Skateboard Wheels

Video Transcript

"Your wheels; picking out the proper skateboard wheels is very important. What you're going to want to do is, you're going to want to pick out the right hardness and the right size for your skating. You're going to notice that, when it comes to having smaller wheels, that you're a little closer to the ground. So the distance between the bottom of the wheel and the truck is very small, and so it's a lot lower. And the bigger the wheel that you get, you'll notice, that you'll be a little higher off the ground. Now, what this will do is in picking a wheel size will not only change the speed that you're traveling, so the bigger wheel will go a little faster than the smaller wheel, but also when you're doing a trick, and you're pushing down on the tail, a larger wheel will require you to go a lot steeper before the tail actually hits the ground. So, when you're picking out wheels, or when your choosing a wheel size, it's best to stick with a certain size, because your board will feel familiar to you when you hit the tail on the ground. Now, that's one reason that people pick a certain kind of size wheel and that's for tricks, and being lower to the ground and being able to have that control of the pop. The other reason, picking wheels, is for the ride that you get and how it feels while you're cruising. Now, there's a lot of different wheels that you can get, and here we have a white wheel, that's pretty normal, Ricta's, that feel like a normal street wheel and they're kind of narrow. And then you have a black wheel here; the black wheel is sometimes a little softer, so you'll notice that it feels a little softer to the rolling on the street. And then you actually have super soft Kryptonic wheels; now these are just pretty much for cruising or sometimes for a filmer to set up a board to roll along with the skateboarder while he's skating. Now, the hardness of the wheel is written somewhere on the side of the wheel, or should be somewhere found. Now, these soft wheels are ninety-eight A's, which tell you that they're pretty soft. Usually wheels will run somewhere between a ninety six and a one hundred and one. Now, these Rictas here are probably somewhere around a one hundred or a one hundred and one hardness, which is the usual street wheel. Now, they're usually smaller, compact and they're a little bit harder. And the reason that they're a little bit harder, is so that when you end up sliding across surfaces, they don't end up flat spotting. And Rictas are very good, they usually don't flat spot at all. A softer wheel, if it slides across a surface doesn't turn because it's not as hard. So it stops and it slides in one spot while your sliding and this causes a flat spot. And it doesn't take very much of a flat spot on a skateboard wheel to make it a load ride and roll down the street, and go da, da, da, da, because of the flat spot. Now, the way to avoid this, is usually riding a harder wheel if you intend on doing some kinds of slides. And this is how you pick out the proper skateboard wheel."