I had a look online for Smik wing bladders.
Seems no one sells them here in NSW Australia. Let alone from other states in Australia.
And the Europe Smik site doesn't send to Australia either.
Or have I missed something.
If this is the case, my next purchase would be a Wing that has all parts freely available with a fair warranty attitude.
I have recently found a couple of twists on my wing bladder on both sides.
After a session I couldn't deflate one side of the leading edge and found the bladder at the wing tip has got a stretched type of bubble. Probably from not being installed properly by me trying to get the twists out. But because it was at the tip I was able to fold the tip over a couple of times before clamping the fold down between the Velcro parts as it should be done anyway. But maybe with one less fold.
All good & no air lost on my last 3 hour session.
But was curious where I could get new bladders if needed.
Try the Standupsurfshop in North Freo - I got a replacement from them no problem - posted quickly and was inexpensive
Phone (08) 9335 5636
You ask a kite repairer
they've been doing all this for 20yrs plus it's not new.
I had a V3 5m Smik leading strut and bladder explode whilst winging. Sent some photos to Moti Levy up in Northern NSW. He quoted a great price, courier picked up and dropped off from my place (Gerroa), did an awesome job, took 2 weeks.
Thought it was going to be a bin job for the bladder.
As we used to do things before online shopping was a thing:
- Visit/call/email/text shop X that stocks brand Y
- Ask shop X if they can order part Z for you from brand Y
- Get a call/text/email from shop X that part Z from brand Y has arrived
- Pick up in shop X or get it delivered to your door
FYI keeping a web store up to date is a full time job and very little surf shops make enough profit to hire someone to keep their web store fully updated. They'll often skip over replacement parts or niche items for the sake of simplicity.
Been using smiks since gen one as well as repairing the since the start too.
No issues getting parts whatsoever. Either contact a smik distributor, smik directly or myself (repair centre affiliated with them) and they will sort spares for you.
Cheers
Ryan
The Sail Doctor
Kite, wing and sail repairs
Smik are good
bladders are available.
(just trying to fix the google results that unfortunately comes from bagging out the manufacturer on Seabreeze when it's a huuuuge resource)
Select to expand quoteSeajuice said..
I had a look online for Smik wing bladders.
Seems no one sells them here in NSW Australia. Let alone from other states in Australia.
And the Europe Smik site doesn't send to Australia either.
Or have I missed something.
If this is the case, my next purchase would be a Wing that has all parts freely available with a fair warranty attitude.
I have recently found a couple of twists on my wing bladder on both sides.
After a session I couldn't deflate one side of the leading edge and found the bladder at the wing tip has got a stretched type of bubble. Probably from not being installed properly by me trying to get the twists out. But because it was at the tip I was able to fold the tip over a couple of times before clamping the fold down between the Velcro parts as it should be done anyway. But maybe with one less fold.
All good & no air lost on my last 3 hour session.
But was curious where I could get new bladders if needed.
Your text makes it sound that you are unaware that Smik is a WA company. My experience of them is that they are VERY helpful! I imagine that they don't do repairs, but I would be very surprised if they wouldn't supply wing bladders. Have you tried ringing them? About twist problems: the tech of wing bladders is the same as for kite bladders and that and repair have been explained many times in blog videos, so fixing twists, etc. should not be difficult.
