Okay, so some of you might have seen the overhead board racks that I made. In my first version of these, I mounted the racks mostly forward of the tower clamps. This was great for rope clearance, but it caused way too much flex on the aluminum flat bar and I didn't like all that constant flex on my boards up there... (especially the foil board).

Version 1: racks too far forward


So I moved my racks so they were centered over the tower clamps. this was great for load distribution of the boards on the rack, but then with the racks more rearward, it caused some interference with the wakeboard line when I was cutting all the way out. it would rub on the board in the rack, especially with thicker surf boards up there.




So I came up with the idea of adding an extension to my tower tow point. I would have a piece of solid aluminum machined so that it had a hole bored in the bottom that would sleeve the existing tow point's shaft (with the nylon bushing and cap removed). then I would have the top of the extension machined to have a similar shaft, so I could re-use the nylon bushing and cap on top of the extension, with a longer 3/8" bolt that would have 1" thread insertion.

Here is a close up of the existing tow point with the countersink socket cap screw backed out...