How To Fix Boa Laces On Your Cycling Shoes | Gcn Tech Monday Maintenance

Welcome back to maintenance monday today, i'm going to explain how to replace the lace part on your boa dials if you're unfortunate enough to have them break. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of different types, designs and colors of cyclic machine, but there is one common theme among many of them, and that is the use of a boa dial. This is an ip1 dial, but there are a few different designs used, though this is probably one of the most common now over time. The lace part of this could possibly wear away or, if you've crashed, it may all be damaged and completely broken the wire here. That'S introduced into the bow system is called the cs1 and it is in fact a stainless steel wire. With a nylon outer coating. There is in fact, 49 individual stainless steel strands that make up this little cable. The ratchet system here is inside the bow dial, and this is used to allow you to tighten and loosen the shoe as you require yet keep it secure once you've got it set firmly in place and to to lock it into place. You just click the button down and pull it up to allow it to open and release a lot of that cable tension. So what we're going to need today is this little tool here, which is a t6 torx piece now chances are when you got your new shoes out of the box you're far too excited to get them on your feet, and you probably had this tucked away in The box and maybe threw it to the side thinking nothing more of it. However, when you do get to the point of needing to replace the laces or adjust or fix anything to do with your bullet system. This is the tool you're going to need. If you can't find it, it is just a t6 torx piece, so you can just find online and buy a little one. That'Ll work perfectly first step before we start removing anything from our shoes is to have a look at how the cable and lace is rooted through your shoe, because you're going to need to replicate this. So it's always a good idea to maybe just take a picture on your phone, so you've got something to reference back to now. What we're going to need to do is take our small torx key place this into the hole in the center of the bowel dial. Just find that sit that in place, and then we can turn and undo this it shouldn't be too tight. Obviously it's fairly small, so it can't be can't be too crazy. Then, once that loosens off we'll be able to remove this top section off here and we've got that little screw held in place, and this should all stay as one piece and we can set that to the side, make sure we don't lose it and then inside Here, like you, can see this purple color is the spool or reel which holds all of the lace, as we do the boa system up to remove this. We can just use the end of our t6 torx piece and carefully lift and pick that up out of the way. Like i say once that's out of the way we can start to unravel it. Now it might look a little bit confusing or daunting having this cable going everywhere, but don't worry it's not that complicated so inside the spool, like i said, we've got the points where the lace is anchored. What we need to do is unloop all that it's just a case of pushing that through taking your time being a little bit patient. What i find is helpful is using your little torx piece to help unloop some of this stuff, so that that means we can then remove all of the lace off of the spool and then start to guide out there. We are so we can unloop the remaining bits here, which is a bit of a faff and fiddle to get out, but there we go there's one. So we can now wrote this all the way out through the shoe pull that out again. This was why it's always a good idea to take a picture of how the lace was rooted through the shoe. Now, if you're unfortunate enough that the lace has broken you're going to need to get all of the broken pieces, so two ends presumably can still be attached into the spool. And then, when we lay out onto our workbench, we can see just how long we need to make our new lace, because when you get one, you will have to cut it to the correct length because it varies between all the different shoes. So try to lay out the pieces to gauge how long to cut it once you've got your lace laid out and the pieces joined together. If yours is broken, you can then measure it ready to cut your new lace to the correct length. Now, as i mentioned earlier inside, here, are some very fine stainless steel cables, but you do need to cut them with a good side cutter, so perfect tool for the job are the sort of cable cutters you use for cutting your gear or brake cables. On your bike, this will give you a nice clean cut, meaning they won't fray and it will last a very long time. So i'm at the stage of re-lacing the left shoe and i haven't taken my own advice because i didn't take a picture of what this shoe looks like at the start, so simplest option, i'm just going to mirror the uh the way the right hand side shoe Is laced up copy that across and then hopefully have it back together in no time at all, so this side first, i guess so. I'Ve got my lace looped all the way through the shoe, and i can confirm it looks the same as the other one, which is always a good start, so set that to the side, and then this is how we want to end so. We'Ve got both the laces onto the actual bower, dial, housing and there's a small hole. Each side here which one lace roots through and then the other one comes through, and then we can end up with both of the laces out. Sat there like this. Now, if you happen to have one lace, that's poking out far more than the other. You just need to take a bit of time and move the rooting around so that you end up with the laces at about the same length which that's about right. It'S important to know that the left and right shoes have different spools on this is to do with the little ratcheting teeth here and also it's to do with the order of how you would lace the lace back into this spool. So, on the left hand spool, for example, if you have a little lettering facing away from yourself, you would start on the right hand, hole insert the lace through then come back down through the middle hole and finish back up through the far left help. So, on the right hand, spool, you would take the reverse action, so you would start on the left feed the lace up into the center of the dial back down through the middle hole and finish up on the right hand side. So it doesn't matter which lace you're going to start with first, but what is important is that you always keep the lettering. That indicates where it's the left or right dial facing away from you and because this is the left hand spool i'm going to start first on the right hand, hole so i'm going to guide the legs through the right hand, hole push that all the way up And through and out the other side like so pull plenty of that through. So we've got enough to work with just move the shoe a little bit closer and then we go back down and out through the middle hole. So, and that creates this little loop here, which is what we're going to then eventually guide the remaining piece back through so make sure we keep a bit of that loop pull some through and then back up through the far left hole. So this point is a little bit tricky. We need to make sure we can get our loop and lace to sit over the top of that middle piece and the reason we're doing that is to make sure the end. So this little piece here doesn't pop back out and get in the way of this ratchet system here so like this, we don't need any more spare lace to poke all the way through. That is plenty, but it's just a case of pulling that bit through. So none of that spare then we can gradually reduce the size of this loop, making sure keeps that little piece there, which i might have to just push that back through slightly. So that's what we need like that. There we go, and that is secure and there's no possible way. Now. However, tight we pull on this this bit of lace, it will always pull that loop down tighter on the end of that cable, meaning it can't possibly come out right next stage is to attach the other side of our lace, because this is the left hand shoe. We need to remember those simple tips which is to keep the lettering away from itself and go in first on the right hand, side guide it through back down through the middle hole and then finish on the left simple at this stage of the process, we're close To having the shoe looking nearly like, it did when we started this job, so we've got the spool, nice and secure, and the main thing is that the lace isn't protruding anywhere from here, and it looks exactly how it looks when we first took apart, which is Always a good sign when trying to fix things. So all we need to do now is pull some of this cable back through. So we've not got any of it to be trapped as we're refitting the spool again once we're at this stage, we've got no cable in the way. We just need to flip the spool over to make sure it fits back into place. The same way. That'S when we took it out is in place and again use our little t6 piece to push that in make sure that's sat nice and flush that looks pretty good. Next step is to put the top cap or the bow dial ratchet system back into place, and the thing with these small screws just need to be a little bit careful with them. Don'T over, tighten it so nip it up. Nice, nice and secure, but not over. The top remember it's nice and small: we don't want to break it. So that's in place. The bow die is back in place. All we need to do now is test to see if it works, so fingers crossed turn. Look at that perfect, so i can gradually remove all this excess lace. I'Ve got wrap it back up onto the spool, which we know is in the right area. Look at that boom um. We need to check the functionality of the shoe really. So no it does up. Okay, we can loosen it off turn the other way yeah pull it through, and then we can open the ratchet out like so look at that good as the day it came out of the box. I hope you found that helpful when it's revived, maybe a slightly old, tired or damaged shoes. And if you have enjoyed this video, give it a big thumbs up. And let me know in the comments section whether you prefer the bower dial or maybe traditional laces and don't forget, subscribe to gcn tech for all things, bike, tech related and hit the bell icon to be notified. When we release a new video