bent BD Camalot X4

Not that anyone is still reading the post but Climb on! unless you're really pushing your limits you should be able to climb with any gear. Don't fall.. Climb like your rope is manilla and you just placed a looped piece of rope in an aid seam. This coming from a guy that bought all his gear from ebay and tought himself to trad climb

mattm wrote:Frankly, looking at the kink point it seems pretty obvious the placement was fairly shallow allowing the cable to kink in that spot. Loading the cable further back should not result in that kink Unless placed more deeply than it appears I'd say what you see is 100% to be expected. Any cam will do something like this to vary degrees (cable flexibility being a major determining factor). Metolius cams would be likely to kink more than say Aliens/basics Broadly speaking, it's a bit disconcerting how many posts i see questioning if "X" damage is normal quickly followed by the "send it back for testing". Many people seem to a) not get the forces at play in trad falls on gear b) grossly over estimate the stoutness of said gear and c) at the slightest sign of wear immediately abandon all common sense and independent thought and call for manufacturer Testing. If DMM or BD pay for the shipping and testing of every kinked cable they'd go broke. Climbers need to engage their brains and self reliance a bit more and make measured And well reasoned choices as to when and why to pull the proverbial emergency brake on "suspect gear". The above looks like classic damaged while in use, did what it was intended to do, time to buy a new one territory Stuff breaks from normal use more often than faulty gear. Learning to identify one from the other should be a requisite trad climbing skill. There are far more complicated things in this game to be sure

Chance Philippi wrote:Not that anyone is still reading the post but Climb on! unless you're really pushing your limits you should be able to climb with any gear. Don't fall.. Climb like your rope is manilla and you just placed a looped piece of rope in an aid seam. This coming from a guy that bought all his gear from ebay and tought himself to trad climb

Maurice.....we'd like to see that.

I say test the unit yourself. Take a 20 ft fall minimum on it. Are you willing to try that?

I bought these x4s, fallen numerous times on most of them. They do tend to stay bent, however none of mine to that extreme, maybe the placement could have been reconsidered to account for this. I just leave them bent, and am conscious of placing them in a similar direction of the existing bend. I too believe straightening then possibly bending in opposite direction will rapidly decrease the life span. Straighten yours a bit, and keep using it, you'll be fine.
I should mention, this is the main issue i have with these cams, never experienced this with BD C3/C4s...