Railflex Bindings: Yea or Nay?

[G]

So I'm about to buy some new Fischer skis, and they recommend Tyrolia railflex bindings. I don't have any experience with these.

I really just want to ride whatever is the very best. Should I use the Tyrolia binders or find something better?




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The skis are Fischer RX8, a short, skinny & stiff slalom/carving ski. I'll probably go with the H14 bindings.

[FNG]

Railflex have been in my experience, the only ski/binding combo that I could really feel a difference in. If they're fat skis, word on the street is to mount bindings directly on the ski for better feedback. If they're just some carving skis, go for the railflex.

[Spats]

Unfortunately I've been on my Spatulas and haven't given my LD12 Railflex a thrashing yet, so I can't really review them.

They're certainly a solid-feeling binding. Any rail system will introduce a little bit of rotational slop, though they still have much less than Freerides or plastic Salomons...I wouldn't personally put them on anything much over 90mm.

I think the "free-flexing" propaganda is crap. That's what the forward pressure spring does on any binding -- allow the ski to flex. The cool part is being able to move boot center forward and back 3cm with one screw. You can actually move it a lot more if you take the bindings off. No more wondering where the right mounting point is...

The main issue is that the Railflex adds a lot of lift. You may or may not want this.

I'll post once I get some real time on them.

[Mulletizer]

I have a pair of M103s with Freeflex D8 (almost the same, right?) and have had some pre-release problems. I have heard better things about the D10 - I would go for them rather than the D8 if I had a choice. If I had a real choice though I would go for binders with height adjustment in the toe that are made of metal rather than plastic.

[splat]

I have a pair of like LD14 or something still in the box, geoff. Call me if interested.

[BakerBoy]

The Freeflex that Mulletizer described is completely different than the Railflex on the RX series of skis... The Freeflex is nothing but a Tyrolia gimmick that they don't currently offer on the 10-20 DIN bindings, and are dropping from next years 6-17 Fischer bindings that are the highest they offer... The Railflex, on the other hand, is something that is truly beneficial to a ski such as the RX line, but would suck ass on any freeride ski... The lift is crucial to a ski like the RX8 that will be tipped over on its side often, and is skied in much shorter lengths than the freeride models.

BTW, I think the D10 he's talking about is the binding without the mechanical AFD, which the D8's (or Fischer FR17's) have, which I would love to be without...

[G]

Cool, Thanks.


Anyone else?

[Spats]

Spent a half day on them in variable windbuffed mush and smooth to chunky ice crust. No prereleases despite hooking a lot of edges: only took one minor digger and didn't release. More sensitive to snow on the boot toes than Looks, but not obnoxiously so, and the heel is about the same. The boot release lever is very easy to actuate with a pole, and they step in with a satisfying "chunk" that really lets you know whether you're locked or not.

I didn't notice any slop or edge chattering, even on some very hard ice crust. They did, however, feel different than my Scratch 100s (a P10 with no lift at all). The Scratches make you feel like your boot is bolted to the ski: you sense every snowflake as you ski over it. The Railflexes felt smoother and definitely less painful on ice, but also slightly more remote from the snow. This was a subtle distinction and didn't affect the performance as far as I could tell -- but it was definitely there.

For hardpack skis? Definitely. For freeride, probably a matter of taste. If you're used to Salomons or Marker Motions (which all have lift), you'll probably notice no difference.

This could change if I start prereleasing, but I'm pretty sure this is the same toe and heel that were on the Bro demos, and I don't recall any drama with those.

Did I mention? Being able to move boot center TOTALLY RULES. It took about three runs to find the ski's sweet spot: one for each position. It's almost worth mounting a pair just for that, and then if you hate the bindings, pull them and mount something else at the setting you found.

[Spats]

Bumping this due to a mildly surprising (though not very scientific) test I did.

Since I had my skis out to prepare them for this season, I decided to see how much elastic travel a Tyrolia LD12 toepiece actually has, especially compared to a Rossi Scratch 100 (the new-style Look toe, shared by every binding in their line except the ZR, AFAIK).

I turned the DIN down as low as it could go on both bindings, which was about 3. At this point I could move the toe wings with my thumbs. So I popped my boot into the binding, adjusted the forward pressure, and tried to see how far I could push the boot out from the toe before it fell out the side.

In each case, the boot would return to center if the middle of the boot sole was inside the outer contact point of the toe wing, and fall out if the middle of the boot sole was past the outer contact point of the toe wing. This was easy to see happen, because for much of that distance, the boot would just hang up halfway out of the binding due to the unrealistically low DIN.

The surprising thing was this: even though the Look toepiece appears to go around the boot much further than the Tyrolia, the difference in elastic travel was minimal -- like 45 vs. 50mm. And even then, the centering force is minimal at that end of the travel because of the shape of the boot toe, so I'm not sure it matters much.

However, it was obvious that more friction was involved releasing from the Look toepiece than the Tyrolia toepiece. My boots are quite worn, so it's not surprising that the rolling AFD and 4-roller toe of the Tyrolia would have less friction than the Look, which gets a lot of its retention from the plastic "claws" sliding above the boot toe.

Another difference I noted was that though both are proportional to DIN setting, the LD12 toe has an easier diagonal release than the Look toe. The high-DIN Tyrolia toe (the rounded one) has a tougher diagonal release than the LD12, but since I don't have one, I don't know how much different it is.

This may mean that in theoretical tests with new boots, DIN=DIN, but for real-world boots, the Tyrolia needs a higher setting than the Look for equal retention. However, please note that I can't draw any conclusions about release in real-world situations, since I don't have enough days (about 4) or enough big wipeouts (0) on the Tyrolias.

One thing I definitely noticed while testing is that forward pressure made a big difference with the Tyrolias. High forward pressure caused the toe release to be very Marker-esque: it was very hard to move the boot at all, but once I did, it was easy to pop out. Lower forward pressure made the curve more linear, which I think is what we want here.