I had this same issue with the plums that I bought from bent gate mountaineering. The first time it happened (~5-10days), pulling hard did the trick. The second time(10-15 days), I levered with the handle on my ski pole, and this happened...

Before this though, I noticed a couple other misgivings...


Sounds like the lever issue is an easy fix, just take care of it before it becomes an issue, and if it does jam, don't go gorilla on it like I did.
As for the cracks in the base plates, I'm sure it can be at least partially blamed on my laziness in using the "direct ski to tour" method of twisting the heel while lifting my foot while the toe is locked out. I've known that this places some extra stress on the toe, but didn't realize it was going to lead to this... I think the reason I've gotten away with it on other bindings is because all other toes that I've used are TLT/Vertical style stamped steel toe frames, which probably have more spring/give/strength than these aluminum plates do. TLT style toes also seem to have a bit looser tolerances in the pivots, where as the plums are seem tight. It seems like it would also help if plum put some extra material in that area, although my guess is the failure would just move to the next weakest link. Long story short, I won't be doing the "direct to tour" move anymore, even on TLT's, now that I realize how much it stresses them.
Otherwise I loved these things. The heels were especially well designed and bomber. All is not lost though, as I was able to get store credit on them for next year. WOOOHOOO!!!!
EDIT: (before the Plum bashing gets out of hand) I think 1000-oaks nailed it... this is a small company trying to bring some innovation to a market that dynafit has really done a piss poor job with, and I still think plums are great bindings with just a few kinks to work out. These Plums actually failed several months ago, but I was hesitant to post the pictures because I don't want to kick Plum while they're down, but I think it's good for other people to see the potential failures, which is why I ended up posting them.
For reference though, all the Dynafit toes that I have are extremely loose and rattly, probably because of the "direct to tour" and other misuse on them. While they didn't fail catastrophically like the Plums, the result was worse for me... I skied off the summit of Mt Whitney last year in my dynafit FT12's, only to have one ski come flying off (they were locked out, but the lock mechanism no longer engaged properly because they just got loose after use & abuse). This led to a 200 foot slide for life that luckily ended 20 ft above a 150-200ft cliff, with only a chip of bone broken off each elbow. The point I'm trying to make is that there is no solid, lightweight binding yet, and I still think Plum is the closest there is. Dynafit keeps piling on more plastic bullshit while taking steps backwards in reliability and durability pouring their $$ into marketing instead of R&D, whereas Plum is making progress and trying to fix their problems. As for the million other touring bindings out there... Dukes fold like silly puddy in touring mode if you over-rotate them, fritschi's are just sloppy from the getgo and blow up if you look at them wrong in downhill mode (the toe's especially), and no other newfangled frame binding is ever going to hold a candle to a tech style binding in terms of weight, performance, and durability. Someone just needs to innovate and tweak the tech binding a bit, and Plum is the only one I see doing that, so kudos to them.
Sorry for the long rant, but I think it's important to approach failures like these with a little more perspective.
Last edited by awake1563; 05-13-2012 at 11:33 AM.
but I know we can't all stay here forever, so I wanna write my words on the face of today...
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