CURRENT BASKETBALL PRODUCT
The 1997-98 season brought about the Big Easy Basketball Adjustment
System. This style of adjustment has been incorporated into all of our
basketball systems. This includes the inground poles and the portable
basketball systems.
The basic design is quite simple. The adjustment is an operating
parallelogram. This means that when the lower arms of the system are
level, you should have a rectangle made by the pole, lower arms,
backboard, and upper arms. At this time the distance between the pole
and the backboard should be the same on the upper and lower arms.
Also the distance between the upper and lower arms on the pole should
be the same on the backboard.
See Pictures
See Pictures
The most common problem associated with the new system is that
the
backboard tilts up or down when you adjust the height of the goal.
The solution here is that the upper arms are in the wrong set
of holes.
The board frame comes with two sets of holes that the upper arms
could fit into. The lower set of holes are used for the portable units.
The upper set are used for the Inground and the Mobile System.
One thing to remember on all of our basketball systems is that the
poles go
together with a friction lock joint. That means once they are pounded
together you can not get them apart! Please make sure you are
connecting the pole sections together as instructed in your owners
manual.
Other common questions:
1. The rear support tubes on the portable do not line up with
the holes
on the pole. Why?
It is designed this way to make the pole more rigid. You need
to attach
the rear supports to the ballast and then force them down to where they
meet the hole on pole. By doing this you will not hurt the ballast or the
rear support tubes.
2. When I raise the goal to 10 feet on the portable it slowly
lowers even
if the knob is as tight as it will go.
Several things can occur here. One is that the slider shim was
not used.
It looks like a big piece of black HotWheel track. Without this it will
not
lock in place. Also if you do not get the teeth to lock together fully
on
the clamp halves, the correct amount of friction needed to hold the
board will not be achieved. The best way to lock the teeth is to fold the
rounded halves opposite of each other and then bring them to the
shape of a circle. It would be like taking two "c's" back to
back and
bringing them together to make an "O".
3. On the inground systems should I fill the pole with concrete?
Generally this is not recommended. The greatest evil to an inground
pole is rust. If you put concrete in your pole it will hold moisture.
Concrete is not waterproof. If it was there would be a lot fewer wet
basements in the world. When you put concrete in the pole, moisture will collect where you stopped.
The pole will rust from the
inside out. If you are wanting to increase the rigidity of the pole it
is
best to use Pea gravel. By doing this you will increase the weight of the
pole and still allow moisture to drain from the inside. Even with the pole
cap on, some moisture is going to get inside the pole so you want it to
be able to drain to the bottom of the hole.
4. Can I concrete my pole in the ground first before assembling
the
adjustment system?
We do recommend that you build the entire pole with the adjustment
system before you concrete it in the ground. The reason for this is
that
you must have all three pole sections pounded together to take your
measurement for the correct depth to bury the pole. Also the middle
and upper pole sections must go together correctly so the slider tube
will fit. If the pole is not pounded together correctly it will not work.
The only way to achieve this is to pound all three sections together on
a
block of wood on a hard surface. If you try to attach sections together
with a sledge hammer to a previously concreted pole section you may
not be able to achieve the correct amount of contact and your pole will
not work correctly.