main@AmelYachtOwners.groups.io | How to disassemble Nirvana Furling Swivel?

Tom Whitehill

#48221

Hi,

I'm new to the forum and am excited to be part of the community.
Current Challenge: The Nirvana Mizzen manual furler Swivel on our 1984 Amel Sharki was frozen when we bought her.
I've extracted the swivel from the mast and am now looking for advice/guidance on how to disassemble it so that I can replace bearings, etc.
I've attached some pics of the Swivel for your reference.
Your ideas would be very much appreciated.

Thanks in advance for your help,
Tom

svcharisma

#48251

The swivel on my 1986 Mango with power furling is similar, thought not exactly the same. There are several seals and bearings in the assembly. I was able to replace all of the parts with the numbers that were still visible. The bearings were pretty much dust. After removing the seals, I had to take the unit to a machine shop to press it apart. When I reassembled with new parts, it was too stiff. I still haven't sorted this out, but I think lots of silicone grease is needed.

I would love to hear more experiences with these older swivels. They are not the same as the SM swivels.

Alan

s/v Charisma

Mango #62

CW Bill Rouse

#48398

Tom,

I am not 100% sure, but I believe the swivel balls, which encircle the swivel internally also hold the swivel halves together. Inside the top or bottom of the swivel you will find a plug of some sort, which when removed, you can remove the balls and separate the halves.

Please let me know if this helps.

--

CW Bill Rouse Amel Yacht Owners School

+1 832-380-4970 | brouse@...

Address: 720 Winnie, Galveston Island, Texas 77550

Website: www.AmelYachtOwnersSchool.com

Show quoted text

On Wed, Oct 2, 2019 at 2:45 PM Tom Whitehill <whitehillrei@...> wrote:

Hi,

I'm new to the forum and am excited to be part of the community.
Current Challenge: The Nirvana Mizzen manual furler Swivel on our 1984 Amel Sharki was frozen when we bought her.
I've extracted the swivel from the mast and am now looking for advice/guidance on how to disassemble it so that I can replace bearings, etc.
I've attached some pics of the Swivel for your reference.
Your ideas would be very much appreciated.

Thanks in advance for your help,
Tom

Tom Whitehill

#48406

Thanks Bill, Alan and Tom Fisher (offline) for your help,

I was able to remove the inner sleeve (my terminology might be not accurate) by soaking the unit in kerosene over-night and using a vise to push it out the 'top' of the outer shell. 'Top' meaning its orientation as it would be if the mast were up. See pic of swivel in vise and of the separated pieces after the fact (the inner sleeve is top end down in the pic, sorry).

Now, I'm looking at using a 'blind hole bearing puller' to extract the topmost bearing. I'm not sure how I'll get the bottom bearing out - maybe with a dowel as suggested by Tom F or figure out how to extend the length of the puller.

I've measured the diameters of the bearings so I can get the correct sized bearing puller.

Inner diameter = 1.75 inches = 44.45 millis

Outer = ~2.25 inches ~= 57.15 millis

I'll follow up with more later. Bottom line at this point (assuming that I can extract the bearings) is:

- disassembling the manual furler gears and getting the swivel out of the mast was pretty easy - the difficulty was figuring out the mystery of how. I needed only to make a simple home made puller which I'll describe in a follow up post. But, now that I know how to disassemble, I will have no hesitation doing the same for the main mast swivel.