Help with Binding Mount Question?

[Shadows]

Sports chalet is now vivo! or something? Wow i forgot about that place

[GrilledSteezeSandwich]

2 minutes ago, Shadows said:

Sports chalet is now vivo! or something? Wow i forgot about that place

I've bought a lot of stuff there over the years. Nastar Glenn knows that family from way way back like the 70s. The father used to run the ski school at Apple hill which was in Orefield and closed in the 70s. Back before 1977 when Little Gap(Blue opened) Apple hill was the little local hill and Doe mountain(no bear creek was the big place. 

[SallyCat]

11 minutes ago, GrilledSteezeSandwich said:

Most newer skiers use a boot that is too large.  I'm a size 11 street shoe and use a 27.5 ski boot but I used to wear a 28:5 ski boot

27.5 was fine (I wear a men's 10.5 running shoe). 104 mm wide was absurd. 

I'm eventually going to have to get a race boot if I want a good fit width-wise, but I'm not good enough as a skier to be in a stiff boot. Hence the Zip Fits: you can cram a lot of filler in the heel and ankle area and sort of make up for a too-wide recreational boot. 

Edited January 7, 2018 by SallyCat

[GrilledSteezeSandwich]

Hermans sporting goods at the mall used to be the place for lower end gear along with sports authority and they had higher end gear at Nestors and Nazareth sporting goods.  Nestors used to have a location in quakertown as well 

[momskeeztoo]

I miss Nestor's. Got my last pair of boots there the year they closed. I love them, they fit perfectly. 

[indiggio]

On 1/6/2018 at 6:09 PM, SallyCat said:

It's the sales/retail side of the store that annoys me a bit. The shop does good work, but I wanted to talk to the tech today, just for a moment, to hear what he had to say about the binding, not have some teenage sales girl blow me off.

Whenever I want to talk to them (bootfitter, tech, etc.), I ask for them specifically ("Is the bootfitter in?  Can I talk to him?") instead of posing the question to the salesperson.
Has worked every time I've had an issue.

[SallyCat]

1 hour ago, indiggio said:

Whenever I want to talk to them (bootfitter, tech, etc.), I ask for them specifically ("Is the bootfitter in?  Can I talk to him?") instead of posing the question to the salesperson.
Has worked every time I've had an issue.

Very true; the couple of times I've had issues with shops it was because I wasn't assertive enough/didn't ask for what I wanted clearly enough. 

[Johnny Law]

I'm pretty confident they wouldn't have whatever specific hardware you needed.

There isn't a ton of interchangeability in screw lengths between bindings particularly if your using a plate or system like on the RTM's.  You can order them from Tognar, I have a bag with like five spares for every screw on any binding I own because except for the top 1% of shops (none around here ) they never seem to have them. I was at 10 different shops for px brake in Durango and Aspen and nobody had them because it's the first or second year world cup heal and it's just mm's different then the brake assembly they used every other year.

If the hole is stripped they definitely want nothing to do with them, you either re-tap at a bigger size and maybe have to drill the binding hole or throw a helicoil which is even more work so most shops will just say send them back. 

It's a single screw mount though that is pre drilled, order like 5 screws and a #3 pozi screwdriver, a nice one, like it should cost at least 20$, and mount them yourself. The rail is what keeps it on the ski anyway. lol

[SallyCat]

Just heard from the shop to which I returned my skis.  Here's what they said:

"Somehow the insert for the screw had become smooth so there was nothing to screw into. We had a helicoil inserted into the opening and fastened into place which gave something for the screw to latch onto. "

So I'm a little bummed because I feel like Blue's shop might have been able to do that, or if not, they could have told me what I needed and I could have done it myself. 

The skis should arrive Monday if I'm lucky. If the planets align, I might be able to spend a full day Tuesday on new skis. 

[eaf]

Well, if you're sure that you have communicated to them that you want them to find and fix the problem, and you'll also pay for it, they really did bad. And I don't care if there was someone already waiting for a ski mount. Because 99% there wasn't.

[SallyCat]

11 minutes ago, eaf said:

Well, if you're sure that you have communicated to them that you want them to find and fix the problem, and you'll also pay for it, they really did bad. And I don't care if there was someone already waiting for a ski mount. Because 99% there wasn't.

I said I'd like them to take a look at it and see what they could do. So they came back and said "broken," which at first I thought was fine, but if it was such an easy fix...ah, well... no sense worrying about it. Next time I'll be more assertive and ask to speak to the tech. (I did not need the skis immediately and expected to drop them off and pick up another day. I was in street clothes when I entered the shop).

On a more positive note, I had a weird issue with the bindings on my other skis Monday night; All of a sudden, I could lift my toe up and town inside the binding very noticeably, (Solomon Warden's. Do not recommend. They squeak like an old barn door, too).  and it made me nervous. So I brought them into the shop just on the off chance that they could help, and they did. Took them 20 minutes and when I went in to pick the up the shop tech came out and explained what he'd found and what he'd done (super nice guy who also works in the bike park's shop in the summers. I can't remember his name; dammit).  He also told me to come back for adjustments if I needed them at no charge if any movement returned.  That's actually way more typical of my experience with the shop and I was very happy. 

[Justo8484]

Re: the RTM binding issue, if it is what I think it is, you don't want that helicoiled. If it came like that from the shop, unmounted, that binding should be replaced, no questions asked. Maybe too late for that at this point?

 

Re: the wardens, that toe should have a toe height adjustment. Salomon's higher end toes have had this for years, and it's a blessing and a curse. It ensures that you get proper boot/binding contact at the AFT, but it also kinda requires you to either take your gear to a shop far to frequently for a sanity check, or you have to keep tabs on it and know how to adjust it properly yourself. Super easy to do with a #3 phillips and a business card to test boot sole/AFD tolerance, but again, just one more thing to worry about. My guardians have the same toe, and I've prereleased from that binding more in one week in cham than i have in all the years I've been riding pivots on all my other skis. I love the idea of the guardians, and definitely interested in the new shift binding, but generally not feeling the salomon binding love anymore.

[SallyCat]

18 minutes ago, Justo8484 said:

Maybe too late for that at this point?

Thank you for all of that, @Justo8484.  Yeah, it's too late: the shop helicoiled it. Is there anything you recommend, like checking the screw periodically or doing something else to it? 

Regarding the Wardens, that's disappointing. I've had nothing but trouble with those bindings since I got them. I have a pair of skis that I'm going to sell and I'm thinking of taking the Attack 13s off those skis and replacing the Wardens with them.  I don't care about a second drilling as long as it's do-able. The skis with the Wardens on them are Nordica Soul Riders and I LOVE them in soft snow. They are such fun skis, but man those bindings are a headache. 

Thanks for your informative reply. 

[Shadows]

I used to cary a screwdriver around for my salo bindngs. Horrible pos

[Justo8484]

Yeah its kinda a bummer. Salomon’s bindings ski really well, have a nice wide footprint on modern wider skis, and have good elasticity in the toe. They just kind of fall short in regards to constantly loosening the toe height and elasticity in the heel related to rebound from quick compressions during awkward g outs. Sally, mounting skis a second time should be no problem at all. The aaattacks or however they spell it have the same gripes I have with the warden, aside from toe height adjustment. If you’re not into doing stupid crap on skis like me, they’re totally fine though.


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[GrilledSteezeSandwich]

I have a few screws loose..in my Shiro Look binders

[SallyCat]

I just took the Wardens off the skis and the Attack 13s off the other skis. Gonna have Blue's shop mount the Tyrolias on the Soul Riders, sell the Wardens AND the flat skis. Can't rid myself of those damn Wardens fast enough. 

[indiggio]

9 hours ago, SallyCat said:

I just took the Wardens off the skis and the Attack 13s off the other skis. Gonna have Blue's shop mount the Tyrolias on the Soul Riders, sell the Wardens AND the flat skis. Can't rid myself of those damn Wardens fast enough. 

If you want any special mount, be sure to talk directly to the ski tech, don't just rely on the salesperson to pass along the information as it tends not to get to them and/or they don't look at instructions on ticket.

 

[SallyCat]

1 hour ago, indiggio said:

If you want any special mount, be sure to talk directly to the ski tech, don't just rely on the salesperson to pass along the information as it tends not to get to them and/or they don't look at instructions on ticket.

 

Good reminder, thanks!