Tight fitting rope--how do you thread it through an opening?

[Toby]

I know what you mean!

I just replaced a depower line on my 2012 North bar.
WHAT A NIGHTMARE !

Did north depower ropes get thicker? It used to be easier...

Anyway, my trick was:

Put a thin wire through the end a bit and wrap it around tightly, so it fits thru the hole.
Put oil on the rope.
Then twist it a lot, that makes it smaller too.
Then push it thru the hole, make sure it stays twisted.
You should get help to do it, we were two.

Good luck

[Don Monnot]

I really like BWD's suggestion of tapering the end of the line by cutting back alternating pairs of braids. I checked out Animated Knots for how to do it, and it looks super quick and simple. If the cut ends don't just get sucked back into the rope well enough, I may try working some wax shavings (from waxing my snowboard) into the tapered rope end. That would also stiffen up the rope for threading through the holes. Can't wait to try it, but sometimes work gets in the way of fun!

Don

[edt]

slightly taper the end of the rope by cutting the rope at an angle, get a strong kite line, strong poly thread, sew the kite line on to the rope, make sure you sew it in there properly with enough stitches so you can can put 600 pounds of force on it the sewing will also tie down the rope fibers so it won't snag when you pull it through. The sewing will take about 5 minutes, pulling it through takes seconds you can use a lever if you need to pull with a the full 600 pounds. If you are really desperate and want to permanently thin a part of the rope you can cut several of the woven threads and pull it out, like mentioned above, I don't like to heat mold because heat destroys all the strength

[BWD]

I like the frozen rope trick that sounds brilliant!
Will try next time.

[edt]

ice expands you know

[Don Monnot]

Fixed! Took about an hour and a half total time from start to finish. I tapered the end as BWD suggested. Easy to do and worked like a charm. 6mm rope is pretty thick stuff for sewing, but I tried that before with no luck. I couldn't get the end shaped properly with heat. Nylon is easy, dacron is easy--Dyneema didn't work well with the stuff I have to use.

To taper the end, I just pulled out one pair of fibers from about 2 inches from the end, and another pair from about 4 inches from the end. I used masking tape as suggested to get a really skinny end to use for the longer feeds through webbing sections. When I got it all put together I cut the ends with a hot piece of steel. Done. Reassembling the connection at the CL was the time-consuming part. I think 6mm is actually larger than the original rope, so it took a little effort and coaxing to squeeze parts together. I probably should have used 5mm. I have some 5mm on order in case the 6mm doesn't work for some other reason.

I was a little disappointed that Airush didn't have a replacement line for the bar. I was SUPER disappointed that Airush couldn't/wouldn't tell me the specs for the rope. Not knowing for sure what diameter rope to use or what material it was made from was just not acceptable customer service IMO.

Thanks for all the great suggestions.

Don

[edt]

6mm was a common size for chicken lines up to about 2008 after that the manufacturers mostly now use 5mm. It never hurts to use 5mm where 6mm used to be, unless you have a cleat that is oversized and won't hold the 6mm line. Both ropes are on the order of 2 or 3 tons so you have plenty of strength with either one.

[Don Monnot]

I saw the breaking strength specs on both the 5mm and 6mm rope, and that made me feel better about riding with that bar as worn as the rope was. It looked pretty badly frayed by the time I decided to replace it, but obviously still had mega strength. I probably could have used it another 100 times, but . . . . .glad I didn't push it. I had a CL rope break on a pretty big jump, and the bar just ripped out of my hands and the kite went floating off downwind. A couple of good guys dragged my butt back to shore and rounded up my wayward kite--kept it off the rocks and got it to the beach with no damage.