Broken Pulley on Hobie Mirage Drive – 8/17/2013

If you read my report on the 2013 MR340 race, you would know that my boat broke. More specifically, the Hobie Mirage drive. I finally got the drive back from the dealer I purchased it from. Here is a close up of the $6 pulley that failed, basically ending my race.

The image below demonstrates what happens when the wheel warps. You can see that the cable that is supposed to be in the channel comes off.

 

Ultimately with that cable out of the track, the drive is stressed in the parts that are working and a failure will happen. In my case, the metal chain snapped before the plastic teeth that it was driving. I should also mention that Hobie declined to pay for any of the labor to fix the issue, only covering the parts. They were reluctant to replace the parts, I had to insist.

I can’t in good faith recommend that anybody use a Mirage drive without tons of spare parts. If you have to pedal one, make sure to inspect the Mirage drive for any issues or you could end up with a total drive failure like I did!

Hogan Haake