Soft Binding mod.

[Guest Bmax Rog]

Anyone ever heard/considered/had an acid trip about modifying the rear support of a soft binding to wrap around the side of the lower leg? This with a view to stiffening up the set-up on side flex, whilst leaving it the same fore and aft. Is this a way of possibly increasing binding angle on a soft set-up, or is it a quick way to the casualty dept?

Yours with the roll of carbon fibre and pack of epoxy in his workshop (and too much time on his hands..........)

[pebu]

I have considered things briefly. I never did anything about it, but what if you were to take something like a power strap and attach it to the upright. it'd be annoying on the rear foot. That's probably why I didn't think of it for long. That'd be something to consider though.

[Phil]

They used to have third straps. I don't know if anyone still does that.

Burton used to make the exact highback that you are talking about. The highback had a bolt on arm that reached around the top of your boot. I do not know what it was called.

Maybe check out Derf's catalog pages?

My personal answer to this problem is to only buy bindings with lots of highback rotation adjustment.

[boarderboy]

Later ones had a wider, conforming upper strap. They show up occasionally on ebay. Good bindings. I still use an earlier version.

cheers

[lonerider]

There was also the Salomon SP4 Shaped which had an upper "wing" that wrapped around a bit to allow you some extra lateral leverage. I think highback rotation does most of the work because you only really need the "side" support in the direction of your heel edge at higher binding angles.

Then again, I've found all the arguments for going past say 45-40 degrees in strap bindings to be unconvincing. I would probably recommend going up to 35-30 degrees at most.

[Derf]

They used to have third straps. I don't know if anyone still does that.

Burton used to make the exact highback that you are talking about. The highback had a bolt on arm that reached around the top of your boot. I do not know what it was called.

Maybe check out Derf's catalog pages?

My personal answer to this problem is to only buy bindings with lots of highback rotation adjustment.

They're not scanned, I can try to do it this summer...

[ARCrider]

I used to power strap my front foot with the board leash.

[Guest Bmax Rog]

Hmm, looks like people have been here before.....

Lonerider, I tend to agree that you can't go over 45 degrees- I tried it with softies last winter and was fine up to 45, but 51 was a degree or six too far. I suspect this is down to basic trignometry. Once you go beyond 45, there's a greater component of any angulation force trying to roll your lower leg off the highback to the side, (when loading heelside), than there is holding your calf against the highback. When loading toeside, your lower leg tends to be able to bend too much sideways at the ankle, so you're not angulating enough. The noticeable effect when trying to transition onto the toeside was that the board was reluctant to swap edges, unless I made a conscious effort to stiffen my lead foot ankle.

Very interesting what people say about using power straps. I notice all the threads on here seem to say they're an essential even on the stiffest hardboots. Is this because any reduction in slop at the cuff of the boot has a huge effect on the transmission of angulation force down to the board? Think about it, the cuff is the furthest point from the board, hence has the greatest leverage-any slack will take a lot of range of movement of your leg to be taken out of the linkage. Does this mean that the stiffest boots aren't neccessarily the best, but rather the ones with the best fitting cuff, that can flex well in the fore and aft plane, but are very stiff side to side, i.e. they stop supination/pronation of your ankle, but allow flexion/extention?

I suspect from this that adding a mod to a standard soft highback would only be partly effective-what you'd need would be some arrangement that mimicked the cuff section of a hardboot- kind of like a flow binding with a front plate as well as a back one?

Starts a rather existential train of thought as to what the real difference between hard and soft set ups is? Or rather, what is it that hardboots do that softies don't? Is it the board?-unlikely, hard bindings on most any board will carve well I suspect. By the way, did the chicken of narrow alpine boards precede the egg of steep bindings angles or vice versa? Is it the boot/binding interface? Are modern topend soft bindings any slacker than hard ones, or is the difference purely within the boot lining, between liner and foot?

All thoughts gratefully received- just think, if you could invent a binding that gave you the comfort of soft with the control of hard.............?

[BlueB]

... if you could invent a binding that gave you the comfort of soft with the control of hard.............?

Comfort? What comfort are you talking about? For me softies were plain torture. Nothing beats the comfort of properly fitted hard boots. Since I do not ride park/pipe and can handle pow in hard boots, I do not ride softies any more - they were just a horribly wrong turn in the development of the sport. Gradually, more and more people will see the light and hard boots will rule again.

[Steve Prokopiw]

Amen to that,although I do ride rails and jumps on my hardboots.The higher the intensity on the board the higher the pain was my experience on softboots even back in the day when I was constantly making my softies stiffer and adding a third strap to my bindings then I found Flexon comps and a set of Miller randonee bindings to modify to hold them and never looked back.All in the name of comfort.

[bartron]

There was also the Salomon SP4 Shaped which had an upper "wing" that wrapped around a bit to allow you some extra lateral leverage.

That entire line (SP3, SP4 and SP5) had the wing. I use the SP5s. The wing really does work.

'later...

[west carven]

1995 burton torque 3 strap.

i ride this at 62 front 55 back.

here's a pic...

[Phil]

That is just a three strap. Correct me if I am wrong, but I thought that the O.P. was talking about a two strap with an extension off of the highback to lever against.

[Dave ESPI]

I ride 1996 3 strap Burton Custom Freeride bindings. I kid you not that they are the best bindings I have ever owned, and love them for racing, and even just out freecarving. I ride 55 degrees front and 35 back both agressive since day # 1 of my career as a boarder.

[bartron]

Here are some photos of my S5 bindings.

[bartron]

One more.

[Fat Old Bastard]

Burton Mission in maybe 2001-2002 had a bolt on piece that attached to the highback.

And as Bartron said Salomon S5.

Anyone ever heard/considered/had an acid trip about modifying the rear support of a soft binding to wrap around the side of the lower leg? This with a view to stiffening up the set-up on side flex, whilst leaving it the same fore and aft. Is this a way of possibly increasing binding angle on a soft set-up, or is it a quick way to the casualty dept?

Yours with the roll of carbon fibre and pack of epoxy in his workshop (and too much time on his hands..........)

[Spiny Norman]

The Burton Mission GT has the "powerwing". I have the stepin and strap versions. I've found the wings usefull up to about 36*. Between 36 and 45*'s I can tell they are there but by then the width of the board sems to negate the angles as my feet were well inside the board edges.

Also with the burtons you can lock the highback so a third strap is always an option. Maybe a booster strap.

Every year I think about doing the mods but haven't pulled the trigger yet.

Keep us posted.

Ta, Spencer

[Guest Bmax Rog]

Thanks for that everyone. Seems like if you engineer it right a mod can work, but the downside looks like it might take ten minutes to get in/out of you bindings!

Comfortable hard boots-hmm, yeah, right, so all those skiing pals of mine who spend every evening weeping and bitching as they drain their blisters, bandage their banged shins and pull off their bloody toe nails, are only joking with me-they're not really in agony after all.

And the range of choice in hardboots is just sooooo good, ain't it-NOT.

In the red corner, we have brand A, overpriced, ???? quality, buckles sourced from a set of kids rollerblades, no powerstrap, joke bootliner you'll have to pay to replace, mission impossible soles so you'll have to pay for cat tracks as well.

And brand B, in the blue corner? Just don't ever dare to break anything. Spares, what spares?

Seriously though guys, come on, two brands????? Hardly a buyers market where you can shop around for the best deal, is it?? Wouldn't a binding mod that worked persuade a s--tload more soft booted park monkeys to try carving? At present, you have to commit to spending your hard earned wonga on board, boots, bindings, boot mods, before you can even find out if you even like carving. A simple aftermarket addition to a soft boot set up could increase the number of carvers by several orders of magnitude overnight, not so?

Rog

[pebu]

First off, the demeanor of your post is a good way to get on peoples bad sides. But I'll ignore that.

My hard boots are unbelievably comfortable. I'd rate them as my second most comfortable pair of footwear and that's only because I've been breaking in my couple hundred dollar pair of hiking boots for a couple years now. (I just got the hardboots late last year.) They weren't really that expensive. Yeah, they're more expensive than soft boots, but that's probably because of the market. As for the quality, I'd trust just about any hardboots over just about any softboots.

I got my hardboots for about 120 bucks. They were used, but in good condition, and they even came with twice molded thermoflex liners. Board and bindings I got for another 130 or so used. ANd that's the more expensive of my two carving boards.

Anyways, the boots are comfortable and available. I believe that it's not the equipment that's lacking, but the information.