A friend of mine just bought a Firewire. After one surf he said he was looking at the vent plug and it seemed that the plug was not seated properly, maybe stripped. He was able to suck water out . He went back to the shop and they want to send it back to the factory. He’s not keen about seeing his board transported all over the place for weeks. He was contemplating unscrewing it himself. Does anyone have any experience with a similar problem? Can you unscrew the vent? Would it be difficult to re-seat the seal?
Yea,you can unscrew them.beneath the screw there should be a rubber o-ring,a thin piece of gortex,and another rubber o-ring.You may be able to rethread the screw properly without too much trouble,as long as it snugs down to the o-rings properly it should be fine.
Goretex will last indefinetly, it doesn’t degrade; made of teflon weave and specially coated. The problem with home-brew vents like FireWire and others, is sealing around the edges of the Goretex. You can’t do this simply by compression and couple of O-rings. If you look at a vent housing that Gore makes, the membrane is bonded or ultrasonically welded completely around the circumference of the plastic housing. This is a very specialized process to insure that no glue propagates onto the membrane, and they’ve tested it to the Nth degree.
yeah the magic of gore tex is in the weave...its such that water (that has molecules that like to stick together) will not penetrate the membrane but air will exit...some of the cheaper "water-proof" fabrics are only coated which over time wears or washes off...at least thats what i remember from my snowboard shop experience