Was pulling my 2010 Puma FTD home from Degray today. Seen something that looked like flew out from under the boat on north side of Little Rock today. It was round and looked like a big super bouncy ball, it skipped down 67 north, jumped the median wall and hit another vehicle. At the time I did not know what it was. Got home and was putting boat in garage and noticed the ball was gone off the top of the step assist pole. The ball sheared the small bolt off even with the top of the pole. I am not trying to criticize BCB about this, but I feel bad about what happened or how bad it could have been had someone had been onside of the road walking. I think this unit could be made with a bigger bolt than a 1/4″ threaded bolt, the pole looks like it can accept a 3/8″ bolt easily. This pole has alot of harmonic vibration in it from road travel for a 1/4″ bolt to withstand that pressure over an extended period. Given that the boat I purchased is a former Elite Pros boat and it has seen a lot of road miles on it and things are going to break. I thought that I had checked everything over on this rig, but this is something that cannot be detected. And again I want to express that I do not want this to sound like a rant against BCB, I truely believe that this is an unforeseen design flaw that only shows up over time. Not something that was designed this way out of negligence. I do like this feature that BCB put on their equipment, but I wanted to let everyone know to take yours off and check them peroidically, as for me, I will not replace the ball out of the sick feeling I got and have wondering if the steel ball went thru a windshield and hit someone.
.
