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Slingshot swivel is rusted and frozen

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NHKitesurfer
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Re: Slingshot swivel is rusted and frozen

Postby NHKitesurfer » Thu Oct 22, 2015 3:51 pm

My Switch (V1 and V2) swivel has never worked as promised under load and I rinse after every session and hit with wd40 now and then. It's a good thing they have under the bar swivel too and I can do backrolls and kiteloops to fix it :)

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windyway
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Re: Slingshot swivel is rusted and frozen

Postby windyway » Fri Oct 23, 2015 3:47 am

windyway wrote:Any changes to the 2012 Slingshot above-the-bar front line swivel?

On my 3 kites, it takes two hands to turn the swivels. Sometimes they freeze tight.
I started rinsing off the salt and sand, but it was too late to save them.
Rust is dripping out from the China stainless.

Back in 2012, I contacted SS Customer Service.
They told me swivels cost $100,
but they would give me a "special deal" at their cost of $50.
No thanks, I think the truth is more like $14.

So here we have a major brand, who won't stand behind a defective part.
And I just lost a buyer for my used kite, because of it.
slingshot swivel.jpg
=====================================================
Follow-up
A year after my first complaint, I contacted Slingshot Customer Service again.
This time, they sent me two replacement swivels at no charge. WOW. Thank you.
I was able to sell my last two used kites after replacing the old rusted out swivels.

The rest of the story.......
I then bought a 6-8-10 quiver of new Rally's.
Thank you SS, I am a happy customer again ! ! !

WW

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alexeyga
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Re: Slingshot swivel is rusted and frozen

Postby alexeyga » Sat Nov 14, 2015 4:59 pm

CaptainArgh wrote:
I decided to try the Wainman swivel after reading this thread. It was less expensive and came with some great promise. I didn't find it to be any different, in use, than the SS swivel. Didn't work any better or worse. And with regards your friend's seizing up, if you don't rinse any of those things with fresh water once in a while, that's going to happen. I've had a bar since that SS swivel first came out and it is not rusted and has worked just as well since the day I bought it...which as you know is marginal.

Performance seems to vary part to part for me and is also different based on kite size. Maybe it works better on larger kites because the center lines are spread further and direct more force to unspin it ? I dunno. I have seen a lot of claims in this thread that gave me hope, but after additional research and purchases it seems they are all about the same. I have now found that my favorite bars have the swivel above the bar in addition to a manual swivel below the bar. So when you collect spins up top on an ocean downwinder, it's an easy reach to undo them.
Having first hand experience with most of these swivels, I'd tend to say that they all perform about the same - which is 50/50. Sometimes it works, sometimes you have to un-spin it manually and sometimes they get jammed when you pull the safety.

If I had to buy a new bar Today, I'll surely go for below-the-bar swivel type. Core's bar is really nice as it self-unwinds, but it seems to come at a cost of increased wear on the line. No happy medium just yet...


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