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jtanzman
climber
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May 26, 2009 - 12:58am PT
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"Quite telling that the crew on this site just don't care (20 posts in 2 days?) while the other forum's members beat themselves into a lather. Again. "
For once, the other guys are right.
Jay
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mucci
Trad climber
sf ca
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May 26, 2009 - 01:06am PT
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Impaler, I happen to have just "tested" a booty alien from the base of EC...All good. Just make sure it's steep whilst whipping!
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ct
climber
CO
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May 26, 2009 - 09:04am PT
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"For once, the other guys are right.
Jay"
Or this board is just done with this dead horse. Yawn.
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justthemaid
climber
Los Angeles
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May 26, 2009 - 09:37am PT
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Funny JLP :)
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John Mac
Trad climber
Littleton, CO
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May 26, 2009 - 11:54am PT
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I'm pretty interested in some more results from testing new cams rather than older cams with an unknown history. However, It needs to be a appropriate sample size. Whether you believe it is important or not is up to you but looking at all the aliens on my rack I think its important.
I know that all cams can break, that's not the issue here, its the apparent lack of QC and in-particular the brazing quality or lack of as shown on some recent cams.
I know that this has been going on a long time and it seems a lot of people on this site just don't care but sometimes you have to have an open mind.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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May 26, 2009 - 12:08pm PT
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Regardless of the origin of the Alien and the fact that it may be used, the braze shouldn't fail. I've seen some Metolius cams of Nathan Martin's that looked to have been ruthlessly worked and mangled in a combination of desert and big wall climbing to the point where there were mashed lobes and kinks and gaps in seperated stem wires. I would have still climbed over any of them confident that the brazes would hold up and the axle holes were drilled in the right places.
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rockermike
Mountain climber
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May 26, 2009 - 12:52pm PT
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This is an amazing and continuing saga. Someone should write it up for a Harvard Business school case study. How to totally blow a corporate recovery after being caught once. then twice - then thrice.
My suspicion is that the guy who runs CCH is just in way over his head. Doesn't seem to understand metallurgy, testing, 6 sigma, public relation, damage control, the economic value of your reputation et al.
If the units (by design) are as good as everyone seems to think (I have a few but they have been long since relegated to my aid rack, so I don't use them much) its amazing that somehow this problem hasn't been solved. The owners just need to hire someone who actually knows the business and the mechanics of producing defect free units - or (as someone posted above) license out a great design to a firm that has total quality control wired. If they would just fix the problem their sales would shoot up. As it is I don't know how they are hanging on with the majority of the climbing community losing faith in the product.
I mean shit; its not like the fix is rocket science. Just do it right and get this over with.
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GOclimb
Trad climber
Boston, MA
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Rather than start up a new thread here (as there's probably not that much interest), I thought I'd just alert folks to another separate thread on Alien testing on rc.com
This one is centered (no pun intended) on mis-drilled axle holes.
Rather frighteningly, it appears that a large percentage of Aliens have their axle holes drilled in the wrong place, such that they don't have anything close to a constant camming angle.
Here's the thread:
http://www.rockclimbing.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=2148506
Cheers,
GO
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Nefarius
Big Wall climber
Fresno
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Thing is, it seems to me like people are more talking sh#t than acting. And I don't see that CCH's business has been hurt. Go to any shop that stocks them (usually the large places - Yos MShop, Gearheads in Moab, Wilson's, etc.) and they still sell out in a couple of days, sometimes hours, each time they get a shipment in. Any shop will tell you they simply cannot get enough of them or keep them in stock. This leads me to believe that they're still selling as many as they can make. The only place that I know of that actually quit selling them was REI.
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Cloudraker
Big Wall climber
BC
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The only place that I know of that actually quit selling them was REI.
And for what it's worth, Canada's biggest outdoor retailer MEC stopped carrying them during the recall shitstorm a few years back.
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GOclimb
Trad climber
Boston, MA
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Rock and Snow had this last set of testing on their premises. I suspect that if Rich (the owner) doesn't hear what he needs to hear from CCH, they will stop carrying them, too.
And I think EMS may be quietly selling off their remaining stock.
GO
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Porkchop_express
Trad climber
the base of the Shawangunk Ridge
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I got to witness the aforementioned testing...I had come in to upgrade some of my pieces, hoping to get bigger c4s and smaller aliens. I didnt buy any aliens that day...mostly because the guy doing the testing bought the ones I had wanted.
I will climb on the ones I have but if I whip onto them once, hard, that will probably be it for me. Too bad. I liked them but I will be phasing them out.
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adatesman
Trad climber
philadelphia, pa
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I dunno... The guy at my local EMS was rather up front with me about them not carrying them anymore when I was looking for test samples. He didn't know why they were no longer carrying them, but hadn't seen a shipment of them in months. There was a grand total of 2 Blacks anywhere near Philadelphia (which they had at that store), with the next closest ones being in NY and MA.
@Porkchop- what sizes were you looking for? I think the only ones I cleaned out were Black, Purple and Clear, and possibly the Red/Silver hybrids. I'm just kinda curious since I have the not-yet published report on the failures sitting in front of me and it would be interesting to see what you may have ended up with.
One of the upsides to doing the testing at R&S was that it pretty much cleaned them out, which (hopefully) gives them some leverage on getting CCH to finally get their act together. I suspect R&S is one of CCH's bigger customers (given the popularity of Aliens at the Gunks and R&S being right there), so losing them would probably not be a good thing for CCH.
EDIT- Hmmm... Might have cleaned out Red too. They're all blending together at this point as I bought 15 of them that day and had 7 (9?) more used ones donated for testing.
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Nefarius
Big Wall climber
Fresno
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I'm sure I'm wrong/naive... But if I were headed out to Philly, I'd not really expect to need cams too much, and wouldn't expect to be able to find them, if I did... is this a wrong assumption?
I mean, I'm used to walking in shops on this side of the pond and seeing hundreds of Aliens go in hours/days... Not to mention all of the other cams/gear they sell.
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adatesman
Trad climber
philadelphia, pa
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Well, Philly is 3 hours from the Gunks and 5 hours from Seneca with a fair number of smaller places nearby so its actually not that hard to find trad gear around. Easiest (but smallest selection) would be REI and EMS. A few of the local gyms have decent shops as well, and Campmoor in north Jersey has a pretty good selection. After that comes Rock&Snow or the Gendarme, depending on whether you went north or southwest and they both have excellent selections.
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Porkchop_express
Trad climber
the base of the Shawangunk Ridge
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I was looking to get green grey and yellow. Maybe red as well. I am a bit OCD so I wanted to have them all consecutive order and not wait for a new shipment to fill in the intermediate sizes.
Wait, maybe that is just impatience...anyhow, I just went with mastercams and C4s.
I doubt aliens will lose their hold in the gunks regardless. I would buy some even now if they got their act together but its tough to argue with other units that are built like trucks comparatively...
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adatesman
Trad climber
philadelphia, pa
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Well you would have been out of luck with Green. Looks like bought 2 Grey, 3 Yellow and 2 Red, and I remember there being one or two more in those sizes left, but I don't remember which ones.
Personally I think they're great too, but with the hit or miss nature of the build quality you won't see me climbing on them anytime soon.
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climb-n-bike
Big Wall climber
Oakland, Ca
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Jun 11, 2012 - 08:50pm PT
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Have there been any reported problems with pre-2004 aliens?
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SuperTopo on the Web
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Let us know!