UKH

Alright all,

Like fools, my OH and I bought a tent at Gooutdoors last year. There were better options online but we needed a tent quickly and it was about the best place to hand without driving miles. We ended up with a Berghaus Cairngorm 2 which we were happy enough with until the OH fell into it in a drunken, midnight moment of clumsiness.

The tent's fine apart from one pole (the side to side cross member) which snapped at the central shallow V shaped bit. Now, you'd think that you could just phone Berghaus and say "excuse me Mr Berghaus can you sell me a new pole". You'd be wrong though. BH send you to Blacks as their preferred supplier. So you email Blacks and get a variety of answers regardless of how you explain the situation and desire for a new pole; the answer being: "it may be a warranty issue, please take it to a Blacks store where they MAY be able to help you find replacement parts."

I have given up trying to explain that clumsiness/drunkenness is almost certainly not covered by warranty after having the conversation with about 5 different "customer service" reps. Regardless of is said they insist it should be taken to a shop with proof of purchase (lol). 

So, enlightened ones, is there anywhere that people can recommend that may sell a suitable V shaped bit? Its VERY shallow angled and 9.5mm alloy. I bought one from Tentspares.co.uk but unfortunately its way too angled to be usable :-/

I hope and await your wisdom...,.

Can you find an online piccie?

Ed: looking at a picture of the tent, I can’t see a V shaped pole part. Is it the very highest part in this photo?

Indeed, that's the puppy. It is a very very shallow angle - maybe about 160 degrees? That's an educated guess though. I'd try replacing it with a straight section but when using the repair tube to patch it together over the weekend we were away I thought the extra tension was going to trash the tent.

eBay...

I've got a Grampian that uses similar poles but they're all straight sections. I've had a similar problem getting any sort of reply from Berghaus who seem to want nothing to do with their non clothing products.

Got a Vango pack of spare 9.5mm poles and hacksawed a section down which has worked fine, any chance you could try and bend a section slightly in a big vice or similar? Might be you end up weakening it though and don't really want it snapping on you mid trip again.

Edit: or just buy the bit linked in the post above which looks like a much better way of sorting it out!

won't work unfortunately - the section I need has male parts at both ends. That's female/female and seems to be different sizes 11-9.5mm 

thanks for the help though

In reply to J101

I wondered this but I think without either a pipe bender of some type or at least a pipe spring it'll just fold or crease in the middle.

Apparently Berghaus/Blacks/GoOutdoors are all part of JDsports now hence the total disregard for any kind of customer service. Frankly BH and Blacks have been laughably useless thus far. For a company to be making and selling anything I would expect at least a modicum of support.

Thats a pain, I broke a pole a while back and MSR sent me another under warranty (+ a spare one!). You could try one of these sites: 

https://tentpoletechnologies.com/

https://www.tentspares.co.uk/

http://tentawningclinic.co.uk/kyle/index.php?route=product/category&pat...

http://www.hamptonworks.co.uk/campingtentpoles.html

In theory if it's under tension and is wide enough to accommodate 11mm then you might get away with inserting both pole sections into that eBay linked piece. If it's a bit loose you could wrap some gaffer tape around the pole ends to get the desired thickness.

Not an ideal solution but if it means you can keep using the tent then a bodge fix is better than no fix.

Ace, thanks for the links. I tried tentspares but missed the others. Lots of emailing to do tonight by the looks!

In reply to J101

This is true but I'm still holding out for a more long term fix until it becomes apparent that it isn't gonna happen. 

The shallow angle is a struggle. The shallowest angle I can find is the 20 degree metal one. You could buy the 9.5 mill alloy connector (gold coloured below), saw in half, insert and epoxy into the correct diameter metal female one.  You could also get a slightly larger diameter metal connector, few wraps duct on the sawn off lengths of alloy, could give a few extra degrees of play?

If you still have the broken bit, can't you repair it?

Super glue and fine string / cord marks for a very strong repair.

I've used this place for pole repairs - https://www.tentpolerepairs.co.uk - and they were good.

Update. After telephone harangues at Berghaus and Black's they have actually finally just admitted that they don't do any kind of after sales support for their tents. At all. No spares in any way, shape or form. They did offer to sell me a pole with a new tent and a 10% discount for the disappointment, making a new pole only 150 odd quid (Literally - I'm not even joking). Why the f*ck they could have just said this in the beginning I'm not sure as I'd have taken it better then than having spent hours chasing the pr*cks.

Out of the websites supplied only one has come back saying they MAY be able to help. I'll speak to them later with more details and a photo of the part and see what they say. 

If it's a case of cobbling or fixing I'll cobble every time. The tension on that cross pole is considerable and I'd be amazed if a repair would last any time at all. I've been looking at pipe benders/springs and may look at trying to "adjust" poles or to try to match the V that I got from tentspares. 

I confess that I have never understood why this feature is incorporated into tent designs. It's an obvious weakness in the pole, being pre-bent and a stress-raising point, but doesn't seem to provide any benefit. It's like someone looked at a perpendicular arch and thought that would be good for a tent.

I do have such a tent, a Blacks Octane 3. It was cheap, and it's pretty good. But I'd much rather it didn't have pre-bent apex sections.

This is no help for the OP but for future use; the Quecha tent I bought from Decathlon about 6 years included a couple of spare pole sections which can be sawn to length if necessary, plus the instructions, which are sewn into the bag, list the part numbers for all the components. I was recently able to order a replacement set of poles for a fairly modest price off their website.