Hobie Mirage Drive Kick-up Fins Problem/fix

One of my gripes with then Hobie Mirage Drives are the long-term durability and potential for excessive wear. I’ve already had the spine and kick-up masts replaced once under warranty and now again in under a year’s time I have wear issues again on both. I’ll just address the kick-up mast issue in this post.
The top nylon faces that lock-in and keep the fins vertical until an obstacle is hit and then they “kick-up”, wear down after repeated use. They get worn down to the point that they will no longer stay in place.
I know they still function when loose, but when they are flopping around like that the current pushes them back and when you start pedaling again they can smack together, etc.
There are set screws that push against the top bearing surface of the fin masts to keep them held in position. The plastic set screws are supposed to be a softer sacrificial material, but they are not soft enough IMO. They had significantly worn down that once flat bearing surface and small lip at the top of the fin mast. Because of that deep concave slope worn into them, they no longer reliably hold the fins in place and won’t remain seated all the way forward. On the original set I had worked on and reshaped the top bearing surfaces with a file to try and get them to hold a little better and function long enough to get replacements. That did/does work, but it’s temporary and you soon will run out of material as the wear occurs over and over.
I decided to try applying epoxy to the worn surfaces and reshaping back to the original contours. Once the epoxy has cured it’s just a matter of carefully working the material with a small fine file to get it back to the original shape. I was skeptical that the epoxy would hold but after a few trips it seems to be working well. It will be much easier in the future to just apply a small ridge/lip along the top as necessary as soon as that little lip gets worn away. It’s a lot more work shaping once the flats surface has a a concave slope worn down. On the plus side, the epoxy seems to be much harder than the original nylon surface, so the set screws seem to actually be softer and they appear to be getting worn down instead of the epoxy. One odd thing I hadn’t noticed when I replaced the masts with the new ones provided under warranty is that one of the original masts was the non-turbo shorter one.
Anyway, maybe this will be helpful to some of you Hobie owners who have been dealing with the same problem. It’s sure a lot cheaper than buying new masts.