About a week ago I was packing my boots to fly home and noticed that the inner ring had fallen off from the rivet (on the inner side) that hinges the upper and lower sections of my beloved Garmont Megaride boots.
[ reference PisteHors.com 2008 thread on “broken megarides” ]
So an hour after I got off the airplane, I was all set to take them to a good ski shop to see if they could somehow repair it—but first I phoned Garmont USA. They asked for my postal address, and three days later a little envelope arrived with the replacement.
Remarkable thing is that the replacement part does not require a rivet tool. I just carefully pried out the old rivet, and screwed in the new one with a 4mm hex Allen wrench (with a bigger adjustable wrench to hold the square base that goes on the inside).
Turns out the replacement part looks a lot like the original part that hinges on the (opposite) outer side of the same boot.
I think the replacement is a bit heavier than the original rivet. My thought at this moment of relief: Sometimes heavier metal could be a good thing.
Ken
P.S. What’s funny is that I never expected to break anything because I think of myself as a gentle skier—keep my release settings ridiculously compared to most serious skiers. But I guess I do like skiing ”les bosses” ("moguls" we call them in America). And nowadays most off-piste runs do soon become bump runs. As do the lower sections of some popular backcountry tours. And I can sorta see how fun bump skiing is an obvious way to put high stress on those hinging rivets.
