Yeah yeah, what the heck was I doing waiting until the day before leaving for trip to set up new bindings. Well, they’re newer year of the same model I currently run, the Flow Teams and there are no changes to the geometry. Just have to match up settings and should be good to go. Right. So two days before departure I finally tried to setup the new bindings to discover new fastners. While I’m glad Flow listened and did something about the tendancy of their previous fastners to work loose, this was ridiculous.Two days before departure, decided to adjust up the bindings. First fastner I was able to crack loose. Then tried the main pivot, to the point of screwdriver slipping. Curses! This was not going to come loose with what I had to work with by myself. So last night after our little St. Louis downhill run, went over to Ckucky’s where Angry Chine Chuck, Scat, and myself had a go with it. Both of them had cordless impact drivers. And after pounding palms numb from holding onto screwdriver on opposite side of fastner that the impact drivers were on, it finally broke loose. Geezus! Moving on to next fastner, this one simply did not budge and striped the head. Vice-grip could not get enough purchase on head. It came down to drilling the head off. Other fastners came loose after varying amounts of work, and one snapped driver bit, but there ended up three being hopelessly stuck. Ckucky even had the brilliant idea of “double impact”! Impact drivers from both sides of the fastner at the same time, the faster to strip out with! WTF! There must be an assembly line full of angry Chinese slave laborers armed with impaxct drivers putting these together!
Ok Flow, these fastnesr sure aren’t going to accidentaly come loose, but how the heck are you suppose to adjust them for set up? They should have come loose so you can set them, then torque down, but then I bet there is a liability issue, so they prob torque them down fully (and then some!) from the factory. Gonna have to write to Flow to see if I can get replacement fastners to replace the ones I squirreled from my old bindings in order to get the binding working.
That was effed up, dude.