T-Bolting

J.DUKE

Active member
Im remounting a pair of Hellbents with Hammerheads for this season. This will be the fourth mount for these skis (twice with Look 14s 328 bsl, and once with Rotefella Cobra R8s). Since these skis are already Swiss cheese, and the HHs use a 6 hole mounting pattern (not including heel piece) I was thinking about T Bolting if I ran into a situation of not enough space between existing holes or overlapping to holes.

Anyone Tbolt before and have advice?
 
I would lean more toward heli-coiling. Regardless you are going to want to make sure you are at least 1cm hole center to hole center. The benefit to using heli-coils for this is if you are a mm or two off from where a hole already exists you can "cheat" and offset the heli-coil drill bit long as the existing hole falls inside the diameter of the larger heli-coil bit. However it all depends on how swiss cheesed and close together the existing holes are.

In general I've found T-Bolts are a pain in the ass. I have a buddy who is 6'7" and snowboards so i have had to add T-bolts so he could widen his stance and it's always taken more effort you would expect. If you are T-bolting mark your pattern carefully, drill straight through the ski with a small drill bit. Cut the P-tex away around the holes slightly bigger than your T-bolts and drill the hole to the correct diameter for you T-bolts. Use 80 grit sand paper to rough up the exposed layer of fiberglass under the P-tex. Using generous amounts of epoxy, I use marine epoxy, insert the T-bolts. Let them cure for at least 24 hours. Mount the binding and make sure the T-bolts are solid. Fill in the P-tex and get your bases stone ground.
 
Back
Top