Sirui tripod repairs – part 2
Remember my post 2 years ago about the past Sirui tripod repairs? I had to send in my already discontinued Sirui M-3204X tripod again!
Summary:
The half shells / shims – which are part of the inner sliding mechanism seem to have easily gotten out of their place and as a result the whole sliding mechanism didn’t move smoothly anymore or even would block completely. 
Back then I sent in the tripod for repairs and received it back with fresh half shells / shims and on one leg Sirui even replaced the top-most sliding element because the notches where the half shells / shims sit on were already fringed which makes the fit between the leg element and the half shells / shims quite loose. In the picture above you see the difference between the replaced leg segment (bottom) and the old ones, where the notches are clearly fringed. I’m glad that Sirui didn’t charge for the repairs.
What happened now:
As it was to expect after some time also the other two top-most leg segments on the other two legs showed the same problem. After writing the German Sirui service what happened I sent in my tripod again and just received it back a couple of days ago. I was quite surprised what Sirui had come up with now: Apparently they figured out that their half shell / shim part was not fit for the job and replaced it with a different construction, see in the next image:
You can clearly see that the the leg segments have been exchanged by new ones where the notches are fresh and sharp. Also the shape of their sliding shim / shell changed noticeably. I guess this construction makes way more sense because it fits and sits well on the end of the leg segments without any play in either direction. I’m actually curious whether Sirui already uses this kind of sliding mechanism for their more up-to-date tripods. Can anybody confirm?