Open Letter to Flow Binding Co

@dan I have a friend who broke 3 already. no risers or crazy angles. he's riding duck with them on a twin board. 

curious as to where is the mounting point of your lower cable pivot and your high back pivots?

@dan Do you get those replaced under warranty? If you still have a broken set I'd love to get my hands on them. I could TIG weld them back together and add some extra material to beef them up.

@lake-m-carver 

last year i did get 2 bases replaced under warranty, these ones are just outside the 2 years, but we’ll see what they say, either they’ll send me free ones or charge me $60. you can have the broken ones if you want. 

@evilofrex 

Well at least it not just me, must be a design flaw imo, which is very disappointing since they're the best bindings I've ridden otherwise. I have them stock position, the cable/highback in the forward holes. 

Posted by: @dan

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Any other carvers having this problem?

I've broken one frame/baseplate so far.  Glad to read there's a two year warranty, these broke just after one year.

 I used to have a set of Flow NXT FSE bundings back in 2010. I regret selling them. I went to web.archive.org and used the old Evo website back in 2011 to check this and the Flow NXT models used to have forged aluminum base plates. 

Are the highend Flows still made like this?

Posted by: @fatbob44

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Are the high end Flows still made like this?

Presumably yes.  They're definitely still aluminum, can't speak to the manufacturing process.

You know, I've never broken a composite baseplate...  Just saying.

@wild-cherry Good to know! Judging from the videos I have seen of you carving that is a testament to their durability. 

Hello everyone, do you rotate highback on your flow bindings to make it more parallel with board edge?

In my bindings there are 2 positions for cable and 2 positions for heelcup. I used first on right side and second on the left, it gave some rotation but I'm not sure if it's intended. Attaching photos

Posted by: @taras

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In my bindings there are 2 positions for cable and 2 positions for heelcup. I used first on right side and second on the left, it gave some rotation but I'm not sure if it's intended.

Pretty sure this is not recommended.  The two sets of two holes are for adjusting the binding for larger or smaller boots, to center the boot between the edges.  You need to adjust both sets together so that the forward lean remains in the appropriate range.

As far as I know, no rear entry binding has a rotating highback.  It doesn't bother me at 27 or 30 degrees, I could see it becoming problematic at higher angles than that though.

Thanks for posting @taras, good question.

@taras , I would not do that as those holes will misalign the hinge point of the high back. On the Carbon version it's almost impossible to put them in that offset unless the base plate have already worn with bigger holes.

@wild-cherry , I thought those were for larger/smaller or higher/lower high back adjustment too. I did not find any literatures online with my quick google search. I did test them in the two settings and perform some flex test. what I found is if you had it in the higher/larger boot setting holes, it changes the cable anchor point so close to the hinge point of the high back that when flexed into the high back, it creates substantially more force on the base plate frame. the extra flex is noticeable in the aluminum base plate. from the other post on the forum someone had questioned if they ever had aluminum base plates broken. having it in this non-default setting will accelerate the metal fatigue and cause it to crack. 

just what I noticed when I was playing around with the settings.

Posted by: @reximus

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having it in this non-default setting will accelerate the metal fatigue and cause it to crack. 

That's interesting...  The one Flow baseplate I broke was on the only large set I have, where I used the front holes.  In my mediums (back holes), I haven't had any problems.  Having said that, I rode the large almost every day last season (probably almost 80 days), while this season I have 65 days (so far) spread over three sets of mediums. 

I see what you're saying though @evilofrex, it makes sense.

Posted by: @wild-cherry

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As far as I know, no rear entry binding has a rotating highback

If you look at the SP  and Gnu bindings literature, rotating the highbacks is part of their adjustment features. However the adjustment is minimal and slightly hinders the rear entry. I rotated my SP's on the front foot only so no biggy.