Cuff Cant (Angle) Scott Cosmos III Ski Touring Boot

Yes Virginia, this is a somewhat virgin (skied once) Cosmos 3. I like these boots. External lean lock, fit my feet (with a few tweaks), probably a 125 flex. Easy on and off due to tongue shell construction. But dang, the cuff alignment rivet present in version 2 is gone. Not so much of a disaster, actually, as those things are problematic (they move, come loose, etc.). What’s better is to simply drill the cuff pivot-rivet holes where you want them so the cuff aligns with your lower leg bone — otherwise known a the tibial shaft. Like they do for World Cup racers at Atomic in Austria. And we do here at WildSnow dot com in podunk Colorado.

Key to using Atomic ‘Frictionless Pivot” system is this little guy. Purchased from igus.com,
this is part number MSM-0912-14, iglide M250 sleeve bushing, shortened to match Atomic T-nut. What makes this all work is the diameter of the M250 is greater than that of most boot pivot rivet holes. (Modder beware, however,some boots might require more extensive modifications than those shown here for the Cosmos.)

Regular cant rivets such as this one from Scarpa move your cuff up and down by about 2 mm, or in this case 1.83 mm to be exact, thus changing the right-left angle of the cuff. That means that simply offsetting the rivet hole in the boot shell by a bit more than the bushing wall thickness of 1.67 mm results in an cuff alignment tweak that’s entirely adequate for most people needing this sort of thing. If you want more, you can do this mod on both sides of the cuff (though doing so could compromise operation of the lean lock, so take care).

Smaller hole will be ‘egged” then cleaned up so the bushing ends up offset from original pivot center.

Atomic ‘Frictonless Pivot’ donated from another boot for now, we’re waiting for a few sets.

Boot fitter tooling moves the cuff so we can access OEM rivet hole. Removing rivet is perhaps the hardest and most time consuming part of these operations. A large burr grinder works best, cooled with water spray. My method involves drilling it out, again with water cooling and a few tricks to stop thing thing from spinning.

Egged hole has been cleaned up, shown with bushing and T-nut inserted. A 15/32 step bit seems to work well for final tuning of the hole, after egging with a rotary cutter bit.

Atomic bushing installed. At this point the system often goes together in minutes, but the process can stall if boot shell and cuff thickness make the OEM Atomic system need mods (problems could come up if your boot shell plastic is significantly thicker than what the Atomic system is designed for) . In this case it all fit together perfectly. Once you know everything works, assemble with blue Loctite, but of course.

Hole in the cuff is enlarged to 16 mm, again with a step bit.

Final assembly is easy. Again, remember to Loctite. If things don’t go together the way you think they should, you might need a longer screw or an extra bushing to space the cuff away from lower boot shell.