I’m skiing in 2006 Tecnica Diablo Race R plug boots, size 44, 319mm sole, ground out for my size 12s. The shells and soles are in remarkably good condition for their age. They still fit my feet well with no pain points. The lace up race liners clearly are packed out by now, but I can still buckle them to a snug and not painful fit. I never spend the whole day all over the mountain, so my snug race boots work for me.
Aside: I’ve read the criticism about these Tecnicas being “rotary boots” with excessive forward lean, etc. I don’t care; they work for me. The well known critic of rotary boots also said that Ligety leaned in too much to be successful.
Context: my skiing consists of 2 hour sessions lapping empty blue runs, working to maintain and improve my GS race carve on 183/25m tweener GS skis. This mode of skiing is obviously not everyone’s thing, but at age 70, two hours of “fantasy GS training” a couple times a week is a joyful time.
I know the Tecnicas are on borrowed time, but I have no great motivation to spend $800 on new boots and boot fitting. If and when I feel the fit degrading, if the shells are intact, I am inclined to spend a couple hundred on replacement Tecnica WC lace up liners (or the identical Dobermanns.)
Which leads to the question (finally):
What are the chances that new Tecnica WC liners will work in my old 93mm Tecnica plug shells? Tecnica tech support is not optimistic: “replacement liners for this particular model are no longer in production and any of our current liners will not be compatible.” There are two ways to take this:
- they should know, or
- of course they would say that
Visually the new WC liners look very similar to mine.
Of course there’s only one way to know: buy and try. I’m willing to spend $200 finding out.
I am not sure anyone out there has faced a similar “old race boot” situation. Any advice will be appreciated.
If anyone out there wants to sell a pair of newer Tecnica or Nordica race liners in my size, I am interested!
Aside: I’ve read the criticism about these Tecnicas being “rotary boots” with excessive forward lean, etc. I don’t care; they work for me. The well known critic of rotary boots also said that Ligety leaned in too much to be successful.
Context: my skiing consists of 2 hour sessions lapping empty blue runs, working to maintain and improve my GS race carve on 183/25m tweener GS skis. This mode of skiing is obviously not everyone’s thing, but at age 70, two hours of “fantasy GS training” a couple times a week is a joyful time.
I know the Tecnicas are on borrowed time, but I have no great motivation to spend $800 on new boots and boot fitting. If and when I feel the fit degrading, if the shells are intact, I am inclined to spend a couple hundred on replacement Tecnica WC lace up liners (or the identical Dobermanns.)
Which leads to the question (finally):
What are the chances that new Tecnica WC liners will work in my old 93mm Tecnica plug shells? Tecnica tech support is not optimistic: “replacement liners for this particular model are no longer in production and any of our current liners will not be compatible.” There are two ways to take this:
- they should know, or
- of course they would say that
Visually the new WC liners look very similar to mine.
Of course there’s only one way to know: buy and try. I’m willing to spend $200 finding out.
I am not sure anyone out there has faced a similar “old race boot” situation. Any advice will be appreciated.
If anyone out there wants to sell a pair of newer Tecnica or Nordica race liners in my size, I am interested!
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