Wild Country cams

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 mike barnard 12 Oct 2019

Apparently Wild Country no longer offer a service for repair of their Friends - rewiring etc. Anyone know of an alternative company who may do it? 

 brianjcooper 12 Oct 2019
In reply to mike barnard:

> Apparently Wild Country no longer offer a service for repair of their Friends - rewiring etc. Anyone know of an alternative company who may do it? 

Sadly, after being in touch with WC and told they no longer replace cams slings etc. I've bought some nice DMM Dragons. Brilliant kit!!!   And they DO repair their cams at a very reasonable cost. Future proofed repairs.

Why buy very expensive cams that can't be serviced?

PS. Although not recommended by WC I've used 8mmx30cm dyneema slings as an alternative for my WC cams. I tried several other manufacturers and climbing companies who said they didn't. 

  

Post edited at 14:49
 TobyA 12 Oct 2019
In reply to brianjcooper:

> I've bought some nice DMM Dragons. Brilliant kit!!! 

The soldering or gluing or however it's done on my first generation blue Dragon failed - the stem came loose from the 'head' (?) of the cam - the bit that axles run through. This meant that even though it had been placed at the top of a crag as part of a belay, we couldn't get it out - it turns out it is very difficult to retract the cams when the stem is loose. By the time I could go back with more tools to try and retrieve it, someone else had managed to get it out, although I imagine they would have got it stuck again if they used it without somehow re-sticking the stem to the head. I obviously couldn't return the faulty unit to DMM for inspection because I lost it, so sent a film clip and photos instead to show what had happened. They asked one of their sponsored climbers who lives close to the crag to go and see if he could retrieve it, but he found someone else had also managed to get it out as I had done. They sold me a new one at a reduced price which is certainly better than nothing, but it was still more than a shop would pay trade price, so DMM wouldn't have lost anything on that solution. I was mildly annoyed because I couldn't get it out because of a fault with the cam, not because of the placement.

I do really like the Dragons but they are not perfect.

5
 Andypeak 12 Oct 2019
In reply to mike barnard:

As far as I am aware no company in Europe will service another company's cams. It's something to do with an EU regulation. You could send them to America where some companies will but that could end up being expensive and taking a long time.

 brianjcooper 12 Oct 2019
In reply to TobyA:

Thanks for posting the 'heads up' on the DMM cams. I'll keep that in mind. I hope the new generation are better.

I managed to lose an old WC cam recently due to over camming and gross placement stupidity on my part.   

 Andy Manthorpe 12 Oct 2019
In reply to mike barnard:

Mike, I've successfully replaced trigger wire with strimmer cable. The method is here

http://www.kakibusok.plus.com/Equipment/RewireCams1/Rewire1.htm

 Dave Mahon 12 Oct 2019
In reply to Andy Manthorpe:

I did a repair with strimmer wire a couple of years ago and it's still going strong after lots of use.

 MischaHY 13 Oct 2019
In reply to brianjcooper:

I work for one of the biggest outdoor retailers in Europe and handle warranty requests. I've never done a single warranty claim on DMM cams, unlike WC, BD etc. 

Toby does seem to churn up this tale about his dragon cam fairly often from what I remember (I've definitely read it a couple of times before) and without devaluing what was clearly a frustrating experience, I'm comfortable to say that it doesn't represent the quality of Dragons in general. 

 Flashy 13 Oct 2019
In reply to mike barnard:

Mountain Tools in the USA do a great job of this, and they do international shipping.

When I called WC about this a few years ago they said that not only were they unwilling to do this, but they'd sold all of their machines and didn't even have the capability. I read an assertion somewhere that DMM make their cams now -- does anyone know if that's true?!

 Dave Cundy 13 Oct 2019
In reply to Andypeak:

Probably not an EU thing but a "someone else's product' thing.  How can you certify someone else's product when you don't have the computational models etc?

When Rolls-Royce started out on the Taranis UAV project 14 years ago, we were offered some french engines for free.  We ran a mile.  Didn't know much about them, beyond competitor intelligence.  Would have been a product liability nightmare if Taranis had crashed.  Same concept applies to repairing/servicing another company's climbing gear.

 Baron Weasel 14 Oct 2019
In reply to mike barnard:

A friend of mine repairs cam wires in exchange for a mountain or cave rescue donation. Message me if you want me to put you in touch with him!

OP mike barnard 15 Oct 2019
In reply to mike barnard:

Cheers for the replies. I'll have a think about which suggested option to try first. 


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