Crampons for small boots

Max 

Would you be comfortable bending the tabs inward? Grivel have the largest tabs that I'm aware of. Won't compromise the crampon's overall integrity. 

I saw a post somewhere where someone threaded a  nut and bolt through the holes on the rear lugs on a pair of Grivels to take up the slack.

In all seriousness, are you certain that you are trying to fit them correctly?  Ideally you would be able to move the heel further back until it contacts the two heel tabs, and then you would adjust the heel lever and linking bar to fit from there.  

Chris C. wrote:

In all seriousness, are you certain that you are trying to fit them correctly?  Ideally you would be able to move the heel further back until it contacts the two heel tabs, and then you would adjust the heel lever and linking bar to fit from there.  

The reality is that some boots are so narrow at the heel that doing what you suggest puts the tabs an inch or more ahead of the true heel, and the rear-most points are nowhere near the back edge of the sole.

I'm curious too. A friend has the same issue. Baturas and BD crampons

If you are handy at all at the workbench, I suspect (haven't proved it by actually doing this) you can enlarge the tabs by putting something bulky and stout over them. I would look at the ferrules used to swage cable. They come in a range of sizes. Either find a tight fit and tap it on the tab with a hammer, or epoxy a loose-fitting one in place.

 I think you need to tighten down the fine adjust knob to make them tighter. My wife has 38 Nepals and I’ve fit Cyborgs, Stingers and Bladerunners to her boots. You gotta be overlooking something.

My wife wears size 39 Rebel Pros. Here they are with the Grivel G20 Plus. I bent the heel tabs in with channel locks to be snug.

I did the same with BD Crampons, and I do the same for my size 46 boots to make them snug. I wouldn't recommend bending back and forth a bunch due to the potential to weaken the metal.

Okay, so reviving a 3 year old thread rather than starting a new one. Thanks to a recent purchase via Mountainproject I finally have a pair of ice boots that fit me, the old style Nepal Evo in a 36.

But same issue with crampons, the boot is so narrow that no matter how far forward the crampon goes the heel will never actually contact the heel side bars! First photo.

I had two question.  1. Does anyone know what crampon I actually have here? (at least 15 years old). It’s black diamond and looking at their current model seems most similar to the cyborgs, which is what the OP ended up finding worked for them, so no point replacing same with same.

 I need to make the length shorter still which will help a bit (though not completel).  There is one more point of adjustment on the bar, but I would have to lever the silver metal bit above the front part so it no longer lays flat.  With a lot of force and levering that’s is possible, but then that silver metal bit is bent up.

Give me some ideas!

Hadn't thought about this for a minute! Looks like those are the old cyborgs- perhaps the newer ones have a narrower heel. You seem to be having the problem I was- bending the tabs in, or epoxying some rubber stops on the tabs, or just buying a new heel unit for modern cyborgs/BD crampons might work. Good luck! 

Those are the BD Bionic model cramp on. You can remove the snap adjustment (silver) and replace with a small bolt and nylock nut. 

I have fit lots of crampons to really small boots. First thing is slide the linking bar forward and put a small bolt and nut in the first hole of the liking bar in the front part of the crampon. That moves the whole link bar forward 2 inches and shortens the rear of the bar.  Second, if you get a nice tight fit with the lever on the back of the crampon you don’t need to worry as much about contacting the tabs on the back of the crampon.  Cassin blade runners don’t have tabs.  In general I have had really good luck fitting Cassin crampons to small boots. Right now I have fit the alpinist techs to my sons size 5 boot.
Dallen

Thanks everyone, I think removing the silver bar and putting a bolt might help at least get the length shorter.  Or a new pair of crampons on my list for Santa!

Sunny-D wrote:

First thing is slide the linking bar forward and put a small bolt and nut in the first hole of the liking bar in the front part of the crampon. That moves the whole link bar forward 2 inches and shortens the rear of the bar.

They would have to add another hole in the front of the crampon to do this, no?

To me that doesn't sound like a good idea because A) a normal center bar is held in tension by the flared out front portion, and can pivot slightly to adapt to the boot shape. Changing that to a fixed bolt connection could result in a lot of stress in the bolts if it's not a perfect shape fit. And B) you are adding more points of failure to the system

I would suggest keeping the center bar's attachment system as designed, and to just push the center bar back and under the rear platform of the crampon. Or just cut off some of the excess center bar

Doesn’t affect them at all. Some crampons are built to use a bolt instead of the quick change system.