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Dirty Ski Bases

post #1 of 13
1/27/06 at 8:07pm
Thread Starter 
Last weekend while skiing I noticed my skis bases are kind of black grey and brown and some spots, the snow was kinda brown because the conditions are pretty rough, but there getting better. So my question is how do you clean skis bases? Even if it doesnt affect performance which I would suspect it does, I dont want it on there. So can some1 please help me out, thanks a lot.
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post #2 of 13
1/27/06 at 8:12pm
http://www.racewax.com/tunetips.html

Read through but the part on cleaning starts @ #5 in the second section.

Never use chemical cleaners. They are bad for bases.
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post #3 of 13
1/30/06 at 7:03am
There is disagreement on base cleaners. Swix and Toko make them and have their use in their manuals. I would agree that the best would be to hot scrape several times. And if you don't do your own repairs so don't need base cleaner for other uses Ok then hot scrape. I don't think base cleaner hurt bases if used properly. On a new pair of skis I spray down and run down with fibrelene towel after 30 seconds. If lots of wax or crap on one spot will reapply there and rub down to clean.

I only use on new ski or if I've got repairs to do all over the ski. With lots of ptex work and a lot of edge work as will be scrapping way a lot of ptex anyway. Other then that just do spot application where I will be doing base repairs.

Now I use citric based cleaner not petrol based so that makes a difference and the citric based stuff is pretty mild. BAse cleaner is great to clean wax off of scrappers .
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post #4 of 13
1/30/06 at 10:45am
Quote:
Originally Posted by RACEWAXdotCOM
Never use chemical cleaners. They are bad for bases.

That is definitely open to debate -- plenty of people use base cleaners with no ill effects. Please educate us -- how can a citrus-based cleaner can do anything bad to a sintered polyethylene material? I do agree that the petrol-based cleaners are potentially bad though.
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post #5 of 13
1/30/06 at 12:05pm
Skier219, thank you for saying that plenty of people clean their bases with Citric cleaners with no ill effects! I'm debating what to do, with the cleaner in one hand and my new skis in the other!!
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post #6 of 13
1/30/06 at 5:50pm
I'm not saying it hurts the actual material, I am saying that stripping wax out of your base is undesirable and will make the base slower rather than removing it by the hot-wax-scape method which is healthier and contributes to a faster base with time. You remove wax while always keeping your base bathed in wax. I talked to several ski company technical employees at the national trade show in Las Vegas; they all recommended it over cleaners. Cleaners are only good to work on limited areas when doing base repairs.
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post #7 of 13
1/30/06 at 6:45pm
I guess I like the cleaners because they get more dirt/crap off the base than scraping (and do it more efficiently). I found this out once when cleaning a repair spot after scraping, and the rag came away nasty brown. Went back and cleaned the whole ski, came to the conclusion that scraping had still left them really dirty. If you have the time, I am sure multiple wax/scrape cycles would work.

Craig
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post #8 of 13
1/30/06 at 7:57pm
I'm not aware of any citrus cleaner that does not also contain a lot of chemical solvents. I avoid them. Maybe 100% citrus cleaners exist, I've just not seen any.
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post #9 of 13
1/31/06 at 8:13am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lostboy
I'm not aware of any citrus cleaner that does not also contain a lot of chemical solvents. I avoid them. Maybe 100% citrus cleaners exist, I've just not seen any.
If that concerned couldn't you just get pure citric acid powder and mix up a batch of your own?? just asking. Would be way cheaper that paying the shipping for a bottle. I might have gone that way but bought about 4 snowboard wax kits that included a case , roll of fibrelene towels, spray bottle of base cleaner, syn cork and some fluro rub on wax ( that I've mostely thrown out) all for less than the equal bottle of toko base cleaner.
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post #10 of 13
3/1/06 at 4:04pm
I know this is late to post , but i would never use a base cleaner like something citric. I use crap wax and scrape the crap out of it. If the wax keeps coming off dirty , wax and scrape again , works well becasue the open pours on the base will accept the wax, and clean out the others. Also , after a while the citric cleaners take away from the skis abillity to accept wax, and can end up ruining your skis.
-JMK
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post #11 of 13
3/1/06 at 6:53pm
Kerosene.
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post #12 of 13
3/7/06 at 7:04am
What about back in "The Day" when we used to keep cans of WD-40 in the lift lines during spring conditions..lol.....Sorry, couldn't pass that old joke up.
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post #13 of 13
3/7/06 at 8:04pm
Never tried WD-40, but I have used Ivory soap and I know a few racers that would use Pledge.

From my experience with cleaners/solvents, the most common mistake people make if they use them is that they do not allow adequate drying time before waxing, and then they do not prep wax their skis, but instead only apply on quick/thin layer of their final wax. Similarly, when people hot scrape, the most common thing I've seen is people overheating the base or core. I've witnesed some people going so far as heating the core so much that the topsheet was HOT to the touch, I'd guess well over 100 degrees. I still recall learning to tune and being told, as soon as you can feel any warming in the topsheet, let the ski cool (afterall it is heat and presure that cure the adhesives in between the sandwich construction layers - therefore, heat and lack of pressure can affect the adhesion between the layers as well).
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