etownfwd wrote:StevieB wrote: ... Nice to see them catching up with me; my Frankensteined a-two's...
First things first:
Second thing: That looks fantastic! Would you be willing to share how you did that? I have a pair of A-One's and a pair of CTT "Vaypors" that I would love to upgrade with Boa's.
-efwd
Glad to, and thanks. It's an easy mod, really. The only tricky bit is finding the lace loop, since although you can buy replacement dials direct from BOA, the lace loops are only available to shoe manufacturers. The BOA dial you'll need is the Low Power Reel - S2, since it has an offset tab with a screw hole for mounting it. That lets you just remove the current buckle and mount the BOA dial in its place.
https://www4.boatechnology.com/home.php?cat=329I scrounged around and found a pair of ragged-out Specialized shoes on eBay that I bought cheap to cannibalize the lace loops from. Brand doesn't matter though, and they don't need to be good shoes or in good shape. The lace loops are pretty much the same on any of them, and even if the shoes are completely falling apart otherwise, the loops are likely to be fine. So don't be afraid to use shoes you're afraid to touch...
Once you've rounded up some lace loops, you'll need a local shoe shop to simply remove the plastic bit that the OEM buckle strap goes through and replace it with the BOA lace loop piece; a very easy job for any shoe repair shop. It wasn't necessary for the conversion, but while I was at it I had them remove the whole upper tongue cover/wrap piece, straps and all, and move it back towards the ankle a bit since I thought it was too far forward on the shoe. Also, the left & right sides had not been sewn on quite the same at the factory, so I had excess straps on one side. You can see the stitching holes in the picture on mine where they originally were. My shoe shop charged me less than $20 to do the whole thing...
Next bit was also optional. You may want to just mount the BOA dial in the same place as your current buckle, but I moved it back and up a bit, since in OEM condition the main back strap didn't lay across my high instep quite right. Just pulled the OEM strap tight across my foot without threading it through the buckle and figured out where the hole needed to be to make it match the angle over the top of my foot. Drilled a hole, pulled the thread insert out of the original hole and put it in the new one. You can see the original hole in mine; I figure it's extra ventilation and less weight!
All that was left was threading the laces through the loops, re-tying the knots in the ends and having a go. Works great; the S2 is micro-adjustable in both directions, with asymmetric dials on each foot so you turn forward to tighten, back to loosen, and the increment is about a half millimeter per click instead of about three times that for a "micro" half step adjustment on the OEM ATOP buckles.