Futahaguro

I didn't use the wrong screws. These are official 16mm Bomber screws from the official Bomber store. If you look at some of my earlier posts you will see that I used a caliper to measure everything. It is weird that they measure 22/32nds, which is closer to 17mm, but they are all like that. I have about 16 screws because I bought extra while back. I measured the depth of the inserts from the top of the board and they seem to be the correct depth for the screws I have so I honestly do not think I pushed any of them out. Also, if you look at the depth I measured of one of the rear inserts, at 7/32nds, I would argue that Prior set that one too high. I didn't use it so that is a moot point anyway. Since I am measuring everything with the same caliper it doesn't matter what the exact sizes of everything is, it matters that the insert depth is 8-9/32nds, the screws were 22/32nds at the time of initial mounting, which was an 8/32nds protrusion from the bottom of the TD-2 disc (and that is without the elastomer). If I could have cranked the screws in an extra 1/32nd I guess I would have pushed out the inserts but it should have happened on all of them. My old Avalanche has 9-10/32nds on all of the inserts so there is a little wiggle room there. I did not discuss the screw length with Bomber because everyone would be havng this problem if they supplied me with the incorrect screws. My opinion is that the base was ground too much.

I'm bored so I thought I would update this just so I don't forget to. I spoke with Prior and they cleared me to pound on the base a bit to push the bumps down. With everything off of the board I had the base facing up, obviously, with a thin towel on top of a sawhorse. I ended up using the slightly rounded back end of a nail set, the thing you use when you do carpentry to push the head of a nail into the wood if it did not go in all of the way. I DID NOT use the small end! I would go all of the way through the base if I did that! The bigger, more obvious bump in the pictures above was the first one I went after. I would have to agree with Prior on this one being the plastic centering pin because I did not have to hit it very aggresively in order to get it down. It also did not have the sound of an insert hiding under it. I got it pretty flat, if not a tad dimpled, so I am pretty satisfied with that one. The other 2-3 bumps, that are definitely inserts, were not so happy to be pushed down. After some "convincing", but not mafia style "convincing", I was able to get them almost completely flat. I can still feel them and if you ran a true bar over them you would notice them but I am also pretty satisfied with those. I'm more in the boat of Sean Donek on the inserts because if I could torque them and create a bump that easily I feel like they should have been easier to pound down. I suppose that isn't quite accurate because I am pounding on PTEX and then the insert instead of pushing directly down, metal to metal, when you torque the screws. After fixing the bumps I attacked the screws with a Dremel rotary tool and a grinding wheel accessory. I had a lot of control over the wheel with the tool in my left hand and the screw in my right hand. I was holding the screw with a Vice Grip wrench. I was able to carefully grind off 1/32nd from each screw. When I was done I screwed them into an old board I have to make sure the threads were fine. The next idea I had, and ran by Prior, was to install the cants with the new screws and then bend the board. After snugging everything up I hand flexed the board a pretty good amount to see if the centering pin would pop out again or in the inserts would do the same. I am happy to report than nothing seemed to pop out again so now I will ride it a bit and see if anything reverts to being an annoying bump. My thought on this process was to see if the initial problem might be the break-in of the board and won't happen again. Some of you readers might be wondering why I am going through all of this trouble on a brand new board but that is because I got a good deal on it and I will be out some shipping dough if I don't like it. I will be waxing the board again tonight and will take "after" pictures when I am done.

I think it is pretty cool! Certainly different. What I am curious about is how much ambient light there was for him to see where he was going! I suppose the camera had a smaller aperature so it didn't blow out the rider but at the same time it had to be at night so it would have had to be open enough to actually film him. Neat.

Like this?:)

I have only ridden them on this board for one day but I rode them a bit more on my old BX board and I really like them. They probably add about 3 lbs to the board, with the cants and plates, but they really help with the boot out problems on hard turns. I will be riding them for a good amount in Colorado this weekend so I will have a better opinion on them then but so far so good. One annoying thing, which cannot be fixed and is not really a design flaw, is that you need to completely remove the soft binding in order to change the angle. In theory you could tweak the soft binding angle up to 5 degrees in either direction but beyond that you are moving the binding off of the plate. I have not launched myself off any kickers yet but I don't see any problem there if you are used to the setup. The whole reason I got this setup was because I wanted something that I could carve pretty well, not extreme obviously, but I could also hit some jumps on it and take it off-piste if the powder is there. I know it probably is not much of a powder board but I don't get any powder in MN anyway.

Was this the guy with the crazy little Bomber box with a wing on it on the back of his board? That would be pretty hilarious to see that carving down the mountain! Nice pictures!

Those kids have some smooth style! How old are they? I like the video too!

On my phone that perspective makes me a little oogie. I like how you can see the board though. That is always the boring part about the helmet cams is that you cannot see what the person is doing. I think an RC helicopter would be fabulous!

No but thanks for the heads up because I didn't know that. If I convert it correctly I get 22/32nds = .6875 .6875 * 25.4 = 17.4625. Hmm, now that I do the math that seems odd. 21/32nds gets me to 16.67 and 20/32nds gets me to 15.875. Either way I measured the depth of the inserts and I think I should take off 1/32nd with a file. I am going to do a test tonight with the approval of Prior. I will hammer down the bumps as they prescribe, file down the bolts 1/32nd, and then mount everything. I will then flex my board by hand a bit and see what happens. If I do not get anything I will strap it on and do some light nose and tail flex and then look. It the dimples appear again there is definitely an issue. If they don't, maybe it was just some initial shifting.

So I spoke with a rep at Prior about this and got some information. The big dimple you can see in all of the pictures is one of their "centering pins." It is made of plastic and is supposed to melt in the pressing process. It would appear that mine did not melt enough, or whatever, and when the board was flexed it pushed out the bottom. As far as denting the insert I have mixed opinions on that since Sean Donek says it is pretty hard to do but other people have done it. I measured everything and I don't think I could have pushed it more than 1/32nd so my opinion is that the base is thin and the flex of the board is popping things out. They have been very helpful so far so I am posting this info just so other people know what this is if it appears on their board.

I knew you guys weren't perfect:) Edit: Sorry to pick on whom ever this is:) Great pictures! Fun to look at!

I will be at Loveland Saturday and Sunday but with some family. Hopefully I will see one of you guys so I can say "hi" and ask you if that is a snowboard or a monoski:)

This was a brand spankin' new board. Here is exactly what I did. I unwrapped the board, inspected it, giggled like a little school girl, and then went to mount the bindings. I used the TD-2 screws, TD-2 orange elastomers, and 3 degree 4x4 TD-2 canting disc. I first made sure the elastomer was firmly engaged in the canting disc so it was nice and smooth. I put the disc in and then put the assembly onto the board. I lightly screwed in 4 screws and then snugged them just about 1/4 turn. I certaiinly did not crank on them like the Incredible Hulk. This was all done in my toasty basement. There was definetly no snow, no threadlock, and no epoxy as I just did some inspecting last night. So after more inspection I got just under 3 turns with the binding mounted but before I totally snugged them so that seems correct. However, since I have a caliper that also measures depth I measured everything and here is what I found. Screws - Almost all of them were 22/32nds. A couple were 23/32nds so I put those aside and used some spares that I have that were 22/32nds. Bottom of inserts to top of board - The 2x3 inserts nearest to the middle of the board, the thickest part of the baoard, were 9/32nds deep and the 2x3 inserts furthest from the middle were 8/32nds. One of them was closer to 7/32nds but I was not using that insert. Bottom of metal 4x4 TD-2 disc to bottom of screw - I stuck a screw through the disc without mounting it and I measured 8/32nds of protrusion. My thoughts - So it would seem that I am not dimpling the inserts and if I am the maximum would be 1/32nd. So if I am not dimpling them why are they there? Hypothesis - Did I force the inserts down a bit from the flex of the board? I measured the thickness of the board, subtracted out the insert depth, and I got a base thickness of 1/16", assuming the inserts are just above the base. More importantly, I am probably making this out to be a bigger deal than it is but it is a brand new board and I wanted to make sure everything is working right. I also don't want to attach the bindings without making sure everything is on correctly. Thanks for everyone's help. I haven't heard from Prior yet. p.s. my caliper was not metric, sorry.

True bar - I do not have an official true bar but I used my metal 2' level and I could see some light through at some points but it wasn't too bad. The dimples from the inserts, a different thread all together, raised it up. Ride - I'm not splitting hairs so I doubt I could tell if it was effecting the ride. It moves out just fine so I will just leave it and keep it nicely waxed. Thanks for the info.

I will have to count but I can tell you this. With no bindings I hand screwed in the bolt to see how far the bottom was. Then, I put just the 4x4 disc on and put in the same screw and it almost bottomed out just tightening it by hand. I would imagine that I am getting them in all of the way if I am dimpling them:) I will test all of this out in every insert I used and report back as well as post some more pictures for future reference.

Maybe I didn't mention it here but I do have the correct screws, from Bomber. Maybe I will put a straight edge on all of them to see how accurate they are. Also, I think part of the problem could come from an insert being higher to the absolute top of the board, correct? If the insert is higher my screw will thread in more, pushing down the insert. In theory I suppose there should be more base material below the insert but I want to talk to Prior about it. I know that if they are not long enough the holding power is lost and that is when I will strip them so a bump is probably better than a stripped insert.

I like my Kali Protectives Avatar full face helmet. I used to have a Giro Sestriere in the 59-60cm size that fit my head better that the 57-58 size of the same helmet. My head is 58cm and it fits great in the Kali medium size 57-58cm. I can fit a Smartwool balaclava underneath to take away the cold head syndrome because it is a mountain bike helmet. I bought it because last year in a practice run for a BX event I rode down with another guy in my age group, washed out toeside on the last berm, and my chin ended up in front of his board. 7 stitches later I competed in the second heat later in the day but I figured out why they wear full face helmets:) You will fog up quicker, that's for sure, but outside of that I think it is very comfortable. I took aff the visor because I hate the fact that, with it on, you cannot stick your goggles on the edge of the helmet so they don't fog up when you are not riding.

As far as the size I would say it is almost exactly like the one I created with the slightly long screw. To my recollection it is darn near the middle (width) of the board. You can kind of confirm this by looking at the 1st and 2nd picture. You can see the inserts for the bindings and the mystery bump looks to be in the middle of those. The pictures you see above are of the mystery bump. I would say it is 1 inch toward the rear of the board from the last set of inserts for the front foot. However, this is nowhere NEAR the tip or tail but when I think about it I would say it is close to the true middle of the board. Hopefully they will get back to me soon. In the mean time I will bust out the dremel tonight to cut down the bolts a bit.

Thank you everyone for the help and comments! I watched the video and hopefully Prior also builds them like that, if they have the metal below the core. I have e-mailed Prior to ask them the best way to fix it to make sure I am doing things how they should be so I do not mess up the warranty or the board. Scrutton - I have cuts bolts using your method so I will probably do that. I can get it accurate enough to cut off 1mm or about a thread. I will post the reply from Prior if it is cleared from them.

So I am curious about the base grind that came with my new Prior BX. I just waxed it, without any bindings screwed on to get it as flat as possible, and I noticed that from the nose to just past the front inserts it seems to have a high/low/high/low/high/low/high profile. The high spots seem to have some structure but the low spots are smooth. There was disclosure on the Prior website when I bought it that the nose was ground a little too much so I probably cannot grind it but they didn't say anything about a crappy grind. I knew that and didn't mind because I never grind it but I was just curious. Also, how can you tell when there is no more to grind away? Edit: From the pictures it looks more like just one low spot in the middle but when I was waxing it I could tell from the melting that there were three low spots like a striped wall.

Well, I beat the rear bump, the one in the original picture, down using the screwdriver method and it worked pretty well but not perfect. Before I go nuts I am going to call Prior and talk to them about it, partially because of these pics below. I believe there is an insert in the middle of the board that is hidden! There is NOT a hole above it! Is this normal practice that they would screw up an insert and then hide it?? Also, would the other inserts get pushed down a bit even if I didn't put any screws in them?

Has anyone else experienced the bump on the base below a binding screw? I used the TD-2 screws in my TD-2 3 degree cant disc with 4x4 insert and orange elastomers. I did not crank the heck out of them, I did the same thing on my old Avalanche and it did not do this. I pulled off the bindings and the bumps are still there. The two in front are not that bad but the back one is kind of annoying, since it is an expensive board! Is this the whole insert getting pushed down or is it the base of the insert getting bent out from the screw? Do I need 1mm shorter screws? I doubt they make them in 1mm lengths. Did I just put a dent in the Titanal? Thanks

I guess. I was hoping it was something like that because the pictures on Prior's website of in stock stuff doesn't really show it well. All of the snow here is man made but I can't wait! I have never ridden a metal board so it should be interesting.

My quiver. Note the Burton that I believe is the same one as RJ @ Milk in the above photo. I thought mine was a 1989 though. The 2nd and 3rd pictures can be bigger but the forum auto-resizes them.

My 1st brand new board in 22 years of boarding:) I have a post with more pictures here, http://www.bomberonline.com/VBulletin/showthread.php?36675-2011-Prior-BX-163 .