Marker Tour F12 Major Failure

[Choucas]

Good to see that Marker has beefed up the F12/F10 for '12. I used the F12 last year. Did a lot of alpine skiing on it and a modest amount of touring with no issues. I have to qualify that by saying that I'm very easy on equipment and rarely break stuff. If you have a habit of being rough on your gear and are looking for alpine binding type performance, I'd stay away from the Tour and head to the Baron and Duke. If you need light wieght, then go Dynafit. The middle ground is Fritschi and Marker with the nod to durability/reliability/convenience to Fritschi and the nod to downhill performance going to Marker. I'm nervous about the durability of last year's Markers and will watch them for signs of deterioration this year.

[angrysasquatch]

Good, so now if mine break and need to be warrantied, I can get the new improved pivot (hopefully).

[1000-oaks]

Think the loss of the toe roller is really because of AT boot toe issues, or did they do it to save weight so they could add more plastic in critical areas?

[tone capone]

But I am really surprised at this widespread and seemingly almost inevitable failure of the first generation F10/12. Apparently just a moderate amount of touring was enough to render the bindings horribly sloppy at the touring pivot. Designing to prevent rare or very long-term failure is one thing. But sounds like this affected all production runs of the first generation, and even just several big testing tours would have been enough to detect that.
And then the irony that the Duke/Baron seems to hold up just fine in that regard, but the F10/12 is the model made for actually doing some regular touring.

What a joke. Everyone who bought these things should get a full refund. 400$ for a piece of untested, disposable shit? "Oh, sorry, we fixed it this year, sorry we never even tested it, just give us another 400 bucks, thanks for the R&D." How can they bring something like this to market? How many people paid good money to be put in possibly dangerous situations? This is unnacceptable. It pisses me off and I didn't even buy a pair. I reccomended them to my friend for his girlfriend at the end of last year and I hope they can get a refund or an uprgrade. Way to screw the pooch, Marker.

[stuckathuntermtn]

Has anyone skied the "new and improved" version yet?
Also wondering how it feels to ski on, compared to the duke/grifon/etc.
any chance on the Salomon coming out mid-season?

[Fluchtweg]

Are there some changes for the F12 11/12 edition?
Can you recommend the new one?

I have to choose a new AT binding for my everyday ski for europe, f12, baron or fritschi freeride pro..

[tone capone]

Apparently the tour pivot is now "beefed up" from last years fischer-price toy quality piece of shit they thought they got away with selling to people for 450$, untested, and unproven. Bullshit that they did that after at least having an adequete touring pivot on the duke. Seems like planned obsolescence or the dumbest shit I ever heard of to me. Why the fuck would they strip down the most important moving part of the binding?

[mammothkid]

After all the threads that say how bad the F12's suck I pulled the trigger and bought the 2011-2012 model (redesigned version). Definitely seemed beefier than last years version. The pin in the toe piece is exactly the same as on the Baron/Duke and the rollers have been removed. I'll post something after a few more days on them.

[Dumb Swede]

Brave man. I took two people out last year on different days with rental gear. Granted, pilot error in terms of technique but both instances the Tour failed. We had to duck tape and strap the binding back to the ski.

[Fluchtweg]

After all the threads that say how bad the F12's suck I pulled the trigger and bought the 2011-2012 model (redesigned version). Definitely seemed beefier than last years version. The pin in the toe piece is exactly the same as on the Baron/Duke and the rollers have been removed. I'll post something after a few more days on them.

Looking forward to your review.

Hopefully you got some information soon!

[thin cover]

I have a pair of the f-12's coming as well, plan on using them for resort and non powder touring. I have 4 year old dukes now and they still rock with no slop, I hope marker cured these issues and dont regret just going with another pair of dukes. The weight savings seems significant enough to try the f12.

[Alpinord]

Here is a thread I started for anyone interested:
New (and improved?) F10 Tour Images

[srsosbso]

I have a pair of the f-12's coming as well, plan on using them for resort and non powder touring...

Any update on these? Interested to hear from people with the new F12's.

[clow35]

I bought the F12 this season. I used them twice in bounds and they were great. I used them for an avy course recently, also the first time I had used them in tour mode. I was kneeling beside my skis with boots in bindings and the toe piece broke right off. Very disappointed in the design. I hope this issue can be resolved. What was really disappointing was I hadn’t had a bad crash or anything to warrant the failure. Until marker fixes this issue I wouldn’t recommend this binding to anyone

[1000-oaks]

I bought the F12 this season. I used them twice in bounds and they were great. I used them for an avy course recently, also the first time I had used them in tour mode. I was kneeling beside my skis with boots in bindings and the toe piece broke right off. Very disappointed in the design. I hope this issue can be resolved. What was really disappointing was I hadn’t had a bad crash or anything to warrant the failure. Until marker fixes this issue I wouldn’t recommend this binding to anyone

I know you bought them this season, but are they the new 2012 version or the original 2011?

[clow35]

I believe they are 2012 model. It wasn't the hinge that broke it was the bottom of the toe piece itself

[srsosbso]

It'd be good to know for sure, they made some significant revisions and many on this forum are waiting to see how the new version works out.

[North]

Having a grand old time Japan on my dream trip and one of the guys in my group broke his F12 exactly as described in post #1. It seems fairly solid in ski mode though, and lasted another 6 runs or so w/o issue. What say the collective? Can he get by in ski mode with this or are we heading for leg breaking/carnage inducing failure?

PS - If anybody has any ideas on how to get a replacement in Japan ASAP please PM me.

[gaijin]

I wouldn't ski it, especially on fatter skis that induce so much torque on bindings these days.

Being on a dream trip, I'd just go to the shop and if they couldn't replace the broken marker I'd literally just buy a new binding off the shelf and deal with the broken binding upon returning home. 400 bucks is small when looking at the cost of a dream ski trip overseas.

Where are you in JP?

[1000-oaks]

Seriously? Somebody reported yet another F12 breakage, without mentioning the model year of the binding?

[srsosbso]

Yeah, it would be really helpful to have that information in both these cases. It's old news that last year's version broke. The question is whether Marker has fixed it or not.

[North]

Where are you in JP?

Was in Aomori. Mini golfing in Myoko starting tomorrow.

Seriously? Somebody reported yet another F12 breakage, without mentioning the model year of the binding?

My bad. I posted not so much to highlight the failure, but to ask whether or not skiing these is a bad idea. Super scientific testing has indicated that they may be OK for low key pow slayage, but I don't think we'll be taking chances now that we're in the land of bouncy pillowy goodness.

Buuuut for the record these are the 1st gen design, the owner was aware of the problem and bought 'em anyways on closeout...so yeah, nothing to see here from that standpoint.

[Alpinord]

Seriously? Somebody reported yet another F12 breakage, without mentioning the model year of the binding?

It might be useful to post images of the bindings and their vintage. Here's the 2012 F10 toe from this F10 thread which I'm assuming ais the same as the F12s:

Attachment 103531Attachment 103532Attachment 103533




Attachment 103516

[Alpinord]

Seriously? Somebody reported yet another F12 breakage, without mentioning the model year of the binding?

It might be useful to post images of the problem bindings and their vintage. Here's the 2012 F10 toe from this F10 thread which I'm assuming is the same as the F12s:

[thin cover]

Yeah, it would be really helpful to have that information in both these cases. It's old news that last year's version broke. The question is whether Marker has fixed it or not.

Just looked at this thread again. My new 2012 f-12's have been bomber. I have skied and toured 20 days on them so far with no problems. I have been skiing them as my resort binding also and they ski just like my dukes did. No issues yet and hope there are none. I am 6"4" 245lbs and ski fairly aggressively but 95% of the time in soft conditions only. Had them in some bumps and firmer stuff at the resort and they were fine but no prolonged exposure to those type of conditions so not sure how they would fair on extended time on firmer stuff. They have been in temps from the low 40's to negative 25 and the plastic has held up fine. I did see a photo of an f12 posted by tfater on here I believe, with a snapped center bar, not sure of the vintage but it was cold negative day.