TheFoothillsForum

I have 2 great tents. Both have broken shock cords. I bought a fix it kit. That could work for my smaller tent. But, how the heck do you get the cord to stay on the threading wire? I am going nuts!! My larger older North Face tent is my favorite one. The poles are thicker and I'd be willing to get another fix it kit. Unfortunately, I can't seem to figure out how many poles are needed for the tent itself and how many are needed for the rain fly. There are 24 poles. I'm so mad at myself!! When I had to put up my old old tent from the "70's, I nail polished each end with its matching number. Why didn't I do this with my dome ones? I can go buy a new tent but prefer to figure one of these out. Is there anyone out there with advice? I checked Sport Chalet's website to see if one of their services is fixing the poles. Couldn't find that service.

Remember when we had the chance to write about ourselves? One small tidbit about me is that I love to camp. I mean rough it, catch my dinner, go to a primitive place, relax around the campfire, count the shooting stars, chop my wood, cook outside, read, and get the best night's sleep ever while listening to nature. Heck, once I even took an owl pellet-put it in a cup of water and used tweezers to build the skeleton. The owl ate a shrew. That was so cool as I did it with my son when he was a young boy.

That's a true teacher for you.

Unfortunately it just might be better to get a new tent, they are inexspensive anymore. I remember getting rid of my old canvas cabin tent a few years ago and was not happy about it.

I am totally springing the owl pellet story on Bob's grandkids . We are taking them to Wheeler Gorge by Ojai for the weekend.

I'm a longtime backpacker, and over the years have had a variety of gear. Here are some ideas:

You may want to try getting a hold of North Face directly. Many of the established companies will be helpful and stand by their product thru it's natural life, especially if it has a lifetime guarantee which many companies used to and some still do. For the cost of mailing, they will often for a very small or no fee repair or replace parts to keep youre equipment going. For some brands Sport Chalet has for me, for a single fee, ship it out for you and you can pick up back up at the store. Don't know if that's still true though. I hear REI will do something similar. Also sometimes if they do not have a comparabile product or necessary part, they will offer you a newer product at a good discounted rate, since they are dealing direct with you. These companies usually require that the gear be CLEAN to be worked on.

I have personal experience with getting repairs or replacemnts for Jansport, Kelty, REI, Traeger and a few others with great success. There use to be a shop Wilderness Workshop near Eagle Rock that would do repairs but they closed down a few years ago and I have not found a good replacement shop. I love my old gear, but often what happens is that I'll get something fixed, then something else will break and on and on. I keep stuff in repair but ultimately If figure if I'm going to the backcountry, I need something reliable.

Good luck!

jim

Thanks so much jim. I got to thinking that fix it places for camping gear is about nonexistent. Even though I'm handy with this kind of thing, I just got frustrated. I want to reuse as much as possible without buying more stuff. I did find a super deal on a Coleman tent and broke down and bought it. It got great reviews and sleeps six. I saved everything for my North Face tent and hope to get it fixed eventually. It's my favorite one. Actually if I took an inordinate amount of measuring, calculating etc. bet ya I could figure it out. I just don't have time right now. Again, thanks and I will contact North Face or Sport Chalet.

I have a 7 person tent I'm selling for $50 bucks, but I'll sell it to a fellow neighbor for $40

http://losangeles.craigslist.org/sfv/sp ... 61921.html