Cleaning up

Didn't realise until I went to write this that I had owned the ACS Skatemates since October last year.
As I had some spare time today I thought I'd finally get around to doing some work on them.

Made a few discoveries..

Stripped the wheels off to discover that the ACS 430 hangers have fully threaded axles, interesting, maybe it was a way of using up old stock of unsold hangers.
Might come in handy for another project that I'll probably never finish.

Cleaned them up abit with some engine degreaser and a toothbrush, came up looking good, the quality of the casting leaves something to be desired though, never noticed back in the day, maybe they were this bad but I'm now more conscious of such things.

I then wondered why I was bothering to clean them up if I wasn't going to use the hangers but did all four anyway.

The bushings were actually in good shape and seemed usable after a wash in soapy water.

The front two pivot cups had turned waxy and disintegrated, have replaced them with some I had.

Found a couple of 651 hangers that I have and offered them up, the kingpins stick out far too much, same as on the 430's, after tapping a rear kingpin out I then discovered that my GrindKing kingpins were too short, the baseplate on the rear is very thick. I then also discovered that reversing the kingpin doesn't really make a lot of difference in the height. A real danger of hanging up with these, the older longer GK KP's might be alright, have some somewhere but probably fitted to some trucks.

Bearing are soaking in degreaser for now but will probably be replaced anyway.

Stick 'em up!

This arrived yesterday in the post, eBay purchase, you never know I might actually stick this on something. (but then again...)

Skandalous?

Some more trucks arrived at work today.
A Bennett and a Randal.
Both have been narrowed to 110mm. Not sure if these are the Sk8Kings modded Skennett & Skandal.
The Bennett came with Reflex bushings and the Randal has the 35° baseplate, this will need less de-wedging to get the desired angle on the back.

Might set these up on the Skaterbuilt Mike Maysey hybrid. Although I had contemplated getting a Tracker RT-S RT-X combo for that.

Surf Rodz

Picked this up from eBay for £20 plus a little bit more for postage. They cost a lot more new.
It's a Surf Rodz truck with an adjustable baseplate. It can be adjusted between 60° and 0° in 5° increments so that's turny through to dead.
Not sure what to do with it yet, it's a bit wide at 150mm for a slalom truck but would make a good dead rear truck set up at 0°, 5° or 10°
Might see if I can get it machined down at work. Might be tricky though as the axles screw into the hanger and are secured with grub screws. Not sure if it can be done but we'll see.

Strokers

Boom, the return of the blog!

Been a while.

Here's some things that happened. Back in August Trev bought along a little rocker deck set up with bottle green Kryptonics and Stroker trucks. 

Made by Ermico they were a predecessor of Indy trucks.
Crazy things that turn by the way of pivots and rose joints. Steer more like a car than a skateboard. 

On the tiny rocker deck with its short wheelbase it almost turned in its own length.

Dragons Done

Old Kingpin removed and new one knocked up, spherical in hanger courtesy of Mr Stride.

Will try and mount it soon and see how it is, may need a few tweaks. 

The Herron Has Landed

Latest ebay purchase arrived at work today, 9" Herron trucks. 

Carbon Fiber (sic) supposedly, look like plastic to me, I've not seen any Carbon Fibre that looks like that, maybe some in there somewhere but they are injection moulded. 

Couldn't easily get to a Tracker 161 to compare weights but they weigh 332g compared to 354g for narrower Tracker B2's with GK kingpins. 

Reports I read say they turn like Trackers so looking forward to giving them a try. Apparently the stock bushings are rock hard so they'll go. 

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. 

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.

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...

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.

Project Old Board

Got some bushings from ebay, advertised as being suitable for ACS trucks etc.
Certainly look the part, 1/2" tall, red.

They are rock hard however, might be okay for the displayers out there but I want my ACS500's to turn. I'll see how they are once they are fitted.

I've spoken to my friendly fastener supplier to see if he can get me some new kingpins.

Hope to get this up and running soon. 

Cheers Trev

Met up with the boys, Trev, Gra, Rob, Paul & Ian for a skate this evening over at Ash Ranges.
Arrived a bit later than them and had raindrops on the windscreen all the way there.
By the time I was halfway between the carpark and the slalom hill it started raining a bit heavier.

Luckily the army had erected some tents for us to shelter in. Then we had hailstones, then more rain, then it stopped and started to dry out.

I decided it would be a good idea to take some photos from the middle of the slalom run, it wasn't, Trev ran into me/I got in his way.
I took a hit to the jaw he got some road rash from a slipped elbow pad.
The pictures should be interesting when I get the film developed. I was shooting with the Minolta X-700 and motordrive.

Anyway, after more rain and a rainbow we arrived back at the carpark where Trev gave me this...

Cheers mate.

Maybe one day I'll explain where this came from.

Tech detail: 2 13/16" hanger, 6" axle. Fixed inverted kingpin, Bennett/ACSesque hanger.

Indy Makeover

The boss had the day off today so it was homer day.

I took in some Indy's that had been bugging me for ages.
The one's on here

I've forgotten what Stage they were, Graham did tell me once. Anyway they'd been painted to look like anodised one's.
They looked like this...

Young Gavin had a bit of time on his hands so I masked them up for him and he went to town with the sandblaster.

They now look like this...

I thought at first that I'd wet and dry them down and polish to a shine but the more I look at them the more I like them as they are.

Trucks Of The Past Part 6

How about these then?

I'm pretty sure that I saw a pair of these at Old Skool Jam 2.0 earlier this year on an old slalom board of Dave Boyles.

Here's a couple of DCS boys checking them out whilst Dave look on.