Hi All,

Noticed a couple of my bars losing foam today and wondered whether anyone had any wisdom on refoaming. I am considering increasing the diameter of a couple of bars (using foam) to see if this helps with kiters elbow / finger tendons...

Also - when I was inspecting my bars (I have 5 identical north bars) I noticed 2 have cracks appearing where the rope goes through the centre...I may have to create a couple of half rounds and pot rivet these to extend the life a bit more...I wont use em if there is a risk of breakage...especially after today when my chicken loop slipped and I ended up with a 16M rhino in the air unhooked in 17 knots lol....(not my fault if there was no wind when i pumped up - lesson learnt tho...)

Cheers in advance for any advice...

Grog

I went hunting for this info a few months ago and couldn’t find much except this thread from another forum... everything seems to be a compromise on the original.

www.powerkiteforum.com/viewthread.php?tid=16825

This problem has been discussed previously... I dont know if North have fixed it but the 2013 bar(which I have) are notorious for grip failure. One problem is that the grip joins on the underside of the bar which invariably gets impacted by the top of the rotor head causing the grip to peel off. I re glued the grip before it got to badly damaged and then whipped some 3mm chord around the bar in the impact area. It works a treat. You could do the whole bar using different colored chord for each side or use smaller (or larger) diameter chord. I just used cheapo Bunnings stuff but marine supply shops have heaps of good chord options.

www.netknots.com/rope_knots/common-whipping

Here is what I did.. Worked OK..

www.seabreeze.com.au/forums/Kitesurfing/General/Anyone-put-new-grip-on-their-bars/#1592212

North bars ........ nearly as good as the F-one bandit 4 bars ?? - at Least F-one supported a bar replacement/ recall