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New Metolius cams


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After seeing your rack of aliens, I was tempted to try to get you to sell some but figured it would be a waste of valuable spray typing. I'm hoping to get my hands on some of these too before I pull the trigger on a whole set. They sure look nice though.

 

Thank you for placing your order with Mountain Gear.

 

Oh who am I kidding, serious impulse control issues here: after looking at the pics and panting like a dog staring at a bone, I just bought the 1,2, and 3 - which correspond to the most common Alien sizes I stuff in cracks. Bought them from Mountain Gear too, it's well deserved as Paul Fish of Mt Gear pull tested the Aliens and confirmed that they had some huge quality issues which led to the recall when CCH earlier had it's head stuck in the sand, you just got to love a guy like that.

 

Anyhow Dave, if you ever wander by where I happen to be, say hi and feel free to borrow and fondle. Kevbone had a handful of my small Alien offsets in use last weekend (the very ones Archenemy sold), so I don't get too touchy if you want to use some as long as I'm around and you don't hangdog on the stuff.

 

:lmao:Oh, who's yer gear Ho, Billcoe... I love it when you put a bit a lube on my cams and wedge it up that crack, oh, please just one more nut, just gotta have it, ya baby I work for gear anytime, anywhere...

 

Thanks for the offer to fondle your gear but I have some aliens, just time to update them. Mine are the very first, original ones. Have taken many falls and have always held up well. Not sure now if I want the new metolius set, c3s or the aliens but am anxious to hear how you like these once you get to actually use them.

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I picked up the 1-4 from MG. They are a bit narrower than their C4 counter parts and just slightly wider than C3s. I don't have any other cams to compare them too. The trigger is softer than the C3 and I like the feel. Like Bill I'm a bit confused about the trigger cable placements. Seems like if they rotated them 90 degrees the stem would nest better. Nice solid piece of gear though!

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My opinion: I had the Mastercams and some Aliens out today and used every one. Yellow and Blue on lead (along with 5 of the Aliens same pitch) and the orange MC for the belay anchor, and they are superb......just superb. My previous post 'bout the width of the cable stem thing only proves me to be full of shit on the speculation game as that had no impact on performance and after looking at the whole no-issue carefully I don't think it will. In fact, the alien cable ass. is @ equal in size and it's never been an issue with them either.

 

I had studied them beforehand and put the sizes in my mental bank so I would grab the correct size - hopefully the first time. My only issue came when mid-pitch on an ungraded route, feeling to be at about my limit of grade for the day, after eyeballing the crack I snatched the yellow one off, and it turned out to be the Yellow offset TCU Metlius makes which I'd also taken and mistakenly or stupidly racked right next to the Yellow Master Cam. Totally different size....I was all like WTF? Why do they do that, make one yellow big and one small? My bad for not paying attention.

 

 

They have all the benefits of Aliens but none of the disadvantages (like being made by CCH:-) I wouldn't toss my Aliens to get these, but these are fine cams, and would not consider buying anything but offsets from CCH if I was in the market for this size of cam. Once Metolius makes the offsets though...there is no going back to CCH IMO. Although the cable is stiffer, it still bent fine and had no ill effect IMO. They stick just as good as Aliens too.

 

Later, I walked around with my Yellow/Red CCH offset and compared it to the Metolius Orange (non-offset). Anywhere I could get the CCH to stick, the Metolious would place as well, which I found fairly surprising as the offsets have an advantage in some placements.

 

Take care all

:wave:

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  • 4 weeks later...

Played with these cams at REI for a bit. the quality did seem to be the same ol' good Metolius quality, but the design did not quite seem the be as good as the aliens. the couple that I played with seemed to be a bit stiff, and one (the black one if I remember right) was hard to start, but then moved quickly after that. Making the trigger feel really jerky... BD and Aliens seem to do a much better job with this.

 

I am curious how well the glue that holds the Kevlar trigger wires into the cam lobes will do. that looks like the point that would cause those things to 'break', and looks like it will also cause a lot of variation in the pivot point. one cam i looked at had maybe too much glue, and the cord then pulled the cam a bit more towards the center, which might explain the jerky feeling...

 

i just played with them for a few minutes at REI, and did not get a chance to use them, so these are just my first impressions. That impression is to stick with aliens... superior design... let's just hope that CCH can pull things together and fix their quality problems.

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Just heard yesterday from Owen who works at:

http://www.edgeworks-climbing.com/cgi/yabb2/YaBB.pl

that a purple alien exploded when he fell and dropped him on meatgrinder crack up the icicle recently. He said he would post the whole story, and has contacted Alien about it. I don't want to describe it second hand and get it wrong. I don't think he spends a lot of time online...but his belayer "kjerstin" has some posts on edgeworks if anyone wants the whole story.

 

I was just thinking about buying some aliens...no.

 

 

 

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Owen said the purple alien that blew up when he fell on it was 2 years old, never fallen on. He is aware of the bad alien year/model problem, said it wasn't one of those. He said the main wire pulled out of the brazing on the head when he fell on it. Then the remnants of the brazing apparently pulled on the trigger bar and the cam, broken, pulled out of the rock, and he came within inches of decking in a long fall. That's how I remember his story. He said he will put a post up with pictures and more details. Don't trust me as I'm second hand. This is Owen on the right in the red hat:

http://www.edgeworks-climbing.com/cgi/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1198891832

 

I'll badger him to make a full report. People should know about these Alien problems.

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