Ben Pritchett
Shop for TLT series Dynafit boots.
Like some readers here, I’m not a huge fan of the forefoot hinge in the TLT 5 backcountry skiing boots. A couple of steel pop rivets solved the annoyance.
Take out the liner, make sure you’ve identified a location where the white lower shell, the black hinge cover, and the yellow extra tongue holder overlap. Drill through and insert a pop rivet. I put in two for redundancy and to share the load.
TLT 5 hinge rivet mod, Dynafit ski touring gear changes.
For me, the fix did two things:
1) Made the foot platform rigid. While downhill skiing the stock shell flex zone allows the ball of your foot to bob up and down as you pressure the boot cuff essentially changing your foot’s ramp angle constantly and allowing more “give” in the cuff flex. Now that the metatarsal flex is gone, my boot feels like a solid platform, without having to place a shim on the ski under the ball of my foot – no extra ski drilling, minimal extra weight, no problems w/ ski crampon interference. While skinning, I prefer the solid platform over the flexible one. The only place I miss the flex is skating the valley floors and snowmobile riding.
2) Stiffened the boot in ski mode. Since the lower shell doesn’t hinge, the boot collapses less under forward pressure, a very noticeable sensation skiing on firm snow. The TLT5P is already plenty stiff laterally (I drive a 125mm ski every day) it’s just got a little more of a front seat to support me (150lbs) and my huge work pack (airbag, plus snow observation and guiding gear).
Also, I’ve re-pressed the cuff rivets to reduce the slop that developed between the cuff and lowers, moved the instep buckle (like what Lou describes here on Wildsnow), put in an Intuition liner, pushed the shell for a bit more big toe room and added a Booster strap (the old one w/ the light plastic buckle, not the heavy metal ones available today). They ski like a “beef boot” and walk like nordic boots. Love them!
(WildSnow guest blogger Ben Pritchett lives in Crested Butte Colorado CO and spends over a hundred days a year in his ski boots working for the CAIC and AIARE.)
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NEXT — THE REVERSIBLE METHOD — By Lou
You'll need a couple of 16d 'box' nails (the thin type of 16d, not a 'sinker'). Get a handful so you can experiment. The cheapest ski gear you ever bought.
Cut the tip off nail, deburr, flatten one side of the tip, then file a taper near the end so it inserts in the space behind the yellow rivet on the boot toe. The fit must be tight, and the depth of the area you flatten should be measured somehow. I used the depth gauge on a caliper.
Finished product is bent so it snaps down into space, as shown, with upper end trapped below edge of yellow plastic. It took me about 10 tries to get it nearly perfect, about 10 minutes. It would be easier to make this T shaped so it still snapped down inside the yellow plastic, but required less fancy bending. I could do that with my welder, but I wanted to keep this as an ultra simple build of something fun. If you fit the lower end tight behind the yellow rivet, it locks out virtually all the flex. If the unit tends to pop up out of the boot, a hunk of duct tape will provide. But it seems quite solid.
Detail of the bent nail solution. Have an extra hour?
Shop for TLT series Dynafit boots.
Beyond our regular guest bloggers who have their own profiles, some of our one-timers end up being categorized under this generic profile. Once they do a few posts, we build a category. In any case, we sure appreciate ALL the WildSnow guest bloggers!
