Hus Ski skis for Diablo or Diablo skis for a Hus Ski ?????

[Go Go Diablo]

Tonight I am starting to put wear skins on two sets of NOS skis for a friend from the Diablo heartland of the Port Washington area. To install the skins, I need to remove the hardware and sand the paint off the bottom of the ski to expose the bare wood. While I was taking the factory runners off, I noticed the hole pattern for the ski retainer plates is not the same between the pairs.

I've seen this a few other times but thought someone just made a mistake drilling holes. But these skis are evidence that Bolens had something else in mind.

A typical Diablo ski retainer hole pattern is narrow side to side and long end to end. The Diablo ski is on the left and the unknown ski is on the right.

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So when I've seen this in the past, the skis did not have part numbers on them. However, these skis do. Diablo skis are either part number 180-1164 for the ski or 180-1197 for the ski with the runner sold as an assembly. This unusual pair of skis has an original Bolens part number tag on it and the part number is 180-1872.

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This hole pattern is about 3-1/2" center to center side to side of ski and about 4=1/8" center to center end to end. Much more squarer than the Diablo ski retainer hole pattern.

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In addition, the runners I removed were more like a Hus Ski ski. They had 6 rivets holding them on versus the typical 5 that a Diablo ski would have. The runners also did not have the center bolt hole that the Diablo skis have where the single taper headed 1/4" bolt comes up through the runner, the wood and into the center of the ski retainer plate.

That certainly is not a ski drilled from the factory made for the Diablo. Any ideas?????

[Barrie2777]

That appears to be the hole pattern for HUS-SKI skis. YIKES!! Since Diablo skis are shorter than HUS-SKI skis the location should not be at the center point of the ski and a ski that wide on a HUS-SKI would probably come into contact with the tool box because HUS-SKI skis are hinged.

[Go Go Diablo]

Confirmed by the Hus Ski expert! :-0

Just when I think I've seen it all, something like this pops up. Someday we might run across the documents that fills in the blanks of the things we think we know and then the Bolens method of madness will become clear.

Bruce