Plum guide tech binding

[fool]

Any way to figure out what version of screws you have in the heal piece? I have yet to obtain a torx set, which would quickly solve the mystery.

And furthermore, which model (10-11 or 11-12) you have? Here are the pictures of my heel and toe piece. I ski tele and I was hoping to have an AT Setup this year but it just didn't happen so I'm looking to find a home for these bad boys and want to make sure I know which year they are. Any help would be appreciated.

[LC]

Here are the pictures of my heel and toe piece.

10/11 (no extra bolt at the front of the heel plate).

[1000-oaks]

They have the new toe lever though, wouldn't that make them early 2011/2012, with the Torx 9 coarse-thread heel screws?

[cegli]

Hi Everyone, was just reading through this thread and thought it would be nice to have a summary of the important parts so people know what to check on their bindings (A plum guide guide?).

Problems:

Many of these problems have been fixed by revisions during the year. You can check what revision yours is at the end of this post.

Pin Breaks:

This seemed to a problem mostly with the early builds. Not many pin breaks reported lately. I think someone mentioned something about it being a early manufacturing problem. I'm not sure if a fix exists? They can be replaced. Possibly adding heel support as seen below can help this, but still being experimented with.


Heel Piece Exploding due to Stripped or not tightened top torx screws.

(source Olympus)

Some of the original heel pieces came with loose screws on the top of the heel. A couple people reported having "spinners' (stripped) screws from the factory. These should be checked/tightened/lock-tited especially if they're the t10 fine screw type. New t8/t9 screws on mine came tight. No reports that I know of the coarse ones ripping out. It is not recommended to try and tap the coarse screws into the fine threads due to the fine screws having a wider entry width.

(Source Honus)

Possible result if not fixed^


1st gen walk/ski lever flipping into walk mode in heavy snow, releasing during skinning.

This has been fixed with the newest lever. See below to check your lever type.


Heel Piece forward pressure adjustment slipping, causing prerelease.

Screws on heel piece track should be checked and tightened often. Be careful tightening if you have the t10 size, fine screws (picture below in the "revisions" section)! Some people have reported stripping them out with very little force. I tightened my t9/t8 coarse screws tightly with no problems. Loctite is probably a good idea (especially with fine screws). Some people have went as far as mounting with the heel piece all the way back, so it can't slip or putting screws all the way through the top of the piece into the ski. Bring the wrench with you in case it moves in the backcountry.


Pins holding toe wings in slowly backing out, causing eventual release of one of the toe wings.

(Source Good4Nothing)

These pins slowly back out on some peoples' toe pieces. If you see this happening, the fix has been to pull out the pin and put a dab of cheap epoxy on the head of the pin and tap it back in. Then if you need to remove it ever, you can heat it to get it back out. Another person suggested glueing something over the hole, so it can't back out.

(Source Good4Nothing)

Keep a careful eye on this, or this can happen! ^

Sticky Toe Lever

Many people report after ~20-30 days out the ski/walk lever gets sticky enough that it cannot be pulled into walk mode.

(Source time2climb)

The quickest fix seems to be to lube the pin. Metolius cam lube, WD40 and Vegetable Oil have been used successfully. A thicker grease may last longer. This seems to be caused by a notch developing in the groove after use. One user (BamBam_540) reported smoothing out the groove with a razor blade then lubing put it in as good as new condition. It would probably be good to keep this lubed before a notch develops.

----

Revisions for 11/12 (Source mikebrom)

There have been a couple different revisions of the Plum Binding this year. Variations include:



Long/Short Walk Lever. The old long walk lever had problems with changing into walk mode during skiing and coming off during skinning. Apparently it is possible to ask plum to send you the new walk lever if you have the old one.



^New Lever is shorter and doesn't say Ski directly on lever.



^Old lever.



Coarse/Fine Heel Piece Screws

Coarse vs Fine Screw (source good4nothing)

The Fine Heel Piece screws are more prone to stripping out. They are often not tightened all the way from the factory. The Fine screws use t10 size. As noted above, do not crank down the t10 screws hard, you may strip them. The Coarse screws use t9/t8. T9 was a bit tight on mine, T8 fit better (YMMV). No reports so far of these stripping out.


Screw for attaching heel piece support.

(source jinky)

The newest revision has an extra screw for the heel piece support. This apparently helps take the stress off the pins to lower the chance of them breaking.



The old version does not have this screw.

Crampon Holder Slot:

(Source: Endure)

There have been two different types of crampon slots. New slot is on the left, old on the right. The new one can apparently take more crampons without any filing or modifications.

Toe piece pin stamp.

(Anyone have pictures of this?)

There's the "four prick" and the "circle stamp". It's thought that the circle stamp holds the pin better.

----

Other Notes:

Ski Crampons:

The Dynafit ones with the rivets filed down work. Some users have said to file the slot on the binding a little instead, and B&D are meant to work fine. (Source BamBam_540)

Reassembling big DIN screw

Be very careful if removing the big DIN spring completely if disassembling the heel piece. The big DIN screw that threads into the plastic is stripped easily. Plum factory says be careful if doing this, start off by hand until you're sure it's threaded correctly then finish with a screwdriver.

--------------

Hopefully this is helpful to everyone. If anyone has any corrections or stuff I should add, let me know and I'll edit this.

Edit (4/19/12): Added Notes about Sticky Toe Lever, Stripping Screws, and Crampons.
Edit (4/23/12): Added Endure's Information about new Crampon Slot.

[time2clmb]

^^ Some people have had the toe lever get "sticky"...I have had mine completely jam up. See here...
http://www.tetongravity.com/forums/s...em-anyone-else

Can you make that it's own post?? Better than having it lost on page 27 and having to go through page by page when you can't remember where it is.

[Mex]

my toe lever jammed up and wouldnt go into tour mode. this happened to two other guys with me on a hut trip. a little olive oil on the pin that slides in the black toe lever and we were back in business for the rest of the trip.

Sent from my GT-I9000M using TGR Forums

[snomaster]

my toe lever jammed up and wouldnt go into tour mode. this happened to two other guys with me on a hut trip. a little olive oil on the pin that slides in the black toe lever and we were back in business for the rest of the trip.

Ha, the exact same thing happened to me whilst on my Jackson Peak Ski Cabin trip last weekend. I was very thankful that the cabin was stocked with olive oil. That's Italian engineering for ya!


Oh, and how can I get one of those heel support pieces??????? I NEED (cuz I huck).

[jinky]

^ i got the heel supports direct from the factory, they weren't on the website at the time (not sure they are even yet), they were only becoming available when i asked about em. took a few emails back and forth with some reminders from me (back to the mom & pop customer service i guess, but worth the effort as they're a good design and will do the job nicely for huckers/chunkers)

[fool]

Thanks BamBam and 1000-Oaks!

[LC]

Worth adding to the master post with Plum info:

Be very careful when tightening the heel torx screws - I snapped two very easily by overtightening (luckily Plum hooked me up with new complete heel units). Previous pages of this thread still have a lot of varying information over the size of torx bit required for different versions. I got some good quality torx bits and T9 is definitely a little big for my 11/12 screws. T8 has a little wiggle but works.

Also be very careful if removing the big DIN spring completely if for some reason you need to take the heel post off completely. I cross-threaded the big screw into the plastic despite being careful. Plum factory says be careful if doing this, start off by hand until you're sure it's threaded correctly then finish with a screwdriver.

Crampons: I'm using Dynafit ones with the rivets filed down. Some users have said to file the slot on the binding a little instead, and B&D are meant to work fine.

[cegli]

Hey guys, thanks for the input. Just added more notes in (sticky walk mode, crampons, cross-threading). I'll make it it's own thread in a bit once we're happy with it. Don't feel like editing both posts while I'm making revisions.

[endure]

here's another one



there's also different toe units from 2011-2012. My originals looked like this pic. the replacement has a different crampon slot (looks like it will hold the dynafit/BD crampons without filing)

[cegli]

^Interesting. Do you have a picture of the new one by any chance, so I can update my post with a comparison?

[Powdurr]

Hi Everyone, was just reading through this thread and thought it would be nice to have a summary of the important parts so people know what to check on their bindings (A plum guide guide?).

Problems:

Many of these problems have been fixed by revisions during the year. You can check what revision yours is at the end of this post.

Pin Breaks:

This seemed to a problem mostly with the early builds. Not many pin breaks reported lately. I think someone mentioned something about it being a early manufacturing problem. I'm not sure if a fix exists? They can be replaced. Possibly adding heel support as seen below can help this, but still being experimented with.


Heel Piece Exploding due to Stripped or not tightened top torx screws.

(source Olympus)

Some of the original heel pieces came with loose screws on the top of the heel. A couple people reported having "spinners' (stripped) screws from the factory. These should be checked/tightened/lock-tited especially if they're the t10 fine screw type. New t8/t9 screws on mine came tight. No reports that I know of the coarse ones ripping out. It is not recommended to try and tap the coarse screws into the fine threads due to the fine screws having a wider entry width.

(Source Honus)

Possible result if not fixed^


1st gen walk/ski lever flipping into walk mode in heavy snow, releasing during skinning.

This has been fixed with the newest lever. See below to check your lever type.


Heel Piece forward pressure adjustment slipping, causing prerelease.

Screws on heel piece track should be checked and tightened often. Be careful tightening if you have the t10 size, fine screws (picture below in the "revisions" section)! Some people have reported stripping them out with very little force. I tightened my t9/t8 coarse screws tightly with no problems. Loctite is probably a good idea (especially with fine screws). Some people have went as far as mounting with the heel piece all the way back, so it can't slip or putting screws all the way through the top of the piece into the ski. Bring the wrench with you in case it moves in the backcountry.


Pins holding toe wings in slowly backing out, causing eventual release of one of the toe wings.

(Source Good4Nothing)

These pins slowly back out on some peoples' toe pieces. If you see this happening, the fix has been to pull out the pin and put a dab of cheap epoxy on the head of the pin and tap it back in. Then if you need to remove it ever, you can heat it to get it back out. Another person suggested glueing something over the hole, so it can't back out.

(Source Good4Nothing)

Keep a careful eye on this, or this can happen! ^

Sticky Toe Lever

Many people report after ~20-30 days out the ski/walk lever gets sticky enough that it cannot be pulled into walk mode.

(Source time2climb)

The quickest fix seems to be to lube the pin. Metolius cam lube, WD40 and Vegetable Oil have been used successfully. A thicker grease may last longer. This seems to be caused by a notch developing in the groove after use. One user (BamBam_540) reported smoothing out the groove with a razor blade then lubing put it in as good as new condition. It would probably be good to keep this lubed before a notch develops.

----

Revisions for 11/12 (Source mikebrom)

There have been a couple different revisions of the Plum Binding this year. Variations include:



Long/Short Walk Lever. The old long walk lever had problems with changing into walk mode during skiing and coming off during skinning. Apparently it is possible to ask plum to send you the new walk lever if you have the old one.



^New Lever is shorter and doesn't say Ski directly on lever.



^Old lever.



Coarse/Fine Heel Piece Screws

Coarse vs Fine Screw (source good4nothing)

The Fine Heel Piece screws are more prone to stripping out. They are often not tightened all the way from the factory. The Fine screws use t10 size. As noted above, do not crank down the t10 screws hard, you may strip them. The Coarse screws use t9/t8. T9 was a bit tight on mine, T8 fit better (YMMV). No reports so far of these stripping out.


Screw for attaching heel piece support.

(source jinky)

The newest revision has an extra screw for the heel piece support. This apparently helps take the stress off the pins to lower the chance of them breaking.



The old version does not have this screw.



Toe piece pin stamp.

(Anyone have pictures of this?)

There's the "four prick" and the "circle stamp". It's thought that the circle stamp holds the pin better.

----

Other Notes:

Ski Crampons:

The Dynafit ones with the rivets filed down work. Some users have said to file the slot on the binding a little instead, and B&D are meant to work fine. (Source BamBam_540)

Reassembling big DIN screw

Be very careful if removing the big DIN spring completely if disassembling the heel piece. The big DIN screw that threads into the plastic is stripped easily. Plum factory says be careful if doing this, start off by hand until you're sure it's threaded correctly then finish with a screwdriver.

--------------

Hopefully this is helpful to everyone. If anyone has any corrections or stuff I should add, let me know and I'll edit this.

Edits (4/19/12): Added Notes about Sticky Toe Lever, Stripping Screws, and Crampons.

Thanks for making it really easy for me to decide I don't want these! I don't think I want to be on a binding where almost every possible part may have had an issue. The new dynafits weren't looking too much better this year so I just bought myself a pair of La Sportiva RTs. If only Dynafit made something more similar to the minimalist design of the RT but with 12 DIN and power towers...

[endure]

early season (received Oct 2011) on the right
later season (received Feb 2012) on the left

everything looks the same except the crampon slot

[1000-oaks]

Thanks for making it really easy for me to decide I don't want these! I don't think I want to be on a binding where almost every possible part may have had an issue.

IMHO, it's quite a leap to think that listing the 1% failures for each part of the binding means all the components in the binding "have issues". I'd rather be aware of potential trouble points on a mechanism that's been run hard (Plum) and keep an eye on them, to using something unknown that hasn't been pushed to its limits (Sportiva).

Edit: Just checked out the Sportiva/ATK binding, seems like an unwise choice if you're looking for something more durable than Plum. Like choosing a superlight road bike over a mountain bike for hard off-road use, because "mountain bikes sometimes break".

[good4nothing]

IMHO, it's quite a leap to think that listing the 1% failures for each part of the binding means all the components in the binding "have issues". I'd rather be aware of potential trouble points on a mechanism that's been run hard (Plum) and keep an eye on them, to using something unknown that hasn't been pushed to it's limits (Sportiva).

+1. the sportiva's are going to have the same type of a thread about this time next year....

[Powdurr]

IMHO, it's quite a leap to think that listing the 1% failures for each part of the binding means all the components in the binding "have issues". I'd rather be aware of potential trouble points on a mechanism that's been run hard (Plum) and keep an eye on them, to using something unknown that hasn't been pushed to its limits (Sportiva).

Edit: Just checked out the Sportiva/ATK binding, seems like an unwise choice if you're looking for something more durable than Plum. Like choosing a superlight road bike over a mountain bike for hard off-road use, because "mountain bikes sometimes break".

You can imagine my hesitation for wanting to try the Plums after this thread. I was really sold on getting them but considering I was really only considering buying a pair off of here which is most likely older, from the group buy, and possibly affected by more issues, I was pretty skeptical.

While the La Sportiva's certainly haven't been proven yet, I've heard zero issues from people who have used them so far, and the ATK RT bindings don't appear to have had many problems, either. Fewer people using them but zero known problems > lots of people using them and 1% of them explode, IMO.

Hoping for the best!

[Jonathan S.]

While the La Sportiva's certainly haven't been proven yet, I've heard zero issues from people who have used them so far, and the ATK RT bindings don't appear to have had many problems, either. Fewer people using them but zero known problems > lots of people using them and 1% of them explode, IMO.

Hoping for the best!

The RT is exactly the same binding, regardless of whether it has the ATK or La Sportiva color scheme.

That said, I too have not seen any RT complaints in any forums during their two seasons so far on the market. At first I suspected that was because they would tend more to be mounted up on skinnier skis (which is what I've done), but La Sportiva sponsored athletes are mounting them up on the Hi 5.

(For entirely unrelated reasons, I've used my pair on only two outings so far, and they certainly seem fine to me. My only quibble of sorts is that originally I set the tour mode lever at 5, but I think that is so loose that it might have a tendency not to stay put, so I might increase it a bit.)

[JonnyMo]

I have the ATK RT and mounted them on the DPS 112RP pure carbon ski.

I've had two problems with the binding. First the plastic heel lift can sometimes rotate while downhill skiing. I think my boots or skis just knock it out of place. No problem putting it back.

The other issue is related to the first. At the end of one day downhill skiing steeps and powder, I noticed that one of the heel pins was loose. Also, the plastic heel lifter had moved.

I had no problems skiing down and at home I took the heel apart, which was very easy and only a 1 beer project. It looked like one of the pins had popped out of place, so I just put it back and reassembled it all. Nothing broken. And an easy field repair IF you carried an itsy bitsy torx bit.

I think the screw that hold the plastic heel lifter on, and doubles as the forward release adjustment, had backed out a bit, causing the pin to come out of place. So far no more problems. I'm just keeping a better eye on that adjustment screw. Probably time for some thread lock.

Cheers,
Jon

[cegli]

here's another one

Thanks Endure, I've added the different Crampon Slots. Can you tell us how this failure happened? Knee fall during skinning, shredding hard, randomly on a groomer?

Thanks for making it really easy for me to decide I don't want these! I don't think I want to be on a binding where almost every possible part may have had an issue. The new dynafits weren't looking too much better this year so I just bought myself a pair of La Sportiva RTs. If only Dynafit made something more similar to the minimalist design of the RT but with 12 DIN and power towers...

To be fair, it does seem like everyone of these problems except the sticky toe lever has been fixed with the newest revision. The version I just bought (after compiling this list), has the screw for the heel plate, circle stamp to stop the pins loosening, coarse screws to stop the heel piece explosion, new walk lever to fix those issues, and I assume the fix for the heel pins (which Plum commented on a said were an early manufacturing issue that had been fixed). I haven't seen a complaint of a broken heel pin since December, so it looks like they weren't lying. All that would be left is to make sure the forward pressure adjustment screws are tightened and possibly loc-tited.

I just skied the dynafit ST bindings this weekend for two days, and they were not without problems. One of my skis managed to switch itself from Walk mode to Ski mode 3 times during my skins, resulting in my ski randomly popping off during skinning. This happening at the wrong time could be deadly! Anyway, I don't think there's a model made without the problems. The key is to know your binding's problems and keep a close eye on them before they become real problems.

[endure]

Thanks Endure, I've added the different Crampon Slots. Can you tell us how this failure happened? Knee fall during skinning, shredding hard, randomly on a groomer?

Downhill sliding with skins on a thick crust, put a good amount of pressure I imagine downhill and forward on the binding which snapped it. After looking at my tlt speeds, I do question if the newer dynafit toepiece would have been okay, as it isn't just a vertical bar but is angled to allow for forces to travel through the metal rather than torquing it. But I don't fault Plum with this and was very thankful for their quick replacement. Should be noted that this was on day ~60 of 110 I had on them this year. No problems otherwise.

Question about the heel piece pins; is it natural for them to move just a little bit up and down, with a 'click' as they do so? i.e. they aren't supposed to be completely immovable? My Speeds also have a bit of play, which makes me think this is natural..

[JRainey]

The pins on mine have a little play vertically due to a slight compression of the plastic under the pins. I haven't skied on my alpine set up for two month because I was satisfied with the retention I was getting from the plums. So these have quite a bit of inbounds thrashing on them, lots of jumping, skiing fast on hard snow. I think the heel post (don't have) would have prevented this, but honestly I like not having any lift on my heel while touring on flats. I find it more comfortable than dynfits with the brake nub.

I've got the first round group buy edition with small threads on the heel assembly screws. Loctite from day one and no problems yet. The all aluminum version coming out next year might help with this, but concentrate more stress on the pins. A flip up heel support post might be the best solution.

I'm super impressed with the bindings in general and am finding it hard to justify alpine bindings. I'll probably beat these to shit with that mindset, but they just keep working and I ski with the toes unlocked 95% of the time. The boots are the limiting factor at this point (quadrants) and I can't wait for some vulcans so I can really test the theory.

[Ski to Be]

My Plums prerelease in the toes constantly unless I lock the toe out.

[1000-oaks]

^^^ What boots? 2012 Tecnica toe inserts seem to be having some issues.