Box Of Trucks

A recent ebay win (or lose, depends on your viewpoint), big box of various trucks and truck parts. 

A set of ACS 651's,  at one time the Gold version, now lacking most of the gold coating.

Four Indy baseplates, 2 with kingpins, 2 without and one Indy 109 hanger.

A pair of Randal DH hangers.

Two Tracker RT-S trucks

One has been cut down to slightly wider than Midtrack width

One Grind King Jay Adams with a stripped thread on one end of the axle and a bent axle and damaged thread on the other. 

Two pairs of shock pads, two sets of Grind King kingpins (one with big flat heads, other with smaller heads) one pair of unbranded Grind King type kingpins, a regular old type kingpin, four splined type with dodgy threads, one bearing (no shield), three kingpin nuts, a cup washer, a flat washer, a GK insert and a random locknut

A pair of cheap unbranded hangers and baseplates, a pair of Speed Demon baseplates (one with a kingpin) a hanger.  

This is the reason I decided to bid on this package, A Radikal Dragons Claw front slalom truck, sadly missing it spherical bearing from the hanger and the kingpin is snapped off in the thread insert in the baseplate. Three more pairs of interchangeable axles for width tweakage.

 

Stridey has offered to send me a free spherical for the hanger, cheers, I have emailed Keith Hollien regarding a kingpin and insert but no reply as yet.

Whilst I was photographing all the above I thought I'd have a swap around with the 8 wheeler hangers

A much more aesthetically pleasing result. 

Updates

I've been fiddling about with the Skaterbuilt Conekiller

Have removed the big aluminium block and gone down the traditional route for now.

3 x Surrey Skateboards wedged risers, 10º each, just about bring the kingpin up to vertical.

Front now running on a 10º wedge and a 5º wedge.

Also for last weeks session at Bowlworth I tried No Skoolz on the BDS 8.

Messing a bit with my OCD having 98a's on the outside and 92a's on the inside. Makes it a bit 'Carlos Fandango' and maybe makes it a bit difficult to turn due to the wheel hang. 

What's Got 32 Wheels?

A session at XC today that's what!

Decided to try and stick to the 8 all day, started off on the new Veteran Typhoon (left)

Wheelbase is shorter as is the tail, the combination of these counteract each other and it actually skates better than I expected for a short deck with a short wheelbase.

Had a few slams when I switched back to the 4 wheeler.

Shot some footage of Trev on hits BDS with my Pentax K30. Need to practice a bit and maybe switch to manual focus and play with other settings.



Missed the drop in at the start and no hand plants in this run…

Battery was nearly dead on my camera so no other pictures from today. 

Bag of Trucks

Gavin at Surrey Skateboards came up trumps.

Ordered yesterday, arrived today…

Six Tracker Mids, 4 for me for Project "Free, The Danish 8", the other 2 for Gra for something or other he's got up his sleeve. 

Got the blue 'soft' Superball bushings in, might swap them for orange Khiros which are a bit softer. 

Trackersteins

Arrived today, 184 hangers on RT-S baseplates.
Don't think that was ever a factory option.

Looks like new bushings required, been cranked down a bit.

On A Cold & Frosty Morning

Went to Tilehurst agian this morning with Trev, Paul and Brian. No Gray, apparently he was chained up in a dungeon wearing a gimp mask or something like that anyway...

A cold start, had the scrape my windscreen as it was still -1°C and misty.

Trev had the 44" Sims Taperkick with him.

The last three shots I took using the 35-80mm zoom from the Pentax P30n that dad gave me yesterday on my Pentax K20D. All the rest were with the fisheye. I also took a few with the P30n with the fisheye, will be interesting to see how they come out.

Project Cone Killer- Update

Bolted the slalom board together today, there was a lot of swearing.

Firstly, griptape, now if I was a shop selling a deck and chucking in some free griptape I think I'd make sure it was wide enough to fit the deck I was selling.

Ended up doing the old 'racing stripe' trick of gripping one side, cutting off the excess and then gripping the other leaving a gap to stretch it out a bit.

Oh, I removed the top sticker which was at too jaunty an angle for my OCD, did it carefully whilst heating with a hairdryer. It now lives on the bottom of the deck.

Secondly bolt holes and wedged risers and truck baseplates, nothing seemed to line up, I ran a bit short of wedged risers and ended up running a drill bit through the baseplate holes to angle them slightly.

So...

Bennett 4.3 on the front, used an old Tracker wedged riser that I had converted into a pair of 'rail' type risers and increased the wedge on at some point. Holey Smoke bottom bushing (deck side) Khiro orange barrel on the top with a flat washer.

Tracker RT-S on the rear, two Surrey Skateboards clear wedges which gives it a bit of de-wedge as it's mounted under the tail of the deck, standard Tracker bushings.

Cult Gamma Ray wheels, 72mm 80a all round.

Took it out for a spin to check it out, I could have used yesterdays blog title really, placed board on ground, step on, take a push, pump, wheel bite, slam. Rough concrete road meets skin, cuts to both palms of hands, scrazed knee, glasses bounce on road. Pick myself up dust myself off checking week old jeans (phew, no hole in knee). Tighten front truck.


My slalom test track was a bit damp and a bit green but I risked it anyway, feels good but I didn't want to go too crazy, check the wheel tracks out.

They were from this first video...

I then moved down the slope to a drier bit of road, I'm pumping down and then up the hill in this one...

The Pleasure & The Pain

My trucks for the slalom board turned up today thanks to excellent service as always from Gavin at Surrey Skateboards.

I went for the standard beginners set up of a Bennett 4.3 in the front and a Tracker RT-S  106mm in the rear.

Oh yeah, look how they arrived inside the jiffy bag and what else I got...

No Jelly At The Party :(

It was my *cough* 50th Birthday on Tuesday and as I was down in Brighton for a few days decided to invite some friends along for a skate at Shoreham Skatepark.

The weather was dodgy all week but wasn't as bad as forecast on Wednesday, dry and windy most of the day in Brighton but then a big downpour at 3 o'clockish.

Me and the current Mrs Brown arrived by train just late enough to make sure that Trev and Gray had swept and dried the bowl and as we crossed the road to the park Nathan arrived.

We managed to skate until dark with only one small shower, then it was off to the Duke of Wellington where they had laid on a buffet, fireworks and folk singing, awesome.

Then Jelly turned up, gave me stickers and bought me a beer. Cheers.

Mrs Brown managed to snap us before the pub, l-r Nathan, Trev (cunningly hiding Trackers), Me, Gray.

If You Can't Skate...

...Buy A Big Hat.

Thanks Trev, great shot of me and a rare frontside moment, must be the new Skaterbuilt, felt right straight away (well 2nd run after I'd tightened the trucks a bit).

More of Trev's photo's of Tilehurst here

Skater-built Up

Spent the afternoon pottering about building this up.
Random stickers removed, polished up with a bit of Mr Sheen.

I originally thought about fitting the Z-Rollers but realised that had old school drilled baseplates so discounted then as the deck is drilled for new school trucks.

Indy 215's were way too wide, 169's were a good fit but still a bit wide with the BDS Dub Cons
I thought I'd get away with it though and started getting the Stage 5's ready only to realise that they had old school baseplates, DOH!

I had a set of Stage 8's but in the end decided to fit some Tracker B2's.
A bit of hammering and cursing later and they had Grind King kingpins fitted and black Bones Hardcore Mediums. Wedged risers slapped in between and it's ready to go.

Think the grip tape job was done by Stevie Wonder though so will have to be redone.

Under The Board(walk) pt.2

So here's another run taken with the camera mounted next to the rear truck and pointing towards the nose.

Under The Board(walk)

Got hold of a little HD video camera that I tried under the board at Bowlworth yesterday.

This was the first run, mounted at the front pointing towards the tail, took it easy to make sure it stayed on.

On The Rocks

Trev snapped this cracker yesterday at Cookies Bash. Thanks mate.

Not sure why I always seem to have skate fists. Reminded me of this...

Orion

My guess is that Climax Mfg didn't name these fine trucks after the 80's Ford saloon car.

These turned up from Frank at Strangehouse yesterday after I ordered them on Friday night and they were shipped Saturday.

These are the SP1 150's.

Looking good, bit like the bastard love child of an Indy and a Tracker Race Track.

These are to go onto the Cockfight when it turns up, I'll probably stick some Tracker inverted kingpins in them first though.

Ricoh results

Here's Graham from the Rom at Crawley snapping back a layback lip slide.
Tracker's por vida!

As you can see I've still got a light leak...
Resealed it last night. Fingers crossed.

Axis Vs Dart

I expect a lot of you have wondered what the difference is between a Tracker Axis and a Tracker Dart baseplate. well wonder no more as here you can see the difference for yourself, on the left we have the Indy-a-like Axis and on the right the Dart.
Tonight I set up my Death Dave Allen with my Tracker Axis and the dyed Cozmo Man In Black wheels....