Cycling UK Forum

Thanks for the reply meredith.

Can I ask what size your Vango poles are?

To be fair to Vango, all lightweight bendy alloy poles are fragile at the ends, regardless of brand. I have a cracked Hilleberg pole. A bit of research revealed that replacements can be bought. Hillegerg don't actually make them. So replacements are not branded Hilleberg. I imagine the same would be true with Vango.

Sweep wrote:Thanks for the reply meredith.

Can I ask what size your Vango poles are?

9.5mm. I believe Vango also do 7.9 and 8.5.

Another variation on the theme would be to use airline slightly smaller than the diameter of your tentpole. Heat that up and put the pole in the freezer. Whip out the hairspray and assemble the lot.

Useful! The arch poles on my 5-year-old (ish) Vaude Taurus Ultralight have two splits which could be tackled this way. So far I've just taped them up with some narrow gaffer tape.

Sweep wrote:
I agree about vango's tents - they do some really nice designs for cycle tourists at good prices (especially so in frequent sales) but the poles are ****.

It's not just Vango's backpacking tents that have dodgy poles. I bought a 5-man (well 5 very small people, OK for four though) family tent for car camping this summer, and one of the pole sections split the first time out. I spent £15 or so on a new pole, having read in the warranty that poles are specifically excluded.

pwa wrote:To be fair to Vango, all lightweight bendy alloy poles are fragile at the ends, regardless of brand. I have a cracked Hilleberg pole. A bit of research revealed that replacements can be bought. Hillegerg don't actually make them. So replacements are not branded Hilleberg. I imagine the same would be true with Vango.

No tent makers make their own flexi-poles - they are all bought in from somewhere.
Hilleberg use DAC poles (Korea); the other "good" brand of pole is Easton (USA). Generally if one of these brands of pole is used, the tent maker will say so.

The commonest causes of damaged or broken poles, other than obvious overload like a strong storm or someone falling on the tent, are...
a) the pole joints not being fully together when the pole is bent into the arch.
b) letting the elastic snap the pole sections together. All those impacts add up to a crack in due course.

andrew_s wrote:

pwa wrote:To be fair to Vango, all lightweight bendy alloy poles are fragile at the ends, regardless of brand. I have a cracked Hilleberg pole. A bit of research revealed that replacements can be bought. Hillegerg don't actually make them. So replacements are not branded Hilleberg. I imagine the same would be true with Vango.

No tent makers make their own flexi-poles - they are all bought in from somewhere.
Hilleberg use DAC poles (Korea); the other "good" brand of pole is Easton (USA). Generally if one of these brands of pole is used, the tent maker will say so.

The commonest causes of damaged or broken poles, other than obvious overload like a strong storm or someone falling on the tent, are...
a) the pole joints not being fully together when the pole is bent into the arch.
b) letting the elastic snap the pole sections together. All those impacts add up to a crack in due course.

Yes, I think cack-handed assembly broke my Hilleberg pole. I am now more careful so the problem should not recur.

g.meredith wrote:9.5mm. I believe Vango also do 7.9 and 8.5.

Thanks meredith. So for 8.5 i suppose I need 9mm internal diameter though that seems to be out of stock with that supplier. Could maybe use 10mm ID though may be a bit loose.

I'm wondering how does it happen for those poles to crack? Strong winds?

Gattonero wrote:I'm wondering how does it happen for those poles to crack? Strong winds?

I think they typically start cracking at the joins, possibly from careless assembly (I've often heard it said that you should never assemble shock-corded poles by throwing them and letting the elastic do the work as it pulls the sections in to one another hard enough to begin cracks). And once they start to go any stress will contribute. And salt water will add to woes (spurred by pals with cracked Quasar poles that TN declined to replace as they said it was salt corrosion I took to washing my poles in warm water after paddling or seaside trips).

Monster winds will take a fault and make it bigger, but if you have a good pole just overcome by more wind than it can take I think it will tend to fail traumatically, with a fold rather than a crack. I've not had this happen while camping, but I have killed a pole that was bent by a strong wind trying to bend it back at home and over-doing it, where it folded Once there's a crease it's as good as dead.

The morals seem to be careful assembly and good quality poles, particularly with respect to the joints between sections where stresses will concentrate. DAC and Easton are the ones that the "money not much object" brands tend to go for, and though every once in a while someone decides e.g. scandium alloy is so much better than anything else, after a year or two they're back with DAC/Easton... Those brands aren't perfect and do fail, but (much like RiRi and YKK zips) seem to do significantly better than alternatives in long-term use.

Pete.

pjclinch wrote:

Gattonero wrote:I'm wondering how does it happen for those poles to crack? Strong winds?

I think they typically start cracking at the joins, possibly from careless assembly (I've often heard it said that you should never assemble shock-corded poles by throwing them and letting the elastic do the work as it pulls the sections in to one another hard enough to begin cracks). And once they start to go any stress will contribute. And salt water will add to woes (spurred by pals with cracked Quasar poles that TN declined to replace as they said it was salt corrosion I took to washing my poles in warm water after paddling or seaside trips).

Monster winds will take a fault and make it bigger, but if you have a good pole just overcome by more wind than it can take I think it will tend to fail traumatically, with a fold rather than a crack. I've not had this happen while camping, but I have killed a pole that was bent by a strong wind trying to bend it back at home and over-doing it, where it folded Once there's a crease it's as good as dead.

The morals seem to be careful assembly and good quality poles, particularly with respect to the joints between sections where stresses will concentrate. DAC and Easton are the ones that the "money not much object" brands tend to go for, and though every once in a while someone decides e.g. scandium alloy is so much better than anything else, after a year or two they're back with DAC/Easton... Those brands aren't perfect and do fail, but (much like RiRi and YKK zips) seem to do significantly better than alternatives in long-term use.

Pete.

In the case of my Calder 500 it was a glass fibre pole section, split with two or three lengthwise cracks for a few inches at one end. After its first outing, in a sheltered spot for three days of good weather in September. Of course, it could have been one of the poles my daughter had been responsible for assembling...

We're talking of tents on which the poles would have to bend in order to achieve the correct shape of the tent.
Plus there will be flex with the wind, so it's all adding up.

Using an additional sleeve seems a wise idea

Fibreglass poles are generally found down-market from alloy. There's probably reasons to do with cost/strength/reliability for that...

On popular sites with a big range of tents the ones with glass poles seem to move around a lot more when the wind gets up!

transmitted from my personal telephony apparatus

Just been shown this thread because I repaired a badly cracked pole yesterday.

I used heatshrink tubing which slips on over the ferrules easily and shrinks down with a hot air paint stripper or hair drier.

http://cpc.farnell.com/unbranded/spi254 ... dp/CB00886

Cheap and easy and appears to have worked well, but I really won't know till next summer whether it can be recommended.

corvus wrote:Just been shown this thread because I repaired a badly cracked pole yesterday.

I used heatshrink tubing which slips on over the ferrules easily and shrinks down with a hot air paint stripper or hair drier.

http://cpc.farnell.com/unbranded/spi254 ... dp/CB00886

Cheap and easy and appears to have worked well, but I really won't know till next summer whether it can be recommended.

Mm, i'm not in the habit of taking a hair dryer camping, let alone a paint stripper.