Mantra delam below titanal layer

**andersmalmberg** · 11-15-2007, 08:51 AM

My mantras have a small delam midway between the tip and binder. The delam seems to be caused by a piece of what looks like black plastic that has been jammed in between the sidewall and the titanal layer. This has caused a dent in the titanal.

I fear that water will enter into the skis this way and I'm thinking of ways to plug the hole... Can't leave holes unplugged....

The obvious way is to fill it with epoxy and clamp it but should I first remove the plastic?

The piece is no more than 5 milimeters long and quite thin. The delam is about a centimeter long.

I've searched the forums but could not find any similar posts/questions. Maybe I'm just a ignorant JONG but I did try.

**HitMe** · 11-15-2007, 09:18 AM

Yes, try to remove the plastic first. Then epoxy and a good clamping.

It is possible (even probable) this is a manufacturing defect, ie that some debris from the factory got in there. So, if your skis are "new" I would try to get the shop/importer to sort this out. Warranty in Sweden is two years, isn't it? If it really is a piece of plastic there, it is clearly responsible for the delamination and it is rather unlikely it got there from skiing.

**andersmalmberg** · 11-15-2007, 09:28 AM

Actually it somehow got in there while skiing in Chamonix last year. It's about time to fix it before the season starts...

Maybe it's not plastic but I still can't figure out how it got there, and I haven't been skiing rails...

The warrany might be worth looking into though.

**skiingsamurai** · 11-15-2007, 10:38 AM

mine started to delam at the tails. We just cleaned it out, put some 2 ton expoy in there and clamped it well. It looks great. Yours might be a bit harder, but use a tooth pick to get as much in there as possible and clamp the crap out of it.

If not, take it to your shop and they can send them to volkl. I had mine back in a few weeks for free, it looked like it never happened

**andersmalmberg** · 11-16-2007, 03:08 AM

I think that in the tips and tails the core of the ski is made up of plastic so water and rot is not really an issue.

In the middle there is the wood core to take care of, does anyone know how the Mantas are built? I assume the core is wrapped in fibreglass and resin and therefore waterproof?

The only way for water to get to the wood would be a core shot penetrating the base, bottom titanal and fibreglass layers finally reaching the wood core.

Does this seem logical?

**HitMe** · 11-16-2007, 04:08 AM

I'm rather sure there is a special braided glass sock around the core, so rotting would not be an issue. But it is still best to try to get the delamination fixed

**andersmalmberg** · 11-16-2007, 06:00 AM

I will fix it some way for sure, but if the core is not at risk its not that critical. Then I'll fix them myself and not do the whole warrany thing (bought the skis online). I think it has expired anyway and I dont think this is covered under warranty.

So hitme, I think I saw somewhere thay you too are swedish, do you have any suggestion about what epoxy to use? Will any readily available slow cure do?

**HitMe** · 11-17-2007, 02:58 AM

Yes, I think pretty much any epoxy glue will do. Super Epoxy from "Biltema" for example. However, if you can get some epoxy formulated for laminating (usually much lower viscosity) you might get an easier time getting the stuff into the crack.

**davep** · 11-17-2007, 03:03 AM

If you heat almost any epoxy up a bit with a hairdryer it'll get all liquidy and go into the gap easier.

I've had good luck repairing my volkl exploders (delamed in exactly the same way yours did) using Hysol 1C. The 5-minute cure crap I tried first didn't last a day on snow.