Subal F100 Housing problem

Hi all, my wife's F100 Subal housing has a weird problem. On top of the housing we use a small ultralight piece to connect a focus light. This piece screws into the screw on top of the housing. Unfortunately the threading of the screw seems messed up and we can not remove the piece anymore. This makes traveling rather annoying. Has anyone ever have anything similar happen? Send it in for repair? It looks like this needs to be actually cut off with powertools and then have the subal screw bits replaced.

Regards,

Cor

Hey Cor - Hope all is well with you. I bet you've got some electrolysis in the treads. I would think that you vould torque it off with a vice without doing any damage. I usually fill the threads with silicone before threading in any bolts. You'd be amazed how long the grease stays in place.

I have had similar problems and I usually get away with spraying some WD-40 and letting it soak. Then I use vice grips to torque it off. I now take out the screw frequently so it won't seize up.

Joe

Hey Kasey, it's julie here. How was your Indonesia trip? I can't wait to see your pics, which I'm sure are amazing.

Thanks for your response and joe's. The problem isn't that the ulcs piece doesn't move, it does. However, it just spins and doesn't move away and out of the shoe screw piece. Incidentally, I did try penetrating lubricating oil which didn't help, the piece just spins faster and easier now.

Is this just a Ball Adapter (AD-6MM) mounted to the top of the housing? Can you post a photo so I can get a better idea of what's causing the problem?

The Subal F100 housing uses a stainless (helicoil) insert set into the square black plastic piece which is itself held in place by 2 screws which bolt into the top of the housing. If the ultralight section which is screwed into the threaded hole is spinning, then it almost certainly means that this stainless insert has sheared the plastic into which it is screwed and has now parted from the plastic and is only being held in place by small sections of this plastic (probably the top mm or so). If it were my housing, I'd try snapping the section out (not using undue force but a reasonable amount) as I've done this when a similar problem occurred on my Subal F100 (my wife's F60 housing has the black plastic missing due to the same problem too), by levering it slightly. If this doesn't work, or you are nervous of using excess force, it will probably need careful drilling out from the side (the 2 bolts are in front and behind the threaded hole I think. It should be easy enough to order a new part and fit it (do use loctite on the small screws before tightening them!).

I think Paul is correct in his diagnosis of this problem. Once the threads are pried out of the Subal plastic mount plate I'd recommend replacement with the all aluminum plate manufactured by ULCS.

A word of warning. After reading this thread, I removed the offending black plastic square from a Subal EOS500 housing to discover that one of the screw holes goes right through the housing! I refitted it onto a Subal F60 and realised that Subal had thickened to housing design so that the holes are now blind and I'm sure that this is the case on the F80/100 housings, etc. But for any owners of the EOS500 housings it is worth realising that the hole may need plugging if the square is removed.