Worn out gear- check yours for these problems

[dbattman 0]

So, all the replacement parts arrived a few weeks ago and I had my rigger put everything together. Would you like to take a look at the crap we replaced?

We begin our tour of horrors with the dbag. The center grommet had been pulled inside the dbag from repeated slammers (presumably) as can bee seen in the 'dbag*'. It doesn't show up in the pics, but there is an edge on the outer portion of the grommet that is not sharp, but pronounced. This was causing the bridal to wear, eventually causing partial failure (bridal.jpg). The slider grommets were also shot since this rig did not have slinks. The is a definite snag points on the insides and the grommets had all kinds of dents and burs on them. The non-collapsable slider had been made collapsible by sewing on a piece of velcro. You would open, grab the velcro and wrap it around the center of the slider. It worked alright, but the hooks had worn out a section of the slider seam (not shown). The steering lines were also shot and had more fuzz than teenager.

So- new dbag, sterling lines, pilot chute and slinks. And yeah, I kept jumping it even after the first part of the bridal snapped.

To sum up:

See Dick,

See Dick jump shit,

Don't be a Dick!

[billvon 2,412]

A few notes on these problems:

>So- new dbag


It's not too hard to replace a grommet in a D-bag; it might have saved some money on a new bag.

>The non-collapsable slider had been made collapsible by sewing on a piece of velcro.

It can also cause wear on slider and lines since the velcro hooks will grab anything including brake line thread.

>The slider grommets were also shot since this rig did not have slinks.

Slider bumpers work as well as slinks at preventing damage to slider grommets. If you don't want to pull your slider over the links, hard links can work better than slinks since they're more bulky. (You can also get slink "bumpers" that keep the slider off the risers.)

[Kat1221 0]

I'm pretty sure your slider was collapsable - the velcro is just old technology, but it came like that when it was new - it wasn't added on. I jumped a monarch that had the same velcro on the slider. Really annoying!

[KevinMcGuire 0]

Didn't you have the canopy inspected before buying it? But even still, it is a used piece of equipment. The bridle is the only thing that should have cost more than a couple of bucks to fix. Figure $5.00 a grommet at the most for the slider and D-bag, =$25.00 and new steering lines usually cost about $20.00 new total $45.00 plus what ever the bridle cost and its not really that bad. That is unless you paid way too much for the canopy or the rigger who replaced the needed items over charged you to install them.

[dbattman 0]

I wanted a collapsible slider without the velcro, so to add new grommets and stich pull cords to the old slider was almost as much as a new slider. I found the bridal wear when I was packing the rig and had the bag turned inside out. It was almost worn through at this point. It was also an old F-111 collapsible pilot chute. I've had the rig for a full season already and put over 200 jumps on it. As far as the d-bag grommet I discussed that with my rigger. Some of the stiching was starting to go on the bag as well and my rigger is overloaded, but the price from Sunpath was reasonable so I just replaced it.

I bought a whole gear set from a retiring jumper at a great price, so I'm definitely not complaining.