Bad sample / broke F2 Speedster RS 172 year 01

[Felix]

Hi everyone. Can anyone please help me

I ride a F2 Speedster RS 172 since 3 years. I have the grey model with the sort of white finisher flag on the bag. The last one before they changed to the newly contructioned sidewall. I believe it is 2001 edition (produced 2000).

Problem: It is not stable at all, when running flat. e.g. Up to yesterday I believed that this is the same for all raceboards, but someone with whom I was carving told me that my board is broke. The board never chatters but I pretty much have to stay on one egde all the time because otherwise one of the edges will dig into the snow and cause me to fall.

3 years ago I had bought this board at Intersport Eybl (a sports discounter, like Sports Experts but in a higher quality range) together with Burton race physics bindings for unbelievable 150 Euros. They told me that someone had returned it because he couldn't ride it. The bindings were set to 30/20 so I believed that they had sold it to a beginner and that the board is allright.

One thing which is strange about the board is, that the base is not completly even. I can't notice this by seeing the board but when I wax it, I notice it. When I hold the iron in 90 a degrees direction towards the board (so that it touches both edges simultaniously) I notice that the inner part of the base is not touched whith the same pressure as the outer parts with the edges. So in the middle the wax does not melt as fast as on the outer parts. Is this normal
(I hope I have explained it good enough so you can understand it)

I tested the board of the guy I have been riding with and I was blown away by the stability.

I must add that I had only broken the first 5cm of the edges at the tail of the board. Do you think that it was only caused by this? I will test it on wednesday or on the next weekend if the stability is better with detuned edges.

I just wonder if my board is broke and that I have to get a new one.
I will post here again when I have tested it again. I can't believe how good my friends Hot was running down the hill and the tremendous edge hold.

I am awaiting your comments. Please tell me if you have already heard about something like this.
How far do you break your edges. (I have to measure from the points where the board is widest, haven't I?)

[King_Paddl]

When a board is broken you can see it. If you look from the front along the bending line of your board you can see the camber of the board. Normally it should be nearly a circle, but when there are breaks or waves in the camber it is a advice for a broken core.
Hope this will help you.
Greetings

[Felix]

Sorry, not clear enough.

I do not mean broken as physically broken but as malproduced.
I measured how much the middle of the base would need to bend down if the board was lying flat on the ground. It is around 0.7 (for the Europeans 0,7) milimeters. When I tried to measure this for my freestyle boards it accounted to only half of the distance. approx 0.3 mm.

I cannot see any other malproduced point about this quiver.

[frunobulax]

I've got the 02/03 Speedster (yours should be 01/02 according to the design, if it was built earlier it could be a prototype which could explain the price and the problems you describe). I'got no problems with stability although the dampening could be better at very high speeds. Camber is about 0,7cm, exactly like yours. No such effect as you describe concerning the uneven base.
Never heard of any similar problems with the speedster although I remember someone telling me the 172/173 is not as good as the other lengths.
They changed something about the construction from 01/02 to 02/03 so maybe my experience that the speedster is a good board won't help you that much.
I'd say Eybl knew there was something wrong with the board otherwise they wouldn't sell it for 150,-. I know they'd got a lot of Race Physics left in stock at that time (I bought mine there), so that would explain the price for the binding but 150 is not a reasonable price for a complete set Speedster/Race Physics even if it's a used one.
If you're not content with the board throw it away and get a new one, be it broken or not.

I never break the edges, they are razor sharp from tip to tail .

greetz
fruno

[frunobulax]

The effect you describe doesn't sound to me like a stability problem with the board itself. More than that it reminds me of the problems I had when I bought new boots a couple of years ago and nothing seemed to work at all, I fell very often surprisingly when going straight (which hadn't happened to me since let's say 1992) and thought of giving up snowboarding.
Then I found out the boot (Blax) wouldn't provide enough support on the backside, simply too little forward lean and the whole thing not stiff enough. That was all.
Sold the boot, bought new boots, everything fine.

Maybe you should try and change your setup, cant/heel-lift, boots, binding angles?

[Felix]

Well sorry again. I can't explain properly. Camber is about 0,7cm. Camber is if you look at the board from the side. What I have is a 0,7mm offset in the other direction. From one to the other edge instead of tip to tail! I do not think that this is normal. You could theoretically see it if you looked from tail to tip.

2. try to explain it properly. Assume the board is lying flat on the ground. Now you could see the camber 0,7cm. Now you press the board down until the camber dissappears and the edges are flat on the ground. But now my board touches the ground only with the edges. I would need to press down the middle 0,7mm until the board touches the ground with it's complete base.

@frunobulax. Sorry if I thought you did not understand. You said "Camber is about 0,7cm, exactly like yours. No such effect as you describe concerning the uneven base. " I did not intend to say anything about my camber. But well it is 0,7cm as yours.
(BTW, Are you ever at the Hochkar?)

Well throwing away my beloved board only because I know there exists better. It's so expensive to buy a new one.

[frunobulax]

Well, u cannot explain, and I cannot read which is worse?
We could change to german forum to make it easier for both of us:?:

I'm gonna check my boards to see if I can find something like this "wrong sort of camber" but I waxed them last week and the iron seemed to lie completely flat on the base.

Ok, here's my other solution: when you ride "flat", let your body be flat on the snow and not your board !!

[harald]

Hi,
It sounds like your board is concave or hollow. That happens and could be a fault in the production. The phenomenon is also known from skis. It makes the board/ski almost impossible to ride flat and difficult to turn. The best way to fix it is to leave the board to a ski/board repair shop and have the sole sanded flat in a machine. Hope this will help.

[Felix]

@ harald

well, if the shop flat-sanded the sole, this would mean to take away something of the sole/base, wouldn't it? with the 0,7mm this would make my edges dissappear


So what I would need is the opposite. Some Ptex filled in. Is this possible?
Well thanks for the answers

@frunobulax. do you have your iron pointing in the same direction as your board or do you have your iron pointing towards an edge?

Thanks for your quick answers.[/quote]

[skywalker]

Hi Felix,

I think, Harald is totally right. There are many boards with a concave base, which makes them very difficult to ride. A shop can grind it for you to make it flat again.

How the heck did you measure 0.7mm on a length of more then 1 meter??? These are rather the tolerances of a stock board, and if each side is all right from tip to tail, I can't believe, that these 0.7mm can make any difference. My advice would be: Bring the board to a shop, get it sanded. This should solve your problem, maybe in addition you want to have the edges on 1°. If the problem remains, klopp the board in die Tonne and buy a new one

[frunobulax]

to cut it short: what harald and skywalker say sounds more helpful and reliable than all that I said before. And I use the iron 90° to the edge, which means derquer and not derlängnach.

[Felix]

@ skywalker

well I used a Wasserwage (dunno in english) and a ruler. So I put the Wasserwage sideways on the board and let it slide down from top to bottom and looked if the board is concave or somehow wrong. Then I used the ruler to approximate the distance. The ruler shows only 1mm steps so I had to take a guess. but the egde to egde distande is not 1m but 19 cm to 26 cm or to be exact the widths of the board.

[melvin]

Hi Felix,

a concave base can be the result of uncorrect installed bindings. I had this once on my Speedster GTS with some old Niedecker Carbon bindings. I wanted to replace the rubber rings around the plate but I probably did not use the correct thickness. The result was that the screws pulled the board into the binding (I could actually hear the woodcore bend ). I realized that the base was concave in the area of the bindings. When I unmounted the bindings the base was back to normal. Fortunately it did no permanent damage, at least none that I could feel.

So maybe you could check if the problem persists when you unmount the bindings.

Cheers,
melvin

[harald]

felix,
Yes, you have to sacrifice a little bit of your egdes and your sole, but not much in order tot get your sole flat. Filling with P-tex is not an option. I think it will not be possible to get the material stick to the sole and thereafter have an even and flat surface.
You may also try a flat file and file the edges from the bottom side as much as you can so a part of the sole is plane, but I would not recommend this. Besides, it is a lot of work.

[Felix]

Well I rode it now the first time after detuning the egdes. Well it does not behave as bad anymore but therefore I am missing a lot of edgehold

Well I will give the board away for an base grind to flatten it out a bit. Should be better afterwards.
Shop guy told me that this situation is normal for a new board (but this can't apply for 15* ridden). So I will miss a bit of my edge

Thanks for all of your replies