jb1979 said..

pete53 said..
Any observations/comments on wear and tear of TR3 in comparison to XXX now that it's Been out there in various board shapes for a while?

I personally have noticed it seems scratch/mark easier, but is just as tough.

I crashed my car into a pole with my tr3 placid inside, it flew forward, smashed the windscreen but not a mark on the board. not bad!

Them poles just seem to jump out at ya JB1979 .. my placid and 9.11 insane TR3 are holding out well ...the insane i would say is tougher with the full gloss .the deck on my placid has sunk a little ..but i guess i ride it too much ...i am rough on boards ,And do sink the deck on most of my boards ..heel heavy rider .the flex seems a little stiffer than the balsa ,maybe being a softer wood ...but the 3-400 $ saving is worth it ..i will be going full gloss on my next custom ..

Not had the same luck with my TR3 Placid. This happened in peaky 3 ft surf

So I repaired it 3 layers of 4oz with epoxy resin and it creased in 2 ft surf which was reform stuff in a river


Both sessions the surf size and power didn't warrant this level of damage.

LastSupper said..

backbeach said..
Not had the same luck with my TR3 Placid. This happened in peaky 3 ft surf

So I repaired it 3 layers of 4oz with epoxy resin and it creased in 2 ft surf which was reform stuff in a river


Both sessions the surf size and power didn't warrant this level of damage.

Thats sad to see ! No board is the same after snapping once ??

SNAPOVA!!!!!!

Hey guys not holding my breath on refunds etc but its not the first sunova sup thats gone down this path. (I had a sunova shortboard whose blank collapsed too) I'm really perplexed as to how the second crease occured. It was a fun board while it lasted. Sounds like there's people who've put there sunova boards through some hard yards and they've come out intact. For me personally I really can't afford to take that chance again even though I think their designs are great, it's buyer beware

Im perplexed....always had XXX boards from Sunova, yet to buy a TR3 ( i prefer the look of the XXX) , my XXX are so hard i cant complain, and was under the assumption reading all the views on seabreeze that the TR3 were actually strongers than the XXX ......maybe the extra flex of the XXX prevent more this kind of damage ??

I bought a sunova pretty heavily used by team rider before me and been thru the wringer since. Very impressed with construction. No deck dents. Same for everyone else I know who has one, all xxx. Everything can break though if it is hit the right way, hard to say in this instance unless inspected by someone who knows. I would think if its a defect sunova would help out. Thinner boards with a lot of surface area could be more vulnerable as well.

Stronger, lighter, cheaper pick any 2 out of 3....

Hi Guys,

Interesting to come across this topic and hear everyones experiences with different Sunova boards and technologies, i work for the company on the ground at the factory full time and it's surprising how much information is spread on this forum but how little we actually receive or are contacted about through our channels. I do scroll through here when i have the chance and will chime in when something relevant pops up. Within this post ill do a little fact checking and give some more information on the differences between XXXtec and TR3tec.

Firstly the differences in thickness of the sandwich mediums is a little less than stated in some of the posts above, with the XXXtec we use a 2mm Balsa on the deck as the sandwich medium, on the TR3tec we use 1.2mm Paulownia. Paulownia is a lot denser than balsa so you can use a thinner sandwich and retain amazing impact resistance, we also use more fibreglass reinforcements on the TR3tec boards maintain overall durability. Justaddwater i would be interested to know exactly how many Sunova TR3 boards you have seen with a compressed deck, they only first landed in Australia at the start of the year and there wasn't too many. I have personally heard of only one board, that customer contacted us directly and we came up with a solution collectively..

When we came up with the TR3tec for a number of reasons, not simply because we wanted to make a cheaper inferior product because i don't believe thats what TR3 boards are. One of the main reasons was to keep an achievable price point in the market due to increased costs across a number of areas. Another was the fact it's becoming increasingly hard to find a sustainable reliable source of balsa in commercial quantities, in the density required to build a superior product. I'm glad so far everyone in this topic hasn't had issues with their XXXtec boards but i will be the first to admit they aren't problem free either due to the inconsitency of balsa wood, so we wanted to find a more predictable, sustainable solution. This was possible through the use of paulownia wood.

Regarding the overall build of boards it's very tough to find a happy medium between strength and weight, we do our best to supply lightweight great performing gear that can stand up and withstand as broad range of conditions as possible and i think we generally do a pretty good job of that. For sure we have boards that break in all the technologies we made, we could make them unbreakable but it would come at the expense of weight and performance so at some point you have to draw the line. Something else that i think is seldom taken into consideration is the surface area and thickness of a board. In this particular case the placid is 33 1/2" wide and only 4 1/2" thick with a super low profile, this is great for performance but if you end up with a lip breaking directly on your board you could encounter some issues..

Regarding this case particularly the customer did contact us about the board asking for advice on how to repair it or if we had any recommendations of people who could do the job. We could see the board was clearly in 2 pieces but understood if a boards in the wrong spot it will break and there didn't seem to be any discontent. From our side it didn't seem to be a manufacturing issue. We recommended a repairer on the GC and heard no further about it until i came across this thread. If anyone has any issues with any of our boards and would like to have a talk about it, we are always open to chat through any of our channels but it's really hard for us to amend issues and come up with solutions to problems we don't actually know exist..

Cheers,

Dylan

Glad i hadn't ordered a TR3 Placid.
But also haven't ordered in XXX because the price was inappropriate compared to other sandwich boards, like Quatro Pro tech.
I wonder why the Sunovas have to be build with wood and not classic sandwich, ecology?

juniorburger said..
Hi Guys,

Interesting to come across this topic and hear everyones experiences with different Sunova boards and technologies, i work for the company on the ground at the factory full time and it's surprising how much information is spread on this forum but how little we actually receive or are contacted about through our channels. I do scroll through here when i have the chance and will chime in when something relevant pops up. Within this post ill do a little fact checking and give some more information on the differences between XXXtec and TR3tec.

Firstly the differences in thickness of the sandwich mediums is a little less than stated in some of the posts above, with the XXXtec we use a 2mm Balsa on the deck as the sandwich medium, on the TR3tec we use 1.2mm Paulownia. Paulownia is a lot denser than balsa so you can use a thinner sandwich and retain amazing impact resistance, we also use more fibreglass reinforcements on the TR3tec boards maintain overall durability. Justaddwater i would be interested to know exactly how many Sunova TR3 boards you have seen with a compressed deck, they only first landed in Australia at the start of the year and there wasn't too many. I have personally heard of only one board, that customer contacted us directly and we came up with a solution collectively..

When we came up with the TR3tec for a number of reasons, not simply because we wanted to make a cheaper inferior product because i don't believe thats what TR3 boards are. One of the main reasons was to keep an achievable price point in the market due to increased costs across a number of areas. Another was the fact it's becoming increasingly hard to find a sustainable reliable source of balsa in commercial quantities, in the density required to build a superior product. I'm glad so far everyone in this topic hasn't had issues with their XXXtec boards but i will be the first to admit they aren't problem free either due to the inconsitency of balsa wood, so we wanted to find a more predictable, sustainable solution. This was possible through the use of paulownia wood.

Regarding the overall build of boards it's very tough to find a happy medium between strength and weight, we do our best to supply lightweight great performing gear that can stand up and withstand as broad range of conditions as possible and i think we generally do a pretty good job of that. For sure we have boards that break in all the technologies we made, we could make them unbreakable but it would come at the expense of weight and performance so at some point you have to draw the line. Something else that i think is seldom taken into consideration is the surface area and thickness of a board. In this particular case the placid is 33 1/2" wide and only 4 1/2" thick with a super low profile, this is great for performance but if you end up with a lip breaking directly on your board you could encounter some issues..

Regarding this case particularly the customer did contact us about the board asking for advice on how to repair it or if we had any recommendations of people who could do the job. We could see the board was clearly in 2 pieces but understood if a boards in the wrong spot it will break and there didn't seem to be any discontent. From our side it didn't seem to be a manufacturing issue. We recommended a repairer on the GC and heard no further about it until i came across this thread. If anyone has any issues with any of our boards and would like to have a talk about it, we are always open to chat through any of our channels but it's really hard for us to amend issues and come up with solutions to problems we don't actually know exist..

Cheers,

Dylan

Hi Dylan
Who on the Gc did you recommend for repairs,I'm in need of one?