I am pretty sure that no kites have unlimited "impact" warranty, if that is what caused the torn bit.

You might just have been unlucky with how hard / loaded and the angle that the kite hit the water or wave?

Or you could have weakened the material before hand by leaving it in hot places / laying on the beach a lot, or previous hard impacts.

So I would be surprised if they would fix it.... Had it been session 1, crash 1 and it wasn't a smack into the water, the situation might be different.

I'm 99.9% sure you won't get that covered under warranty. Similar thing happened to my 13m Bandit3 last week. Basically you just have to take the good with the bad and accept that the kite's value has now dropped.

Kitehard said...

Manufacturer warranty is for defects in the materials and workmanship. If you have flown it 30 or 40 sessions, it would be very fair to say there were no defects in the kite from new.

To KH, would you say this would stand for a stitching issue that occured 9 months after new? I am thinking of my kite that has recently torn on the leading edge where the manufacturers have stitched a buffer on, then stitched over the same section again without lining up the needle holes properly so there's two sets of zig's and zag's crisscrossing.

The only place that has torn was where the zig's and zag's didn't match up and created a weakened section of leading edge ie. the more holes you put in the fabric, the greater the chance it will tear so it would seem ideal to match the zig's and zag's up like they did on every other buffer.

Did that make sense?

hey mate, i have a friend that had the exact same thing happen to him with a fuel.another had the kite literally blow up on him whilst pumping the kite up and my kite suffered tears after it crashed and deflated, also had a very long swim in.I just reckon that ss quallity has drastically reduced and are no longer the benchmark for bulletproof construction.If i was you, i would get it to a good local sailmaker and just pay the 100 or so bucks that it will cost and that way you will have it back sooner. my kite took over 5 weeks to get back to me when it got sent to the distributor, which is pretty poor form. i wish i had just had it done myself. don t reckon ss will be my 1st option kite for next year tho.

I had the same thing happen last year to my brand new SS13mtr on first session. In a simple roll I lost control and the kite hit water and wouldn't relaunch. I eventually found a straight split along LE from centre strut to next strut (clean and neat at point of connection). Witnesses who saw incident were surprised because of it was only slight impact. On contacting SS I was initialy told it's my fault and bad luck, however persistence led to a positive outcome. That said I don't think a kite with 6 months of use would qualify for faulty workmanship. I reckon that once a kite is a month old the warranty is useless because the manufacturer will claim use & wear will have caused whatever problem.

Hi guys,

The way I had it explained to me by a manufacturer was that the kite is designed to fly and perform well dynamically in the sky. It's flight performance is the most important consideration.

Kite weight is also a consideration and directly links straight back to the first order of design ie flight (build it light and it will turn/fly better).

Lastly the kite is designed to withstand some basic crashes and float to achieve relaunch from the water.

If you sit at the beach on any windy day and watch what people do to their kites, it's pretty unbelievable that the kites last a session, let alone a season or more without major repair.

Shell scrapes as they are self launched, crashes into scrub, vegetation and dunes, hard impacts on the sand, caught in shore break and rolled/dragged through the wringer whilst the hapless rider is towed along like a rag doll torpedo, impacts from pitching green waves, full bore kite loop slams leading edge straight down, mid air crashes into other kites and finally self landings that go wrong.

I observe this stuff ^^^^ every single day at Pinnaroo with the exception of pitching green waves and you do get to see the odd bit of damage but on thew whole, most survive repeated abuse. Considering that they are not really designed to be crashed and abused, they do generally last pretty well.

Just a different perspective,

KH

stabber said...

ss and warantee....is like ss and after sales service!..is like this years wind!

Personally, I beg to differ -- Slingshot has been absolutely First Class in dealing with any and every issue I've ever had with any of my many SS kites -- not that there have been many issues because their gear is well made, however whenever something amiss comes to their attention they're always keen to want to know about it, and in my experience, waste no time doing whatever is necessary to make it right. I give them TOP marks for service--and I can't say the same for some other brand-name manufacturers I've bought kites from in the past. Others may have had different experiences but I can't fault Slingshot on any issue.

wow....that's short for World Of Warcraft!

back on topic though, why red thumb me when the truth is out there?

I'm just replying to a thread which is dear to my heart.