extremely concerned (part tech questions, part rant)

[The Jackamo]

ok, so i went and got my AR5s mounted up this week and picked them up earlier today. first thing i noticed was that the toe piece wasn't flush with the ski. not good. so the guy took them back and went at em with the posidrive. came back and basically told me that he thought the core was really really soft cause he had the posidrive cranked up to a 9 to get the toes flush with the topsheet.

so now i'm really concerned - are these things even safe to ski on if there's a chance the toe piece could rip out? and, i didn't think of this until i was half way home, if the toepieces weren't flush with the ski, then i'd bet good money that the heels aren't either, but i don't know Look bindings well enough to disassemble and reassemble, so i think i'll just have them checked out when i go to mammoth next week.

also, i mounted up some sollys on my pair of beater skis and put some woodweld in the holes when i mounted, but a couple of the screws are still able to turn (this is about 13 hours after i mounted). any advise there?

i feel so stupid - i potentially messed up on 2 pairs of skis. the worst part is, i was planning on getting the AR5s mounted when i got to mammoth (cause the shop guys in so cal know absolutely dick, as demonstrated here), but i didn't want to miss out on a day riding them, but now it looks like they're gonna be in the shop anyway. goddammit.

[skea 457]

The AR5s are probably not a problem. Sometimes when mounting if the holes are not countersunk the topsheet gets pulled up as the screws go in, it is not an ideal situation, but I haven't seen any bindings rip out because of it. The solution would be to take the bindings off, countersink the holes and put them back on. But it may not be worth it because even the process of taking the bindings off and putting them back on weakens the holes slightly.

However your beater skis are a problem. If the screw keeps turning you have stripped out the hole and no amount of glue will keep you in. They need helicoils which should be fitted by a reputable shop.

[The Jackamo]

with the beater skis, therein lies the problem - i put on a pair of solly 997s that were previously mounted on the old plate system, but since i wanted to ditch the plate, i needed shims for the toe pieces. seeing as it would take something a little short of a miracle finding shims that were actually meant for the binding, i did the next best thing - i made my own (which are +/- 1mm from spec [edit - looked at them again - it's more like +/- 0.3-0.5mm deviation]). but now, if i take the things into a shop, i run the chance of the tech seeing the homemade shims and refusing to work on the skis due to liability.

so i'm pretty much stuck between a rock and a hard place. but thanks for alleviating my grief about my armadas a little.

[skea 457]

If you get a cool shop tech and sweet talk them a little, the 997s will be fine. They are still indemnified so the shops won't refuse to work on them, but they may need to replace your set of screws with ones the correct length so you don't need to use the shims. The beater skis can be fixed, you just need to find an open minded tech.

[The Jackamo]

^it's only 1 screw that's turning any, so i think i'm just not going to worry about it. else they'd have to take off the bindings altogether and remount a cm forward, which would defeat the entire purpose of me doing the mount cause i wanted to save a couple bucks.

damn, come to think of it, remounting a cm or 2 forward is probably a lot easier than worrying about it.

[Idris]

For all you screw problems, use epoxy resin...the 24 hour kind....JB weld is ok if epoxy is not available.