Dynafit Low Tech Radical

[lowsparkco]

Anyone have any feedback on this one? I guess it doesn't matter as I already pulled the trigger, but I need some purchase validation

Looks like it's just the Radical toe with a LT heel. Gives you some release and cuts some weight. Bought it to use for the Grand Traverse. Thanks in advance for any beta.

[counterfeitfake]

I love these threads! It's a POS, yer gonna die.

[XXX-er]

IMO you are more likely to get a "fuck off and search you jong" than an external validation ... you did you try searching eh?

I am pretty sure I read that the plastic used in the heel pieces gives off a rogue polymer that will cause sterility due to a loss of sex drive due to terminal flacidility which is a troubling concept today on V-day ... you should have got plums

[gregL]

Anyone have any feedback on this one?
Looks like it's just the Radical toe with a LT heel.

You mean the Speed Radical? I think it's the best binding in Dynafit's line, as long as you don't need brakes. The toe is exactly the same, only no baseplate. The only negative is the little grooves on the heel baseplate still don't keep it from auto-rotating once in a while.

[timmaio]

Nah, he means this: http://www.dynafit.com/product/bindi...w-tech-radical

Cheaper than the speed radical.

I'm considering making my own version of that with plum race heels. I don't think you can go flat on the ski with that heel piece, so a drawback, I think.

Edited to say, I would have gone for something like this: http://www.dynafit.com/product/bindi...peed-superlite but am waiting for a flat to the ski touring option for it.

[lowsparkco]

You mean the Speed Radical? I think it's the best binding in Dynafit's line, as long as you don't need brakes. The toe is exactly the same, only no baseplate. The only negative is the little grooves on the heel baseplate still don't keep it from auto-rotating once in a while.

Yup, it's the same as the Speed Radical toe, which is nice cause I have a pair and some of my skis already have inserts for the toe. The rear three screw pattern will throw me off a bit, but so be it. I also noticed it only has one climbing position. Does the heel baseplate still give some adjustability? My F1's have a slightly shorter BSL than the same shell size in the Maestrale and it'd be nice to use it with both. Kinda an impulse buy on a set locally that I didn't really get a great deal on. I probably should have just waited for BC.com to get the Speed Radicals back in stock, but I figured the sale might end by then. I'm figuring the toe releases the same as the Speed Radical, and no heel release on the LT's? GregL, thanks for the info. Everyone else, I love you very much.

[kevino]

Too bad you can't tour flat with them.

[Jonathan S.]

The Low Tech Radical for some odd reason is not distributed in North America. (Maybe the same odd reason it wasn't renamed the PDG for this season to fit in with the PDG ski and boot, since it's basically the same idea as those models: an ever so slightly heavier race model for a drastically reduced price.)

The toe is obviously exactly identical to the Speed Radical, which in turn means it's the same as the Radical ST sans lifter, and the Radical FT sans lifter and connection point for the underfoot ... thing.

The heel is identical to the Dynafit Low Tech Race bindings I have, except the U-shaped heel pin/prong is steel, instead of the full-on race binding's Ti. The Ti quickly starts to develop some notches, since Ti is softer that way. The steel will wear better, and will also have a higher forward release value. (Or at least Plum distinguishes that way between its Ti 135 vs steel 145.)

The lateral release value/resistance is controlled by some mysterious innards. The binding can rotate 180 degrees, and stay put there, but as was previously noted by another commenter, not flat mode. Big Steve will probably chime in here that he likes a pure flat mode, but I've found with the "half-step" position of my various race and near-race bindings (Plum 135, Dynafit + Plum mixed, Dynafit Low Tech Race, ATK/Sportiva RT), combined with the crazy rearward articulation of the DyNA, TLT5, or EVO, I don't need a purely flat mode.

"I'm considering making my own version of that with plum race heels."
- One of my setups is a Dynafit Speed toe + Plum Race 135 heel. The only real point of it was that a snowboarder sold me a pair of Speed toes for way below market price, and then I was able to get some 135 heels relatively cheaply. Setup works fine (on my well-battered Trab Duo Sint Aero skis), although officially it is prohibited by ISMF rules, but then again, if you have any ambitions to compete in ISMF-sanctioned races, you wouldn't even be contemplating such a setup...

[skimaxpower]

Does the heel baseplate still give some adjustability? My F1's have a slightly shorter BSL than the same shell size in the Maestrale and it'd be nice to use it with both.

Nope. Doesn't adjust for different BSL. Mount it once, mount it correctly. And be damn sure you love that boot.

[Jonathan S.]

^ You can buy plates that allow for fore/aft adjustability -- either the full set, or just the heel unit plates. (If anyone is interested in just the heel plates, I would be interested in buying a full set, just for the toe plates for myself, then selling you the heel plates.)

[timmaio]

^ You can buy plates that allow for fore/aft adjustability -- either the full set, or just the heel unit plates. (If anyone is interested in just the heel plates, I would be interested in buying a full set, just for the toe plates for myself, then selling you the heel plates.)

That fit the 3 hole pattern of the dynafit race heels? I know of the sportiva plate, but didn't know of a similar plate for dynafit race.

[Jonathan S.]

^ Correct. (Such plates have been around for awhile with other non-adjustable heels, but this is the first season for any such Dynafit plate.)

[lowsparkco]

Yeah, I see the plates... but you'd be much better off to mount the toe on a plate and negate some of the ramp angle than just the heels. I guess I kinda screwed up. The normal speed radical heels would have been a better fit as I like a flat touring setting and adjustability. Oh well.

[Jonathan S.]

Yeah, I see the plates... but you'd be much better off to mount the toe on a plate and negate some of the ramp angle than just the heels.

Can't mount just the toe plates with the Low Tech or Superlight, because then you'd end up with negative delta. (The race heels and Superlight heels have pretty much zero delta.)

[gregL]

The Low Tech Radical for some odd reason is not distributed in North America.

Thanks, Jonathan, explains why I haven't seen any . . .

[XXX-er]

http://cgi.dolist.net/online.asp?l=1...-9950-f189ef04

some good dynafit sales across the pond this time of year and it works out pretty cheap if you do a little group buy amongst buds

[lowsparkco]

I'd be willing to trade you for some Speed Radical heels - GregL

man, the plates would prolly make me pretty happy, but $170 is pretty darn steep for plates - that snow leopard face adds a lot of value to an item

[JRainey]

I checked out a pair of these yesterday. The only problem I can imagine with the race heels is that the lateral release tension seems quite low. It probably takes a quarter of the force to turn that heel piece around vs my plum guide at 10 rv.

Beside that, I don't see why they don't just take the race heel design, fortify it, make the the spring tension higher, and then you'd have something burly, light, and simple. I just think the U shaped pins are such an elegant solution, it's unfortunate that they can't come in a more robust heel piece. I understand the marketability problems of a binding that doesn't have variable release values, but it just seem like the race heel is a better design.

It seems like the whole tech binding industry is just making things more complex and trying to make things look "burlier". When the simple, elegant solutions are right under their noses. Make it simple and then you have wiggle room to use heavier/stronger materials.

Sorry for the thread drift.

[lowsparkco]

Don't worry about the drift, I'm done here anyways. J.S. your inbox is full so I can't reply to your pm. I don't know where the guy got the bindings - but either Telemark Pyrenees or Snowinn will ship them to the U.S. - so not difficult to acquire.

[Jonathan S.]

I just cleaned up my inbox.

Returning to the thread drift: I'm also surprising some rando race shop hasn't (yet) put out a heel unit that ditches the adjustable forward release and ditches the fore-aft adjustment: not to save weight really overall, but instead to (respectively) simplify the inner workings and strengthen the heel pedestal. (I'm not sure if a high release value can be achieved though with the typical race binding approach to a fixed-value lateral setting -- might still need a big spring in there for strong return-to-center force.)
With the weight savings from those two modifications, the rest of the heel unit could be strengthened in all sorts of ways, yet still come in around or even under the weight of a Speed Radical.

Then again, it already has been done:
http://www.wildsnow.com/backcountry-...dynafit-4.html

[gregL]

Then again, it already has been done:
http://www.wildsnow.com/backcountry-...dynafit-4.html

Hah! I mounted a pair of those for Silas last year! Yeah, I'm all for getting rid of the slider adjustment and going back to shipping the heels with several different "U" pins. I think the standard was a "7" (as stamped on the side of Lou's pair) but you could get others. You wanted more or less forward release values, you just took off the top plate and slapped in a different one. Maybe Plum copied the wrong heel.

[Jonathan S.]

I pimped one of those pairs for him several years ago from a consignment shop out here...
So right before the Guide, Plum did have a model that was essentially an update of that old Dynafit model. But then they discontinued it.
PHK currently has a version of that same design.

Sent from my ADR6300 using TGR Forums

[Jonathan S.]

Put in a heavier spring, strengthen and elongate the mounting plate, use a higher-release value U pin, hmm:

[timmaio]

Those PHK bindings are interesting: http://www.phksnow.com/uk/ski_uk.html

I've never heard of them before, and can't find any distribution of them or prices.

BTW, continuing thread drift. It seems to me that the weak point of race bindings is the toe breaking. Is this across all race toes, or have some had a more proven track record than others?

[Jonathan S.]

PHK seems to be resented by some of the other more established companies, one of whom claims that PHK's "core business is carbon-copying existing products, and add their logo on them. They have copied alpine snowboard bindings from F2 & other companies."
The PHX binding pictured above sure does look a lot like Plum's previous "Touring 280" binding, although then again the 280 sure looks a lot like the Dynafit TLT3.
Anyway, all that is more relevant to calculating damages in an intellectual property lawsuit ("We are about to sue them, so that they stop producing and selling these copies."), and ATK did indeed win a lawsuit against Haerèo (proudly posting the victorious details on the ATK website), and supposedly was suing Crazy Idea (which no longer has a race binding now, hmm...).
And although I'd be happy to serve as the economics expert witness in that context, as a skier, I care only about how they work.
So the only information I've ever seen on PHK bindings is here:
http://www.tetongravity.com/forums/s...-tech-bindings

As for race toe breakages, I remember that Andy Dorais broke a race toe (IIRC a prior-generation Dynafit ... and then shortly thereafter he broke a first-generation Trab race heel).
The East Coast's "Thin Cover" broke a Plum Guide toe wing, which is identical to a Plum race toe for that part, but he sure isn't identical to a typical rando racer's physique and skis, so I don't think that's really relevant.
Scroll down for a picture of a broken Dynafit toe (with the Speed Superlight toe lever, but this is identical to the manual version of the Low Tech Race, and the part that broke is shared with the automatic version too):
http://www.wildsnow.com/618/dynafit-durability/
The owner stated, "They’d had 4 months’ fairly heavy training and racing use when all of a sudden they started popping off my boot while I was in climb mode. About 2 weeks before I’d taken a side slide fall on some ice and gradually came to a halt." (This is followed by a comment questioning their durability, but a data point of one requires quite a bit of extrapolation and speculation to reach any meaningful conclusion.)

Compared to the widespread (despite the post title) G3 Onyx/Ruby toe breakages:
http://www.wildsnow.com/6392/g3-onyx-toe-pin-break/
and the Dynafit FT12 toe breakages (from the insufficient wing support as compared to the ST or Speed baseplate, as the toe is identical):
http://www.wildsnow.com/4371/dynafit-breakage-ft-to/
... I'm not sure if race toe bindings are any more prone to breakage.

By contrast, race skis often break. Plenty of pictures from Western & Europe races of broken skis (often breaking right behind the binding heel). And even just out here, out of the three members of "Mass Team Rando" we broke two pairs just last season!
Plus the hardware on PG boots break ... frequently. (Apparently this has something to do with the unforgiving nature of the all-cf construction, so when something has to give, it's the metal connections that go.)
In light of those other well-documented failures of skimo gear, I don't think the bindings toes are a major concern. I just haven't read many (or maybe even any?) reports of races being cut short from binding failure. (By contrast once again, the only junior on the world championships team these past few days broke a ski during a race, then once a replacement ski had been located, he broke his boot also!)