Skateboard Maintenance Guide
As every seasoned skater will know, maintaining your skateboard is absolutely essential for an epic skating experience that allows you to progress and push through boundaries. For the most part, you will want to make sure your bearings and wheels are up to scratch and running smoothly. However, you will also need to ensure your trucks are tight enough and balanced, plus you will want the griptape on your deck to stay ‘grippy’ to avoid your feet slipping unnecessarily and causing injury.
How can I tell if my bearings require maintenance?
A key giveaway as to whether your skateboard bearings need a bit of work is if it feels as though you have a bungee cord attached to your skateboard when skating, holding you or pulling you back from rolling efficiently.
Skateboard Wheels and Bearings
The majority of your time spent on maintenance will be ensuring your skateboard wheels and bearings are up to scratch. Whether you are an indoor or outdoor skater, your wheels and bearings will get dirty and attract grit which of course, compromises on its performance and can lead to a not so smooth skating experience. All you need to do is simply pop your wheel off, but make sure you put your washers somewhere safe so that you don’t lose them!
Generally speaking, there is a quick way and a long way to clean your bearings. The full, longer way of cleaning is using acetone and bearing cleaning. On the other hand, a bottle of speed cream, such as Bones Speed Cream is available at a great price and is an efficient, cost-effective way of cleaning your skateboard bearings. All you need is no more than a couple of drops applied to your bearing ring. Once applied, give your bearing a quick spin so that the speed cream is distributed evenly.
Skateboard Deck
When it comes to your skateboard deck, there’s not a massive amount to maintain in all fairness, aside from the griptape. If you are down at a dusty or muddy skatepark, your griptape can get rough and dirty pretty fast. However, the only time you will need to take maintenance action on this is if it starts to affect the actual grip on the board. You will undoubtedly recognise if the grip has been compromised though, as your foot will be sliding around on the deck.
Skateboard Trucks
When it comes to maintaining your skateboard trucks, it’s all about keeping the balance with regards to how loose or tight you want them. New boards typically have this ‘breaking in’ period, where you break in your bushings to how you like your trucks.
So, to keep your trucks balanced, you will want to tighten each one, one by one. Some skaters prefer their trucks tighter and others a little looser. You can now place your skateboard upright, stand on your skateboard. Now, shift the weight forward onto both of your toes and then backwards onto your heels. If there is an imbalance in the trucks, you will feel the deck dip forward more so on the side rather than the other. You simply then just re-tighten the looser truck and rinse and repeat until you have achieved complete balance.
We also have complete skateboards available in a wide variety of sizes up to 8.5 skateboards.
