After around 35 years of climbing and owning cams for about 30 of those years, I taught myself aneat trick to repair broken trigger wires. It is dirt cheap and quick although probably not very durable. But it can be done at a stance while climbing a multi-pitch route provided you have a short length of ordinary electric wire. So keep some handy

Hiya Snort

Time to put those guys on top of a velvet cushion inside a glass box and donate to the MCSA relic museum.

No way! Both those cams are still good to go (they do need a proper repair job though).

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Climb ZA - Administrator

Hey Paul, those cams are a lot safer than many of those rusty 20 and 30 year old bolts that litter our crags around SA.

The cams you see have spent 99% of their minutes in cool indoor conditions, have probably only been weighted once or twice, may never have taken a fall and are still as strong as ever. It is only the trigger mechanism that perishes.

I still have my first cam, a friend 3 that is 32 years old. It is just fine. I also have a friend 4 that Kevin Smith dropped 100m off the Cookie Cliff in Yosemite in 1984 that I occasionally use when needing a big cam.

Does anyone know where I can buy some kevlar string? That might just work really well especially to do running repairs on a stance.

this is exactly why i wanted an epidural and not a full anesthetic when Snort operated on my broken ankle. i really wanted to keep and eye on him and make sure he doesn't use electrical cable, cable ties, pritt glue and sticky tape from his stationery cupboard to fix me up.

I concur !

gmf! trad bias.....

Shorti, Kevlar won't work for most cams. The wire has to be stiff. Soft trigger wires will work on double axle cams like Camelots and also with the metolius mastercams. But the wire stiffness is required for Trango cams and friends to stop the cams from changing angle

Oh, thanks Snort. I don't think I quite understand what you mean, but I'll have a look when I get home. Maybe I'll understand when I have a cam in front of me.

If you need a bit of stiffness for use on bigger "Friend" type cams, I have used the thick nylon cord you use on "strimmers" (or whatever you call the spinny things for cutting grass edges) and it works OKI. Just remove the whole wire plus the rigid bits and thread from one cam through trigger and to other cam, put a double knot at the end (use pliers to grip and pull it tight, then clip off the excess.

SaChris?

http://tom.grundy.tripod.com/basedir/camfix.html

Another method but this depends on the swage being intact

I found some 2mm accessory cord in a cupboard last night. I thought it would work perfect, but I just couldn't manage to thread it through the little holes. I even tried to melt the cord a little to make the tip long, hard an thin enough to push through, but I only managed to burn blisters on my finger tips. The idea was to just make stopper knots to prevent it from pulling back through the holes. In the end I threaded it through the two big holes (those designed to reduce the weight of the lobe) closest to the trigger holes and tied the ends together at the trigger. It looks terrible, but it kinda works ok-ish. I'll try get something thinner to see if it works better, it should at least look better.

That shoelace trick looks rather neat. Hmmm, my salomon tech amphibians have nice and thin shoe laces...

I shall import cam repairs sets to CityROCK soon. Any orders?

If it's affordable I'll be interested.

are the cam repair kits product-specific (eg only for C4s or Fiends or Master Ccms)? i'm intested for C4 & master cam repair kits. thanks!

No they are generic. they will cost around 70$ per set by the time the get here and they fix 10 cams per set.

Yes?

Cool, I'll take a set if you decide to import.

Hi SNORT, did anything come of that? The cam repair set I mean?
I've got a few cams in need of loving care and attention.

CR stocks them and they were on special a while ago...

I just fixed my .3 camalot, using a pin from my sewing box and a electrical cable splice (not sure what that thing is called). It works really well and if you find a good size pin you won't know the difference.

Garvin

A butt connector? (great name! ) I've used one on a cam wire before too. They work quite well, especially if you use the ones with a heatshrink plastic sleeve