Alpine Noob ? ->

[lowsparkco]

I've been migrating back towards alpine gear lately after getting an AT set up and popped into a local gear exchange store the other day and found a pair of Lange boots that fit me pretty well. I got them up to the counter and started looking at the soles and it's obvious there was some attempt at modification done on them. There are a bunch of little screw holes (maybe a dozen) spaced out on each sole like a different type of block was screwed to them. The molded pattern in the soles still looked pretty new so I couldn't figure that the screw holes would hurt anything. I asked the idiot at the counter and he promised there was no negative effect, but neither of us looked real close. So, I got home, mounted up some Marker Free 12.0 bindings, adjusted them for the bsl, and popped in on the carpet.

There's about 3/4 of a inch of vertical play. All of the movement comes from the interface between the boot and the binding. The binding is mounted solidly onto the ski with no movement. After closer inspection it appears that perhaps the former owner ground the toe block a little for seem reason? My question is if anyone has any idea why? Or for what?

The boots were pretty inexpensive but I don't want to eat the money, and the store has a pretty bad reputation for customer service and returns. If perhaps I could put the same type blocks back on the soles perhaps that would solve my problem.

I appreciate anyone patient enough to read this and come up with something other than "search JONG." To be honest and couldn't even think of where to start searching? I actually poked around with the google powered searches and didn't come up with anything useful. Thanks in advance!

[Lone_Summit]

Do you have any pics? The vertical movement is in the toe or heel, or both? Due to limited info I would say your binders are incorrectly adjusted. But maybe someone shaved and blocked the soles for some sort of boot fit. It is hard to tell by your text.

[RShea]

If the modification of the boot was only to one side (or edge) then they could have done some grinding for canting modifications. Probably need to measure the toe and heel heights to see and then maybe post up, or just go back to the store with a ski and show them.

[El Chupacabra]

Post photos.

From the description, it sounds like someone had the bootss planed + canted, and then unscrewed the under-sole blocks.

If the soles are rubbery, the bootfitter just screws plastic material on the bottom (hence all the holes you see), and grinds both the topside of the toe/heel and the plastic blocks on the bottom, back to DIN spec.

[lowsparkco]

thanks for the responses

the movement is only in the toe and only vertical

these bindings don't have a toe height adjustment - so I don't think it's the bindings

I tried a few different bsl adjustments on the bindings - kinda the range of what would be considered "acceptable" on a rental binding (there's a tray that allows for about 3 cm's of heel adjustment)

I called my local bootfitter and it seems maybe the boots had been modified for some kind of block maybe for a racing binding?

I'm headed down there now with the boots... if we can't figure it out then I'll post some pics when I get home. The screw holes run the whole length of the soles so it would appear that there were both heel and toe blocks previously mounted although the heel wasn't ground and the toe appears to be. Who knows.

[lowsparkco]

So, for the record, it might help someone in the future to know... these are Lange boots and the soles had been ground and had blocks screwed/epoxied to them. My local bootfitter is going to be able to add some new ones for me. I guess when the guy put the boots up for sale he pulled them off and I was the sucker who didn't notice.

Do people do this because of wear? That's my only guess. Guy goes into bootfitter and complains that he loves his boots but they don't fit his bindings so well anymore. Bootfitter answers, well for $50 we can epoxy/screw a shim on the bottom and grind it all to the DIN standard. Anyways, problem solved, thanks to all that participated. I was really at a loss and didn't find anything online to help.

[Wired2theT]

As a few people mentioned they probably planed and canted the boot. If that is the case you would need to replace what they took off but the topside of your boot sole (or whatever you call the toe and heel that actually interface with the binding) was probably also modified. In this case you won't really be in DIN spec unless you match the previous canting.