Michael's Vivid Update information!

[Hampe]

His theory is that bowling mfgs make balls to go dead after a certain periond of time! Its what keeps the bussiness alive, (his words). He said how would they stay in bussiness if a ball last you many years! I hear this statement a lot on the board.... MY Ball has gone Dead. hummmmmmmm

Ehhhh.....I don't know about that. Most serious bowlers I know have about 4-6 balls in their arsenal and are replacing one of them just about every year, regardless of whether or not the ball is still performing like it used to. Most people just have to have the cool "new" ball. A lot of the people I know that complain about balls dying don't clean their ball properly, or they are using a cheap-*** cleaner to do it. I use the expensive stuff (I'll have to look up what it's called later) on my balls, and you can really tell the difference between a good cleaner and a cheap one by looking at your towel (and the ball itself) after cleaning the ball. I've played at least 300 games with my VG (the original one), and that ball still turns the corner as hard as it used to.

Also, it wouldn't be smart for the manufacturers to do that. I don't know about you guys, but if I bought a ball, took good care of it, and it died after 100 games......I would never buy from that company again.

[The Mayor]

Yes, extremely strong bowling balls like the Nano WILL die if they aren't maintained properly from the BEGINNING. Most people only start thinking about extracting oil or resurfacing AFTER they start noticing a change in reaction. Well... that's too late! You need to clean your bowling ball after every 3 games (a league session), you should take the surface back to it's original grit by sanding every 9-12 games and depending on your lane surface, you should do a full resurface every 50-80 games. These are just rough guidelines, but they will really help keep your reaction strong!

[billf]

I have personal issue with the Storm bowling company. It has ZERO to do with their products. While I was on worker's comp and bowling a minimum of 155 games a week with my "Hy-Road and Victory Road (original), I would stop after 15 games and clean them. This is in addition to wiping off prior to every throw. I would do the sanding part once a week. These balls didn't die and I followed that routine for 14 months. That's an average of 4,650 games on each ball and they were used when I was injured.