By John McNamee Administrator From Littleton, CO Feb 28, 2008
rockklimber wrote:
PS. Have you noticed that in the picture of your BD ATC guide that you have it upside down? The rope going up to the anchor should be coming out the top of the device and the brake hand side of the rope should be coming out the bottom of the ATC (ie. the device needs to be rotated 180degrees clockwise). The braking action is supposed to be down in the opposite direction of the load (which is up). In this picture you would not be able to adequately brake downward (which would also have the rope rubbing along itself), so you would either have to break to the side at 90 degrees to the direction of the load or when you break the opposing load and braking forces would force the ATC in the correct orientation which would cause the belay loop to twist (thereby weakening it) and would also crossload the carabiner.
Thanks for the heads up on that. Its funny how you screw things like this up when you're staging photos...
Does anyone know what the crossover sizes for the blue and yellow TCUs are? Red and yellow? Or is the yellow C3 more like a blue TCU? I know my .4 camalot is slightly larger than the yellow TCU...
A direct comparison to Metolius TCU's would be nice...function, placement, especially shallow cracks and/or pin scars, size range, weight.
Although I've only used C3s a few times now, I thought I'd share an interesting anecdote regarding placement.
Last year I removed an old cracked angle protecting the crux of a local route. After removing the pin I could not place Metolius TCUs or FCUs in the pin scar. However, I could get a nice bomber C3 placement in the pin scar in addition to placements above and below.
I thought it was a nice real world example of the different placement possibilities with C3s and an improvement in style. Hence, the piton was not replaced.
Took a 15 footer on a size #0 c3, and it held like a dream. Don't know if I would go any smaller than that though.
As for the cams themselves, I like them. TCU's are awesome, but these guys can go into some pretty weird places. I got the 0, 1, and 2 sizes and have had no problems yet. Haven't noticed an unusually stiff trigger either. Maybe because of the bigger sizes? Teamed up with the new c4 cams, they complement each other well.
Compared with Metolius TCUs, I prefer the 0, 00, 000 BD C3s to the grey, purple TCUs. But I find that with the c3 1s and 2s, I still like my TCUs (blue, yellow) more. I find the trigger tension to be a small issue, bust mostly the trigger action and the placements appear more stable and less prone to walking/easier to clean with the metolius pieces. I'll try to get some pics to demonstrate this soon.