Fibraplex Carbon Pole Replacements

[South_Aussie_Hiker]

Does anyone have experience with the products at fibraplex.com?

A bit of reading online suggests they aren't quite as robust as aluminium, but the majority of failures are caused by user error (failing to ensure the pole sections are fully inserted into each other).

I've been looking at getting the weight of my Mutha Hubba down, and replacing the 1kg pole set with 500g Carbon poles. The dilemma is that for the same price of replacing my carbon poles I could probably get a Tarptent, but I really really love the build quality of the MSR. If I could get the 3kg weight down to 2.5kg, then it would be a much more acceptable weight to split two ways.

They do replacement light weight pole sets for many common light weight hiking tents.

I might replace the two not-quite-so-critical straight pole sections first before going to the expense of replacing the main hubbed pole.

[alliecat]

Funny you should mention Fibraplex...

They have been around a while, so you would think they were reputable, but...

I placed an order with them on Feb 13. Apart from an automated email acknowledging the order, I've heard nothing since. No "your order has shipped" email, no tracking information, nothing. I've emailed them twice to ask about it and had no reply so far.

Now it may be that the package is on its way to me, and that they just have rubbish customer service who don't reply to emails. But right now, I'm only a couple of days from declaring them to be thieves and trying to get the money back via my credit card provider.

I have a friend in the US who has been calling them on my behalf to try and get some sort of response out of them, but so far, he's only got their answering machine.

But aside from that, their products seem to have a reasonable reputation. The problem with carbon poles that are bent is that when they fail, they do so catastrophically. When aluminium poles fail, they can often be bent back into approximate shape and reinforced, i.e. repaire in the field enough to get you through. That's much trickier with carbon poles. Roger Caffin has a lot of experience making carobn poles for his tunnel tents - search backpackinglight.com for some very detailed discussions of the trials and tribulations of making your own carbon fibre tent poles.

The quality of the carbon fibre tubing varies greatly from simple, cheap, and rubbishy pultruded through to expensive, complicated wrapped structures that are much, much stronger. There might be some detailed info on the web about Fibraplex's poles.

If/when my issues with Fibraplex get sorted I'll post here to let people know.

Cheers,
Alliecat

[South_Aussie_Hiker]

Okay, thanks alliecat. I look forward to your feedback.

[alliecat]

An update: my friend in the US finally got hold of them by phone. They were able to confirm that my order had shipped a few days ago. They were apparently "too busy" to respond to my emails. Several other people have come forward with similar stories - no contact from the company after placing an order and no shipping information provided. But everybody got what they ordered eventually.

So it seems that they are a bit slow to ship ("a few weeks" seems to be the norm) and they have really poor ideas about customer service, but, if you order from them, you will get your order eventually.

Cheers,
Alliecat

[South_Aussie_Hiker]

Well that's good news Alliecat.

Once you get them, I'll be interested in hearing what you think about strength/durability. What tent are you using them with?

I'm thinking if I go down this road I might paint a white ring around the female end of each pole and the end of the ferrule. That way when assembling the tent, I'll be able to make sure each pole section is fully inserted into the next (ie no gap between the two painted bits), and reduce the risk of snapping one.

[alliecat]

I'm getting just a simple straight pole (the Pinnacle 62 tarp pole) for my MLD Trailstar. The pinnacle poles are much bigger than their usual poles; 0.625" diameter compared to 0.292" so other than general comments about the quality I probably can't tell you much that is useful.

There was a quite favourable review of the Fibraplex poles on bacpackinglight.com a few years ago. That's probably worth a read. Although, they do list "good customer service" as one of the good points, so things have obviously changed a bit since then... Reading the comments that follow that review is worthwhile too - there is a suggestion that adding external aluminium ferrules over the joints can greatly reduce the chance of a break. Definitely worth reading that and other discussions abut CF poles at BPL and elsewhere.

Edit: One last update. I had an email from Linas at Fibraplex apologising for the delay and lack of contact. There was a mix-up with shipping my order but he's assured me it will ship on Monday. So all's well that ends well I guess. Hopefully they will take this as a sign to put some effort into improving their customer service.

Cheers,
Alliecat

[South_Aussie_Hiker]

Well, I've done some more research on these and think I'm going to give them a miss.

The general consensus seems to be that for replacing straight poles, these carbon ones are every bit as good at almost half the weight.

But when it comes to tent designs with heavy bends, they inevitably break fairly quickly. In fact, even bends less than their "recommended maximum" cause breakages.

It's quite a pity, because I could have done with the weight savings... having said that, for the same price as a set of poles, I can probably get a Tarptent Stratospire 2 which will save much more weight anyway. If they start making them with slight curves/bends, I might look into it again.