Zen and the Art of Skateboard Maintenance...

"It's a tightrope Spud, a f**kin' tightrope."
Mark Renton

I am very particular about my skateboard wheels. I like them to be a solid locked system with no rattles but I also like the spin of the wheels to be as fast as it can be. This is a very fine line.

The wheel system of a skateboard comprises of 6 components:
o The wheels
o The bearings (pictured)
o The trucks (or axels to the un-initiated)
o The washers
o The spacers
o The truck bolts

The wheel, made of urethane, spins on the trucks with a bearing on either side and a spacer in the middle. This is then attached to the truck with washers on either side of the bearings in the wheels, with the truck bolts.

Theoretically, this should be a locked system on which the spin should come only from the bearings. However, because of the softer, lighter metals involved, they are open to slightly more tensions than would be perfect, making very slight changes in the tightness of the truck bolt affecting the speed of the wheel.

The difference for me between the wheel nut being too tight and being too loose can be fractions of a degree and sometimes very hard to get just right. I just put new bearings in so gave the whole system a good wee clean.

[Footnote]
ABEC stands for Annular Bearing Engineering Committee and is a scale used to rate the manufacturing precision of bearings. It's a scale of 1 to 9 using the odd numbers. The higher the number , the more precise the manufacturing of the bearings.