I have a pair of 2 year old DeNiros where the zipper won’t stay up on either boot. The leather tabs the zipper pull goes through ripped on both sides (who knows how), and now any time I ride my boots unzip to mid-calf. Has anyone fixed this short of sending their boots off?
I’m sure your local leather repair guy / shoe guy could stitch some new keepers on. It’s not a difficult repair.
Any local shoe repair can put in new zippers – I don’t think at this point fixing the leather tabs would help as the zipper may be stronger than the tab. You see this a lot when people walk around with their boots half unzipped.
Take a small strip of duct tape and tape the zippers shut. In other words, zip up the boots, and then place the thin strip of duct tape (1/2" by 1 1/2"-2" maybe?) across right below the zipper so that it tucks up into the base of the zipper a bit and then let the little zipper tap drop back down over it.
I have some black gorilla tape that I’ve used for that purpose with old boots - can’t see it and it works great. Sometimes you can reuse it for 2-3 days.
It’s a pain to have to tape your boots every day, so having a cobbler add a new strap (or repair the ones that broke) to keep them up is probably a better option, but it will work in the meantime!
[QUOTE=Kalele;8746055]
Any local shoe repair can put in new zippers – I don’t think at this point fixing the leather tabs would help as the zipper may be stronger than the tab. You see this a lot when people walk around with their boots half unzipped.[/QUOTE]
Well OP, the first thing I would say is congrats on getting your boots to last two years!
Zipper fail sucks. I’ve never had any luck at all getting them replaced by shoemakers who are used to working on shoes vs. riding boots. Have struggled with the issue and had DD wear black socks and yes, the duct tape. Finally just got new boots when zipper repair failed almost immediately.
If I had it to do over, I would mail my boots down to Woodys of Wellington. Everyone says they do a great job and could probably do the tabs and the zippers. It’s what they do. Good luck and do please let us know how it goes.
Tredsteps are notorious for bad zippers!!! It is amazing they lasted two years. I would send them out personally. I hate fussing with zippers.
It may just be a simple fix… if you have a god shoe repair person take it them. I had the same problem on a pair of boots and it was because the part that closes the two sides together had widened out… not sure how to make it make sense. basically he just had to replace the whole mechanisim that you pull up the zipper with. once he did that they stayed up and it was fine. He also taught me how to make sure you are pulling directly up when you zip up your boots. we tend to pull away from the boot then up which he felt causes that part to separate and then it can’t hold the teeth together or stay up… pretty sure this doesn’t make any sense… but it can be fixed easily… or worse case scenario they can usually put in a new zipper… had my friends boots done for $80. which isn’t bad if the rest of the boot is still good.
Shoe guy locally absolutely obliterated my old boots replacing zippers, and has made me nervous about replacing zippers in anything.
It’s just a shame that these zippers couldn’t hold up to light wear (1-2x a week, plus shows/clinics); the leather is still fantastic and looks almost new. Does anyone know if DeNiro repairs zippers on their boots?
