Metolius TCU climbing cams pulled until failure - Great Slow Motion!

Would you like to see us pull this cam out of this crack with that pulley system? We're going to pull some cams straight in line out of this crack on this episode of Cam Crusher. Hi, I'm Ryan Jinks and welcome to How Not to Highline. Go to slackline.com. It's our new domain for our website that we just updated. It's got lots of good stuff on there. Today, we are going to pull out some cams straight in line or out of line out of this crack that we have here in the middle of nowhere. In our previous episode, we pulled in this crack, we pulled that direction and we were testing to see if the wires, the stems of the cams going over a sharp edge reduced the strength and we've got very interesting results. Most of the time, it didn't actually reduce the strength having the stem go over a sharp edge like this, but it did mess up the cam. As far as safety goes, it was super good enough, but we're going to find out how strong these cams are and if they slip. Now, in Slack Snap here in my garage, we actually have the cams slipping out of our adapter that we made for Slack Snap and that's because it's two pieces of metal and metal is just sliding on metal. We are going to see if we can get some rocks to fit in this Slack Snap machine. I've got some ideas for that, but we're out here in the middle of nowhere in order to see if the cams will slip with real granite. This is the Sierras in California, so this is a pretty good granite. There's some decomposed stuff out here, but not much. Anyways, let me show you what we've got for our test system that we've mocked up here. This is a red TCU Metolius that is about 15 years old. This is my personal cam that we're testing here. They were great when I had them and they were great for what I was doing with piton scars in Yosemite, but if you're a cam connoisseur, you can judge my placement here just so you can totally see what we're working with before we try to pull it out. We have the cam, a 72 kilonewton carabiner going to our dynamometer that we use in Slack Snap. Now, we just broke a line scale, so we're a little afraid to use our second one. We only have two. If you guys buy line scales from linegrip.com, I won't have any to buy. He is running low, but he is ordering more. Anyways, it is the preferred one to use in this case. What we have here is a SMC pulley. These are 45 kilonewtons here, which is probably where they'd break. We can use them on tests that are less than 45 kilonewtons. Gregory in the break. Got our multiplier here. Actually, it's 27 to 1 because he's multiplied it again. First of all, don't judge me if I'm wrong. Second of all, I don't use pulleys because I'm a and we just do a 3 to 1 on everything. What is this? Leave this in the comments below because it's good for the algorithm. This is a 9 to 1 when you multiply the 4 or 5 to 1. Man, you think I would know this. I'm the how not to highline guy. Then you add a multiplier to that, so that's a 3 to 1 on the 3 to 1. It's 9 times whatever the heck you want to consider that. 9 times 5 strands, 4 strands. Leave that in comments below. We're actually interested in cams in this test. Let's get to it. Whoa. So those lobes are almost fully open and the rock cracked. It's just grabbing that now. We're going to keep pulling this. If it slips out, we can always put it back in. But that is, that's interesting. It slipped. We didn't get any slippage when we were pulling it, not in line. At 5.5, it slipped. Well, let's just keep pulling. That's what we're testing. 3, 4, 3, 4, 4.8 kilonewtons in order to get it to come out. And it looks like this, I guess this rock isn't as good as we thought. We can put it in deeper and try it again. The condition of it is, well, it's a well-used cam, so I don't know how much teeth damage is from today. I definitely think this right here is from that test. You can see that the teeth here are how they're supposed to look. You can see what ungrinded teeth look like. All right, so let's stick this thing back in and see what happens. We're at 7.9 kilonewtons. Whoa, it's just moving. Yeah, still well-placed. You're at 10.3, 11.5. Need some help pull? Need some help pull? Holy crap. We need to do better with our catchers, man. Oh, man. Oh, man, that just, she's a slippery girl. Look at that. We got some skid marks. Oh, we just keep breaking things we're not trying to break. How's the dyno? This thing still works. Whoa. Okay, so yeah, that looks like that old guy in Aladdin at the beginning. Looks like his teeth. It's 11, 11.85. I mean, pretty hard to generate that in a whipper. Okay, so we just looked at the slow-mo videos because we like doing that after every test because they're fun to watch. And I noticed there was like a jolt and I thought the camera moved, but I realized this rock was moving. What? Now, okay, so whatever, the rock moves, but I would totally use this situation if I was really climbing or rigging a highline, I guess, because this looks plenty big. It's not super well seated underneath here, but this is a BFR, a big freaking rock. The rock moved apart. We're going to have to test this maybe in a different crack that's bigger rocks, maybe the stuff behind us. We'll test this one more time. I put it in a more of a constrictor, so the rock would really have to move in order to have this come out. Technically, the cam did not slip. The rock failed or moved. That's interesting. That's a lot of being put on the outside fours. If you know cam math, tell us how much are 11.85 kilonewtons this way put on the rock this way. I'll be sure to read all the comments after you show us the math on that. Another thing that we're going to do to keep this stuff from flying is we have placed really low here, a removable Titan, something that's easy on screws, what we use for most of our bolt buster tests. That way, this is not going to break or come out just like our orange TCU did when we quickly placed it in there. It was supposed to catch this thing and it went flying. Anyways, let's zero this out. Bobby, let's start pulling on this. That is funny. The lobes are still at an angle. This thing is getting pretty trashed. At 10.1 kilonewtons, I think our rock is not good enough anymore. Super not good enough. For it to come out like that is nuts. You can see the marks here and here. You got to find something a little bit more sturdy. Are these rocks strong enough? I'm an expert climber. Even that doesn't work. A crack. We need a crack. Where's crack when you need it? Hello. Yellow will fit, red will fit, and I'll make the orange fit. Let's do this crack. It takes quite a bit to set up each one of these tests, but we are finally ready. Let me show you what we got. We put in a, this is the bolt from over there. We just move it around. This is long enough, but not so long that this won't hit the ground. We don't trust our judgment anymore, so we are putting this. Our placements, we can get a yellow, red, and an orange in here. This is a flaring crack, but it was a good placement. It's totally something I would normally use. Right now, we have two kilonewtons on it. You can see on this side, it's scary filming this, that it's wider on that one lobe than on these lobes. This is also a really damaged cam that we've already pulled tested a bunch. I don't think this rock's going to move because it would literally have to lift up that giant thing in order to get this to go. Let's see if we figured out how to break some cams. These lobes are open right here. It's probably around eight kilonewtons. Bobby's going to add some mechanical advantage. That's pretty good considering they're not all even. Our system worked. That's a quarter inch bolt. Okay. Interesting. 15.85 kilonewtons. Wow. We had both had to pull with the double mechanical advantage to get that to work. That's usually what breaks. The cables usually break next. That's just plastic that's broken, but the cables are fine. When we put a carabiner on this, the bend radius is smaller than what the sling is. That's usually why it breaks right there. It didn't come out, man. These rocks were not budging. This is a good spot. These lobes, they're not perfect, but they're doing their job. That was after we'd already taken it up to 10, 11. Oh, yeah. We've already break tested this four times now. Before we put this back in, look how chewed up that is. This cam used to be more curvy. It still kind of works. We're going to put it back in there and just do what we can. We're trying to break this wire right here because that's usually what is the next thing to go. While Bobby's setting this up, we'll take a moment for our sponsors. We are sponsored by no one. I started a coffee business with my friend and we make instant coffee. You basically pour it in hot water. That's how instant coffee works, but we made it with a specialty espresso, fancy ass coffee. It tastes really, really good. If you want to help support this channel, you can donate on PayPal, Patreon, or buy some of our coffee. It really, really helps. I put 200% of your donations back into this channel. Now let's see if this chewed up red TCU has any life left in it. Metal's crunching. Those lobes are like one with the rock. I mean, it's 100% touching because it flaxed it out. So I wonder if we'll ever get that thing out of there. That is amazing. That held. Ow, ow, that's sharp. So I just grabbed that with my hand in order to pull the trigger. Oh my gosh. It comes out quite well actually. So is that granite stuck to it or is that just no teeth left? I think this cam is done. What do you think? Whoa, consistency. Is that consistent? 14.7? It's less. So we do get higher strength on the slings than we get when we pull on the stuff holding the slings, but that's because of the bend radius. Carabiner's fine. So let's test the orange TCU, which is the next size down from this one and see if we get consistent-ish results. Oh man, that almost knocked the cameras over. Hey, that's not the top. That's the side. Interesting. All right, pull the trigger. See if we can salvage old Betsy. Hey. Good as new. Good as new. And it came out. So you can see the skid marks right there. And I don't know if I can see any up there. Let's see if we can place it in better and get a better result. Dan, what is our result? Well, 10.1 is not bad. Let's see if we can get more. The sling broke. Shocker. This just shows Bobby's better at placing cams. Oh, Bobby thinks he's better at placing cams. I was trying not to place it perfect. We're going to break the next test without touching that. 12.4 in order to break the sling. Cool, eh? I hit your elbow. The wires broke. What are the chances? Right where the carabiner connects? How does that happen? Well, lobes are looking good. That ant is in a sketchy spot to be walking. Can you imagine being an ant and having a cam blow your head off? 14.4. Wait. 10.75. I'm seeing a pattern. Yeah. Here. Maybe if Bobby places it'll do better. Oh, nuts or cams. Hey, Mr. Fix-It. But this last lobe here is. Oh gosh. Freewheeling. Freewheeling. This thing needs some braces. All right. Let's do what we do. It came out, Bobby. I thought you were good at placing this stuff. What's happening, I imagine, is these two outer stems are bending the center rod. I can't imagine it being anything else making these lobes do that. Okay. So let's see if we can fix it again. We'll try to stick it in one more time and do one last test with it. What did we get? Pretty consistent. Yeah. Right in that same range. So now you know how much it takes to pull out. Bobby's good at placing cams. 14.3. As gnared as that cam was. I mean, that's impressive. So the sling finally broke. I don't know if this is a mixed blend or all Dyneema, but it's definitely not 100% nylon. Definitely not pulling that out. Well, unless. Well, let's see if the wire breaks first. Probably will. Whoa. Something different. Right there. Broke this one of the stems. That's cool. Look. It just sheared it off clean. Look how many newtons it is. Wow. That's science guys. Count your blessings that we got the dyno right. All the other tests. But because we've pulled enough things, I bet you that was in the 14 kilonewton range. We could be off by up to two kilonewtons, but definitely not more than that because we're experts at pulling without falling over. Bobby did fall over the first time on the first sample. Bobby failed twice. Yeah. So I don't think I'm going to be using this anymore. Go to slackline.com if you want to learn high lining A to Z. We've got high lining 101 out. It's 80 videos and a textbook, all that got the bolting Bible. And if you want to see these break tests, all the charts of the data and the videos, the raw videos, that's all on the website, slackline.com. It's all available and there's all free. This is all based donation based. I make very little off of ads that I make you watch at the beginning of this video. We got science. How? I don't know. 15.25 for that. We were within a kilonewton right of guessing. We were pulling pretty hard. 15.125. Huh? Cool. Well, let us know what you want to see. We're going to stop breaking cams at this point. We have another cam episode that we pulled out of unfavorably. Got this one and we did some in our cam crusher slack snap break test machine at home already, but it kept sliding out because that's metal. And we just know that you guys wanted to see it in real rock. So put in the comments below what you want to see next. We've got more cams coming that people are donating. If you want to donate some gear, please hit me up on Facebook messenger. Ryan jinx dot 35 is the my Facebook. Please send it to my personal one, not my how not to highline one. And we definitely read all the comments so we know what to do next and how to do it better. We're always getting better at this stuff. So yeah, definitely leave vague comments about how we're destroying people's lives or hurting people's knowledge. We love helpful trolls. It's good for the algorithm. So you can troll me. That's fine. Why shouldn't we highline cams? We need a good pullout joke. Sometimes pulling out is safer. Therefore you shouldn't climb. Sorry, it's the best I could do.