Big Mountain Time

Well, I suppose you already know the benefits of ICS system Burton setting up for their boards now. It’s a cool system which holds your bindings just on 2 bolts, and all you need to move your bindings over your board is free a bit those bolts and move the binging or change its angle in the way you want. That’s it, no 4 bolts which you should screw out completely to move bindings. Seems very easy and comfortable, right?

Well, everyone has their favorite bindings but what it comes to when you buy a Burton board and can’t use any non-burton bindings with it easily.

I have purchased Burton Custom ICS for a new season, yes I got EST bindings for it, but I had a question, if is it possible to use any non Burton bindings with it. And YES, this is possible, but some bindings will require a little work over the burton ics base plates. So I’m ensure you that any non-burton binding with standard base plate is fully compatible with Burton ICS boards.  See the detailed instructions below.

Any current Burton ICS board comes with a mounting hardware (there is no any hardware shipped with the EST bindings). The hardware comes in a small box and includes few special bolts and 2 special base plates. Well the whole point of this article in those baseplates. The ICS baseplates are there to mount non-EST bindings. If you will take a look closely to EST bindings then you will see that there is no any need in circle baseplates now and the binding mounted to the board through the side holes.

Those baseplates are Burton, which means that they will perfectly fit to the Burton bindings only, but what if I love some Union bindings? Now problem there. I’ve discovered that Burton baseplates radius are a bit larger then common bindings baseplates. You will be unable to fit the burton baseplate to the usual binding because of that.

What you should do now is to make the burton ICS baseplate a bit smaller in radius, just cutting off a few millimeters around the circle. You can do this easily with the electric powered stone or with the tools from your board tuning kit.

Few easy steps:

1. Take a look at the ICS baseplate and at your non-Burton bindings, try to place the baseplate into binding and check how much plastic you should cut.
2. Set approximate cut edge on the baseplate surface with a marker.
3. Take one of the following tools: the file, the pocket stone, the edge tuning tool
4. Carefully start cutting the plastic around the circle to reduce radius
5. Always check if the baseplate can fit to your bindings as cutting more then necessary will bring you uncomfortable riding.
6. When you are finished, place the baseplate to your binding, set the right degree value and mount it to your snowboard.
7. Go to your favorite mountain and ride!

There is another way to do it more easier. I will describe it a bit later and provide the photo examples.

Important Update

At this moment a lot of large binding manufacturers are making a base plates which are compatible with the Burton ICS system. You can purchase such base plates only separately, check it with your snowboard hardware store or at bindings manufacturers website. Some manufacturers or binding series are still not compatible with ICS system and will require some hand work over the ICS plates.

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