended pole for a tower. I am leaning towards the New Dimension exact fit tower for my boat model/year. Is there anything I should be aware of when installing the tower on my boat? Do you have to add extra backing under the tower bolts? I just want to make sure it is rock solid and doesn't cause any gelcoat cracking.

[charlesml3]

OK, I'm doing this from memory on a 99 Sport Nautique so it might be a little different. Anyway, I was there when the dealer installed the FCT2 on my 99 and we ran into one issue. Back tower leg, driver's side. When we drilled through, one of the screws was going to hit a fiberglass stand-off that was there to hold wires or something. This meant the backing plate could not go in as designed. We had to cut the backing plate such that it had a notch in one side to go around this standoff.

-Charles

[t.franscioni]

The stock tower on my 02 SAN had 1/8"-1/4" backing plates. I would imagine new dimensions would provide you with that kind of stuff though if you purchase one of there towers.

[swatguy]

Should have backing plates. If not you do need them for sure.


if you really wanna do it right add some fiberglass strips on the underside of where you plan to mount it. Just make sure you chamfer the edges of each hole good to prevent stress cracks and. Hopping

[Quinner]

Just as important as backing plates and chamfered gel @ holes is that the feet are flush to the deck itself, depending on where they fall that could require a contoured foot plate or shimming as required.

Towers are great but do make some things more challenging (like your fly hi). Height; if regularly going under canopy or garage, may need to be folded every time. Bimini; if you have one it may or may not work with the tower, if you add a tower bimini it likely will need to come down to fold the tower. Cover; should be able to modify what you have however never met a tower cover I liked, drawstring style on non tower boat takes 2 mins to put on, around the tower legs will be more like 10min. Towing; if you tow tower up at dusk/evening it's a bug catcher, saran wrap or tower down helps combat that problem. All that being said my tower gets used a ton, pretty much everything except slalom gets pulled from there and if storage is an issue you can hang ski's, boards, etc. from the tower.