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billl7
Jan 13, 2006, 6:05 PM
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In reply to: In reply to: RE: Letter To CCH Somebody who can, please trophy Joseph Healy's last 2 posts. Thanks Joe. It certainly won't be so but there ought to be a hushed silence in all the alien related threads until CCH has time to fully respond. Super letter. Super follow through with the call to CCH. Thanks for posting and hope it lessens some of the distracting noise Dave is undoubtedly hearing. Bill
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bobruef
Jan 13, 2006, 6:08 PM
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In reply to: I bought 3 aliens recently, all labeled 1105, a red, a grey and an orange. Only the orange had the dimple. (I also looked at all my old aliens just in case, no dimple.) I looked at the other two, and both had a faint 'N' etched into the stem, between the braze and the cam lobes. Feel pretty good about climbing on those, just though folks might be interested. aww, you can still climb on the one with the dimple. You wouldn't get caught up in all of this histeria, now would you? :lol:
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caughtinside
Jan 13, 2006, 6:13 PM
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In reply to: In reply to: I bought 3 aliens recently, all labeled 1105, a red, a grey and an orange. Only the orange had the dimple. (I also looked at all my old aliens just in case, no dimple.) I looked at the other two, and both had a faint 'N' etched into the stem, between the braze and the cam lobes. Feel pretty good about climbing on those, just though folks might be interested. aww, you can still climb on the one with the dimple. You wouldn't get caught up in all of this histeria, now would you? :lol: Actually, I'm going to return the orange alien in response to CCH's recall. Which is a little different from the hysteria taking place in various threads. I also inspected the braze on the orange. While I'm no metallurgist, the braze was thick and uniform all the way around the joint. I suspect the braze is ok. I'd test it myself, but CCH is doing a recall, and I'm going to respect that. For those interested, I still think bobreuf is an idiot. 8^)
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skinner
Jan 13, 2006, 6:33 PM
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I think it's clear now that Dave understands our concerns and realizes that we want and need more information. So may I suggest that unless your query is specifically whether a cam "that YOU own" is affected by this recall, we refrain from calling CCH and allow them to get on with replacing our cams. I assume that people have nothing better to do when it is revealed that some of the most vocal posters do not even own a single Alien! To those I say, turn on Oprah or Jerry Springer and yell at the TV instead of burdening those of us affected, with endless hair-splitting drivel about test sampling, statistical calculations, etc. etc. Thanx :D
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tim
Jan 13, 2006, 7:16 PM
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In reply to: In reply to: In a few days I will be condensing the various Alien threads into one or perhaps two threads for future reference. If you have further general discussion to add to the issue then do feel free to post to the original threads. Condensed threads may be more readable but it isn't the truth. It sounds as if you plan to preserve in history how you feel about the issue or perhaps a story more forgiving of CCH. There is too much dispersion among closely-related threads at the moment. Joe Healy pointed it out, as have others elsewhere (Werner Braun, for example). Those that follow closely related themes will be merged. Those that do not, won't. It's as simple as that. The purpose of the consolidation is to put useful, related information into a natural representation, so that related posts appear together. Timestamps, verbiage, etc. will not be altered (there is no means for moderators to do so), and shadow threads should redirect visitors from elsewhere to the merged topics. Therefore, I assert that the attentive reader should be easily able to reconstruct the sequence of events as they transpired on the Interweb. Leaving aside the question of whether this isn't a trivial ancillary to what happened with those brazes in real live-fire use, I claim that this ought to be sufficiently unbiased for any usage, and that no significant information is lost in the process. CCH does not advertise with Rockclimbing.com, so we legitimately have no reason whatsoever to bias coverage of their recall. I take offense at your suggestion that anyone who volunteers their time to the site would do so, or if they did, that the rest of us would let it stand. I own three sets of Aliens up to an Orange; so far, I have not found any dimpled cams (many of my CCH cams are from the 90's, and I have not found one from 2005), but like most others, I was concerned by the possibility that a hidden flaw could result in unnecessary injury or death, due to no fault of mine or the rock's. It is our moral obligation to retain an accurate record of the development of this recall and its resolutions, so that others with similar concerns can evaluate the information for themselves.
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billl7
Jan 13, 2006, 7:38 PM
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Ahhh gee wiz, that (edit: regarding the condensing of Alien threads) was just a typical misunderstanding between poster and reader. "Condense" did kind of sound like modification. On the other hand, I've seen nothing but professionalism at RC.com. Bill
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tim
Jan 13, 2006, 11:11 PM
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True, the winds can shift; but it doesn't seem like your friend posted a pic of the cam actually experiencing a structural failure as we have witnessed in this latest round of problems. All gear is capable of failing. I feel very confident of a nut in a buried constriction. I feel confident that a hand-sized Camalot in a parallel crack, placed in the direction of fall, is going to catch a lob. As cams get smaller, and nuts get tiny, I feel less and less confident of a catch, to the point that I get a little nervous climbing above a blue Alien or a micronut, and always try to back them up if I have to rely upon them, despite the fact that I have been caught on a 35-footer by a #3 micronut. This is pretty generic practice; most sane people do this (look at the Brits who headpoint things with a nest of wires at the crux). Brazes failing are pretty bad, though. If you back up a poorly brazed Alien with another poorly brazed Alien, let's say in a natural belay anchor, you could expose yourself to total failure of the anchor at loads far below the rated capacity, especially if the leader took a winger right off the belay. That's a pretty serious concern. It is a much greater concern than your friend's Alien popping out intact, which would seem to indicate that the placement (rather than the piece) failed. If you have further details beyond your friend's helpful and sober-minded analysis of the event, please post them; but otherwise, it seems like your friend's Alien placement failed for the reasons he suggested, rather than reasons related to the manufacturing process. I'm not saying that Aliens are good or bad -- I think they are tools to be employed as appropriate. If the head came flying off my hammer on the first swing, I would be pissed at the manufacturer. If I hit my thumb with the hammer, I'm pissed off at myself. Kind of an important distinction.
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climboard
Jan 13, 2006, 11:26 PM
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In reply to: To answer the questions on the (9) Nine Alien cams Mountain Gear had tested: All (3) Three that had failed brazes had dimples. Please do not climb or let your friends climb on Aliens or Hybrid Aliens covered by the recall notice from CCH. Paul Thanks Paul, that is very helpful information! You already had my business but I think you are earning a lot more customers.
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jt512
Jan 13, 2006, 11:29 PM
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dup
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jt512
Jan 13, 2006, 11:31 PM
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In reply to: To answer the questions on the (9) Nine Alien cams Mountain Gear had tested: All (3) Three that had failed brazes had dimples. Please do not climb or let your friends climb on Aliens or Hybrid Aliens covered by the recall notice from CCH. Paul Paul, that's half the story. In order to be able to correlate the dimple with the failure rate, we also need to know how many of the non-failures had (or didn't have dimples). If none of the non-failures had dimples, that tells a much different story than, say, at the other extreme, tht all of the non-failures also had dimples. In the first case, there would be strong evidence of a connection; in the second, there would be no evidence. Jay
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billl7
Jan 14, 2006, 12:06 AM
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In reply to: If none of the non-failures had dimples, that tells a much different story than, say, at the other extreme, tht all of the non-failures also had dimples. In the first case, there would be strong evidence of a connection; in the second, there would be no evidence. Yeah, but I would still expect them to recall on the dimpled batches. I know you would too. I realize the information that you asked for would impart more knowledge. But in my opinion we don't need all the details right now - just slows them boys down. I say hold our questions until CCH has some more time to research and respond to Joe's letter. It's CCH's baby anyway; why take up Paul's time with it?
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bobruef
Jan 14, 2006, 12:10 AM
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If we knew how many of the non-failing cams carried the dimple, we would only learn a bit more about how affected the population of outsourced cams might be. This information, at least to me, is of little interest. The most important thing is that all of the cams that failed had dimples. This supports CCHs statement connecting the cams with dimples to the failure rates. Beyond this, I'm not too interested in how extensive the failure rate is amongst the 'dimpled' cams. It is enough for me to know they are potentially dangerous. I'm not trying to calculate my odds of being caught by a group of cams I already know to be bad.
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rocknap
Jan 14, 2006, 12:35 AM
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In reply to: In reply to: If none of the non-failures had dimples, that tells a much different story than, say, at the other extreme, tht all of the non-failures also had dimples. In the first case, there would be strong evidence of a connection; in the second, there would be no evidence. I realize the information that you asked for would impart more knowledge. But in my opinion we don't need all the details right now - just slows them boys down. I think what Jay was getting at was that you cannot assume that the non-dimpled aliens are safe without knowing anything about the six that passed. Knowing that all failures were dimples doesn't say anything about non-dimples or non-failures.
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jt512
Jan 14, 2006, 12:46 AM
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In reply to: In reply to: In reply to: If none of the non-failures had dimples, that tells a much different story than, say, at the other extreme, tht all of the non-failures also had dimples. In the first case, there would be strong evidence of a connection; in the second, there would be no evidence. I realize the information that you asked for would impart more knowledge. But in my opinion we don't need all the details right now - just slows them boys down. I think what Jay was getting at was that you cannot assume that the non-dimpled aliens are safe without knowing anything about the six that passed. Knowing that all failures were dimples doesn't say anything about non-dimples or non-failures. Exactly. The partial information that Paul released suggests that the dimpled Aliens are problematic, but actually says nothing about the non-dimpled ones. As helyje more eloquently put it, many of us, who have sworn by Aliens for many years, now have nagging doubts about the product's quality, and would like to know whether the problem was exclusively limited to the dimpled Aliens, or is more pervasive. Knowing the failure rate of the non-dimpled Aliens would thus be helpful. Jay
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skinner
Jan 14, 2006, 1:00 AM
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The information that Jay is requesting would totally satisfy me for now. I don't need to know failure rates, I think at this point they are irrelevant as it is clear the dimpled cams and not safe.. period. Knowing that the cams that did not fail were all non-dimpled would go a long way to restoring confidence for many of us I am sure.
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billl7
Jan 14, 2006, 1:11 AM
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In reply to: The information that Jay is requesting would totally satisfy me for now. I don't need to know failure rates, I think at this point they are irrelevant as it is clear the dimpled cams and not safe.. period. Knowing that the cams that did not fail were all non-dimpled would go a long way to restoring confidence for many of us I am sure. I doubt CCH doesn't want to restore confidence. We need to let them work to a point where they can speak. The information Jay is requesting may be absolutely worthless. Consider that Paul's post of the test results stated explicitly that this was not a random sampling. Also consider that it is possible that Dave may have specifically requested Paul to test some arbitrary of dimpled ones (edit: that is, to focus on testing dimpled ones) - not to be sneaky but to test a hypothesis. So what? Now that Paul gives this additional bit of info now we need just a little bit more?? (edit: if it doesn't go this way it could go another) Let them work awhile. Let us give it a rest. Bill
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billl7
Jan 14, 2006, 1:58 AM
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... or Jay and skinner get what they want but Bill wants just one more thing ....
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climb_ian
Jan 14, 2006, 2:09 AM
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ok im proably gona get yelled at for this because its already been awnsered ..but i cant read all 5 pages at the moment but i found that dimple on my orange alien.. is it ok to return that one, and keep the ones with out the mark even thoe they are new cams?.. i mean i imagine they were made after 2004 but my yellow and green dont have them .. kk thanks
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skinner
Jan 14, 2006, 2:21 AM
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(removed, because I realized it was too ridiculous of a post to even comment on)
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skinner
Jan 14, 2006, 2:27 AM
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In reply to: ok im proably gona get yelled at for this because its already been awnsered ..but i cant read all 5 pages at the moment but i found that dimple on my orange alien.. is it ok to return that one, and keep the ones with out the mark even thoe they are new cams?.. i mean i imagine they were made after 2004 but my yellow and green dont have them .. kk thanks Yes return the orange one, keep the rest.. I'm curious what lot# is on that one?
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billl7
Jan 14, 2006, 2:30 AM
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In reply to: (removed, because I realized it was too ridiculous of a post to even comment on) Hey, you deleted the wrong post. Let me help, it was four posts up from the above one. :wink:
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skinner
Jan 14, 2006, 3:02 AM
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Bill I am curious, in your long and illustrious career how many Aliens have you acquired, and how many are affected?
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bobruef
Jan 14, 2006, 3:05 AM
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In reply to: Exactly. The partial information that Paul released suggests that the dimpled Aliens are problematic, but actually says nothing about the non-dimpled ones. As helyje more eloquently put it, many of us, who have sworn by Aliens for many years, now have nagging doubts about the product's quality, and would like to know whether the problem was exclusively limited to the dimpled Aliens, or is more pervasive. Knowing the failure rate of the non-dimpled Aliens would thus be helpful. Jay Ok, I get what you're after now. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you're thinking that if all 6 passing cams were non-dimpled, then that would attest towards the strenght of supposed 'in-house' cams? I think this would offer some evidence (albeit very weak) to indicate the problem is exactly as CCH states it. But, I'm affraid any other mix of dimpled, non dimpled, or even if all 6 were dimpled, we wouldn't learn much. The only results that would carry any weight towards said presumption would be if all 6 cams were non-dimpled.
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