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...)

Old mates, new mates, Skate Mates

Have been having the urge to get back on some quad skates again for a while.

These popped up on eBay and I had to have them.

ACS Skate Mates

Will swap the 430 hangers out for 651's unless I can get hold of four 580 hangers cheap.

Perfect size for my Sk8-Hi's, need a bit of tidying up and new toe stops and bushings.

Wheels and bearings will probably change too.

Green Kryps? 

Oh and probably fit inverted  Grind King type kingpins. 

Here's an old advert from back in the day. 

Just got to figure out fixing the boots to the plates.

Stoked

Well it's been over 2 years since I updated this blog.

Instagram seems to have taken over for me but here I am again.

A lot has happened over the last two years.

New car, new job, new eye lenses, new lower weight, some new skateboard parts and new friends and new countries visited.

Some things never change though...

You leave your skateboard at the park unattended and it gains a sticker or two.

Gecko Set Up

Finally got around to setting up the Gecko last night just in time for the torrential rain and thunder today, great. 

Set up with the Don't Trip Slalocybins, with Yellow and Pink Abec 11 Zig Zags. (as they were what was on the board I dismantled) 

Two rubber shock pads and an Element hard riser under each truck give an extra 10mm of clearance. 

Up top there's Mob Super Coarse Grip Tape and a PSD 'IN Side' Footstop.

Red Venom Dome head bolts for three quarters of the fixings and some countersunk on the rearmost after I ended up snapping the heads off of two Khiro Trussheads. Grrr. 

Current wheelbase is 19" measured inner truck bolt centres, 21" actual (axle to axle) I can squeeze another half inch out by moving the rear truck on the baseplate holes. That gives me a range of 17.5" to 19.5" with the double drilled nose and baseplates. 

Need to find some time and dry weather to try it out before the next race. 

Gecko Grip

Griptaped the Gecko this evening. 

Left a diagonal strip in the middle ungripped to show off the carbon and save a bit of weight. 

This puts the weight of the ungripped deck into perspective, the deck only weighs 4.6 x the weight of the grip tape. 

Gecko

Successfully bid (long story) and won this beauty on eBay, it turned up yesterday. 

A Gecko Decks Martin Drayton Slalom deck. 

Superfluous stickers removed and old dirty grip tape removed too. 

 Carbon Fibre loveliness, built in de-wedge for the rear truck. 

 Before grip tape removal (took a couple of hours to get old glue residue off) 

Afterwards, check out that carbon

Beautiful... 

Will post again when it's set up, grip tape is on it's way from Octane Sport. Trucks and wheels will be removed from current deck. 

Hope the grip tape doesn't weigh too much. 

I Wanna See Your Wiggle Kit...

I had a request from Biffa a few weeks back for some details on my slalom set-up.
So here goes...

Deck is a Pavel "Paul Price Roadster" picked this up from a guy in NZ who got it from old mate and ex-pat Nat 'wafflesole' Halliday 

I have a variety of wheels of different durometers. 

Abec11 70mm Zig Zags in 83A (Lemon), 80A (Lime), 77A (Pink)

Also some 69mm Seismic 84A (Purple) 81A (Teal) which I bought second hand from Paul Price himself. 

These are the wheels that I currently have on the board. Cult Daredevils, Yellow 84.5A (yes really) on the front...

...and Red 79A on the rear. Softer wheels on the rear for more grip. 

Bearings are Mindless Hoodoo Freestyle with built in spacers and speed washers.

 This are the trucks - Don't Trip Slalocybins here they are before I fitted them and were all fresh looking. 

As you can see the track width is adjustable by use of the two smaller spacers, the larger is for the bearings. 

They have spherical bearings in both the hanger and pivot points.

Front is adjustable between 45° and 70° it saves having to mess around with wedged risers and means you can change angles easily.

70A RipTide APS bushings.

By loosening off the two Allen bolts the main body pivots between the two halves of the baseplate.

The rear is a fixed 15° with 90A RipTide APS bushings

Here you can see the wedge under the rear truck to take out the angle of the tail on the deck and return the truck to a flat mount. 

Here's the front, both of these picture show the flared arches of the deck  off well, allowing for a lot of turn with no wheelbite. 

Deck construction is 3 wood laminates with a glassfibre bottom with foam core in the centre.

PSD In-Side footstop to hold my front foot in the right place and give me soothing to push against when on a start ramp. 

MMM*

*Mike Maysey Makeover/under

I bought this Skaterbuilt Mike Maysey Hybrid slalom at Hogtoberfest from "The Bass Player"

Wasn't too keen on the sticker job albeit there were some cool ones on there so set about removing them, all came off without too much trouble and after a quick clean with some brake cleaner to remove the sticker residue it was looking a lot cleaner.

It looks as though Helen Keller has been let loose on it with an electric drill however, some of the stickers were strategically placed to hide holes.

I had planned to set this up as Mike Maysey recommended with a Tracker RT-S / RT-X combo but didn't have one to hand. 

I did however have the Bennett / Randal combo that I bought a couple of weeks ago.

The rearmost set of rear truck mounting holes were an extra set that had been added, I contemplated not using these but then realised that with a 'reverse kingpin' truck the wheelbase is effectively shorter so went with the longer option.

A bit of judicious bolt bending and riser stacking, about 20° of de-wedge under the 35° baseplate and taking the angle of the flattish tail into account the Randal looks to be suitably de-wedged. 

I slapped some 85A Riptide barrels in it and some Lime Green Zig Zags on Seismic Tektron bearings.

On the front the Bennett needed a bit of tweaking as the original press in kingpin had been removed and it had been supplied with an 'aircraft grade' longer kingpin, broke out the JB Weld and fixed it into place.

A 10° wedge and a couple of thinner risers, Reflex Bushings of an unknown duro, Yellow Zig Zags blah blah blah.

Didn't take it for a spin as I need to wait for the JB Weld to cure completely before cranking the nut down from finger tight. 

Wheelbase is 21.5" 

Hogtoberfest

Well a bit late I guess but...
October at Hog Hill is Hogtoberfest time. Full on hill bombing and slalom weekend.
Great weekend, old Guildford Skate Star mate Martin Pavey was over from Oz.
Mentioned it to Trev who just happened to own a Turner Summer Ski deck that used to belong to Martin.
Little did I know that he would give it to Martin as a present.