Looking at 2018 print catalogue Meridian drysuit says nylon zippers for weight and comfort. My guess cost is a factor also. Probably same in all drysuit now. Good or bad? Any experiences?
Just got a warrantied suit in fall it has metal zippers. Didn’t like that that new suit was all black below the waist unlike the original suit . Still thankful for the warranty they gave me.
There’s nylon zippers on my North Face down coats, Astral PFDs, Columbia 3/4 fleece zips, and Kokatat Otter jacket and dry suit. They work just as well as metal, but are lighter in weight. I think the only metal zippers in my wardrobe are on my Levis.
The thing I might worry about is the much greater tension between gripping sets of teeth that results from tightly pressing the sealing surfaces of the zipper together. There’s never that kind of stress on the zipper of a basic jacket or parka, and plastic seems to work fine there. On a dry-suit zipper, those large rugged metal teeth are reassuring that a tooth won’t pop loose. Oce a zipper tooth pops loose from the grip of the opposing teeth, that’s pretty much the end of the zipper. I suppose Kokatat, being Kokatat, has thought this through, though.
My old suit has metal zippers. I highly doubt the plastic ones will last as long. Guess will see as they switch over to plastic.
My original Palm paddling sit and my current Kokatat paddling suit both use plastic zippers, and they ave worked fine. If I bought a dry suit and it came with plastic instead of metal, that wouldn’t bother me at all.
It seems to me that a metal zipper could possibly kink if you bent it too uch, which would likely make it not work anymore. Would this be less likely with a plastic zipper?
@Peter-CA said:
My original Palm paddling sit and my current Kokatat paddling suit both use plastic zippers, and they ave worked fine. If I bought a dry suit and it came with plastic instead of metal, that wouldn’t bother me at all.It seems to me that a metal zipper could possibly kink if you bent it too uch, which would likely make it not work anymore. Would this be less likely with a plastic zipper?
Bend yours and we’ll know. LOL. Probably break too.
There should be no difference between a metal and a plastic zipper in terms of kinking, because the teeth of a metal zipper are individually embedded in the fabric with no metal connecting them. When you fold the zipper back on itself (like I just tried with the zippers on both of my dry suits), it’s the fabric that does the bending and no harm is done. The teeth just go along for the ride.
@PaddleDog52 said:
Just got a warrantied suit in fall it has metal zippers. Didn’t like that that new suit was all black below the waist unlike the original suit . Still thankful for the warranty they gave me.
I got a warranty suit back in January and like the yellow top / black bottoms. I always thought color split at the zipper was weird. I personally prefer the ‘shirt and pants’ look of the new suit.
Mine also has the metal zipper as of late Jan.
I like more color for visabilty
@Peter-CA said
It seems to me that a metal zipper could possibly kink if you bent it too uch, which would likely make it not work anymore. Would this be less likely with a plastic zipper?
I have broken two metal zippers on NRS dry suits - the first they replaced under warranty, the second they didn’t. In my case, they kinked and broke between the teeth. Now I keep them zipped when I transport them, unzipped for storage, and I am a lot more careful. I don’t see a problem with plastic zippers.
Make that three zippers on NRS drysuits - blew out the zipper on my current 4 year old NRS Extreme Drysuit yesterday. I’m ready to try plastic.
I’d want to actually look at a plastic zipper before thinking it might be better. Note that with the metal zipper in the picture, it’s those tiny teeth (very tiny!) on the back side of the zipper that interlock, not the big ones that naturally draw your attention (those are just there for alignment within the slider). I have a hard time seeing how such small teeth, if made of plastic, could hold up in the long term, so there may be a structural difference there in a case where the teeth are plastic. I’d want to see such a zipper for myself, or a good picture of one.
Also, here, each tooth is individually embedded in the rubber-like material, and it’s that material that failed. What the teeth are actually made of is not relevant. The only way I can see that plastic teeth might be better is IF the teeth are sewn into a fabric backing, besides being embedded in the sealing material as shown here, so that the cloth backing reinforces the sealing material against being torn. If the plastic teeth are just individually embedded in the sealing material fabric as in the picture, I don’t see how making them out of plastic changes anything. Again, without an example to look at so the actual sealing material can be seen, it’s not something anyone can be sure about.