UKH

Hello all, 

I'm in need of some opinions, ive inherited my dad's old trad gear, we are talking 40 year old rigid stem friends and similar aged stoppers. If I ofc reslung the cams, is there anything to suggest they wouldn't still be safe to use ? They haven't had much use for a couple of decades either. 

Cheers

They should be ok. I still have my 80s rigid stem friends, although they don't come out of the cellar very often - I might take them along for something where I needed doubles and my partner didn't have any.

Somewhat related - Petzl recently brought their gear breaking rig along to an event at a climbing wall near me, and asked people to bring old gear in. I donated two items: a 40 year old carabiner and a cam with a very fuzzy dyneema sling that I crag swagged ten years ago - no idea how old it already was at that point.  

The sling on the cam broke at above the rated strength of the cam. The carabiner rated at 24kN stretched a bit but didn't break at 30kN, which was the limit of Petzl's portable testing rig.

I would echo this, and have my original rack of a similar vintage. Replace the slings. Then what I would do is to whip the cams off the axle and check for any corrosion picked up in storage. Then you should be good to go.

Paul

Clean using cam cleaner, Metolius cleaner is good but expensive, or Mountain bike cleaner is relatively cheap (i have Dirt Juice - other brands available).

Lots of (Metolius) Cam Lube (its wax not oil) on all those hidden bits, krabs as well as cams. A bit of gentle heat helps the lube into the cracks. It will drip before it gets cleaned up so lots of sacrifical (news)paper.

Easiest with all the soft stuff (slings/cords) off, and then new tape / cord.

If you hunt around you can get slings of any colour. Remember you can't knot dynema slings, and dynema cord requires a treble fishermans.