Ride El Hefe Review And Buying Advice

150 dollar quality for the low price of 400 bucks

Ride El Hefe Review And Buying Advice

First off the good:

The straps are great, super comfortable and solid.

Now the bad( or just meh):

For 400 bucks I expected the chassis to be anodized aluminum, what I got was painted. The paint started to chip off on day 1( on the back bindings).

The hardware is cheap. I striped a screw in the baseplate just trying to adjust it when setting them up for the first time. I used the proper size Phillips head and a hand tool( not a screw gun). I had to use a tap to get it out and replace it.

The footbed is sloppy....the way it mounts to the binding is very similar to a flow binding, but not tight and you can feel it slip around under your foot.

The forward lean requires a tool ( not a big deal but for 400 bucks I expect better) and the highbacks don't rotate.

The disk is aluminum as is the baseplate, which caused the back binding hardware to loosen and gave me disco foot after 2 runs.

All in all the ride they offer is pretty good and they are extremely light, but the bottom line is that for them money I'd look elsewhere. Burton, Bent Metal, and Union all offer better features , better build quality and the same or lower prices.

My suggestion... if you want aluminum bindings, buy a set of sparks,burton hitchikers or Karakoram bindings and solid board pucks...they're all made in the USA and are waaay better quality and you can splitboard with them.

Thanks.

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Ride El Hefe Review And Buying Advice

Ill start with the good. I like the binding i was having problems with my feet with my old binding but with these i could ride all day without stoping which is nice. super resonsive binding it rails out turns.

Now the bad. Dont buy these if you have multiple boards and want to switch back and forth cause at first its almost like the hardware isnt long enough. if you want to take the binding off losen all 4 screws a half turn before losening one completely cause if you dont that last screw becomes almost impossible to take out. The wedgie foot bed after the third time I changed it, the washer thats connected to it came out. The washer makes sure the screw cant fall out, not a huge deal but could be if you loose the screw.

Now this could me my fault but my burton bindings lasted a bit longer, on the el hefe's the ladders for the rachets started to strip after the first day. i tighten my binding till it cant go any more so might just be me but like i said before my burton ladders seem to last longer.

Overall, I dont dislike the bindings but there are things I really don't like about them

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Long term update

Ride El Hefe Review And Buying Advice

So I've gained a bit of weight since my last entry, probably equal parts muscle and fat - hey I like to eat and train. On to the update.

Reading my review back from a year ago I feel it is spot on still and one of the weaknesses has proven really troubling, the Wedgie footbed. It is held onto the binding with a single, fiddly screw and during riding it seemed to shear some thread from the top of the screw hole, making the footbeds unusable on that binding.
I can probably have the aluminium screw hole rewelded and tapped but in the meantime I have purchased some 2014 Burton Malavitas and 2014 Burton LTD bindings to use while I figure out who can do this repair for me.
I hope Ride address the Wedgie system with something more elegant and less vulnerable to an issue like this, these are top of the line bindings that let me down big time while I was riding.

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