Teaching an ol' Rapture new Tricks

Galanga · December 24, 2008

Weight and length

I have a Rapture 10* that really has never done me wrong so it has been in my bag for several seasons.

I have a Xcon-5 in it and need to run it at about 45.75" with a lot of lead tape to get to my D-4 SW.

I want to get back to 44.75" driver - just much more confident at that length.

I hear of folks stuffing heads with cotton etc. to get head weight up - that's attractive to me because I would guess that would produce a nice muted sound.

How the heck do you do this?

Or, is there a better way?

I don't want to have thick wads of tape on it and a I am a little leary of a tip weight making it heel biased - I don't need that.

G

icec0ld · December 24, 2008

on the bottom back of the original rapture there is the ping logo. it actually covers a hole to the driver that allows for hotmelt to be put into. you can just pop that off, put what you want into it (hotmelt or cotton) and seal the hole back up witht he ping logo.

Awalkspoiled · December 24, 2008

Consider going to a lighter swingweight than you're used to if you're going to stay with the XCon 5. That shaft can get very touchy when matched with a very heavy clubhead at shorter lengths. If you add enough weight to get to D4 at 44 3/4" you're going to have a clubhead close to 215 gm and will need to tip the shaft more than an inch just to get close to the same feel and launch angle. I'd suggest gripping down an inch for a while before trimming, and fooling around with various amounts of lead, to see how light a swingweight you can tolerate. When you do trim, you'll want to take something off the tip as well as the butt to maintain stability.

t_m_harris · December 24, 2008

Thanks for the info on this...Im a huge fan of this driver (its been in the bag since it was introduced) and was thinking about going the hot melt route and changing the shaft at sometime.

Im all about the muted feel and to enhance that a bit would be great.

Galanga · December 24, 2008

Thanks for the advice folks. That's awesome that the Ping badge covers a hole - good to know.

Now I have to figure out what to do with the XCon based on the Awalkspoiled's recommendation - that sounds like the voice of experience.

Thank you - Scott.

Galanga · December 26, 2008

Quick update. I trimmed an inch off the length on a Rapture that was up around 45.75 to 46" and stuffed the head with about 20 cotton balls to get it to D3-4 which is perfect for me.

Going to take a little to get used to shorter length again, but, dang, the thing feels SUPER solid and has a very satisfying thwack. No problems with shaft flex change or too high or spinny.

Feels like it could be a winner.

Galanga · January 25, 2009

Another quick update - it's a winner. Thanks for the help folks.

t_m_harris · February 10, 2009

Please help me out with the process of removing the back label on the Rapture and re-sealing it. Want to make sure im doing this the right way.

Would like to do the cotton-ball trick myself. Thanks!

Galanga · February 10, 2009

You can learn from my minor mistake then.

My mistake was trying to pop off the back badge and that only caused it to dent a bit (the bade is like a really thick piece of foil with some adhesive rubber backing).

What you should do is heat up the head and the badge with your heat gun and, if necessary, lightly pry at the badge once it is hot. My guess is that if you heat it up pretty good with the heat gun it will basically pop off due to the increased volume of the warm air in the head - it wants to go somewhere.

I stuffed and weighed the swing weight after every few cotton balls to make sure I didn't get too heavy too fast.

After I got my SW right, I cleaned up the badge and the club with acetone and used shafting epoxy to close the deal.

Now you are ready to thwack the ball. I think you will like it.