Since I manufacture RipTide Bushings I have extensive knowledge of bushings and how to set up your trucks to do what you want to set up to do, including wedging and de-wedging. Unfortunately, many trucks for the electric market are clones of other trucks at least in appearance but they do not necessarily use the same sized bushing as the trucks they look like. If you want help setting your trucks up, I created this thread for that purpose.
In order for me to make an informed bushing recommendation, I would appreciate the following information:
The brand of truck you are using plus the base plate angles and hanger width. If it is a clone, I need the bushing Outside Diameter, Inside Diameter height to the .1" or .1 mm, and shape (normally a Cone/Cone, Cone/Barrel or Barrel/Barrel for stock set ups).
If you are using aftermarket bushings, I need the bushing brand, duro and shape that are in the trucks currently.
I need to know how the trucks feel and what you want to change: Do you want it looser, tighter, more stable, less stable, more rebound, less rebound, etc…
Type of skating you want to use the setup for.
Deck you are using and how likely the set up will wheel bite.
How much you weigh.
To keep things simple (I hope), when I respond to your question and you have additional questions, I will add to or edit my initial response. Does this board notify you of edits like it does likes and responses?
This is great @Alphamail so many people skip over this important piece.
I’d trust anything this guy says ^ being a president for one of the best bushing manufacturer out. They literally have a bushing and pivot cup for every truck you can imagine.
Hells yes I’m taking advantage of your very kind offer:
Caliber II 50s all stock and genuine.
No aftermarket bushings… Yet
I’ve tightened them down with the kingpin and whilst I get great stability at high speeds (30mph) my turning circle is atrocious (~2.5m by my guesstimate). I run my front trucks looser so its dipped down a bit but I believe I need to change me bushings.
They’re responsive and have decent rebound but I’d like to find an optimal compromise between stability and turning circle (so I suppose stability whilst running trucks looser). Not sure how realistic my wants are. If I can squeeze in more rebound that’d be super and would help me weave between manhole covers more swiftly.
drop through deck with cutouts, no wheelbite (will hit the trucks before I hit the wheels). Edit: deck is 40 inches long.
about 195lbs or 89kg.
Let me know if I missed anything/wasn’t clear anywhere.
From my experience with clone trucks, the biggest issue is the pivot cup.
That is the part that the clones can’t seem to get right when copying name brand trucks like Calibers.
I took a pair of 218mm Caliber II clones and put the hangers on genuine Caliber II base plates so that I could
run upgraded pivot cups.
@Namasaki the riptide independent wfb cups fit the TB baseplates I believe @Alphamail had a set sent to him previously to size pivot cups for us all if I’m not mistaken
Torqueboards caliber clone, same measurements as Caliber II 50s
2)stock bushing
I’d like something more stable at speed
mostly commute
I’m using the redemberboards shuggah deck. There’ll probably be wheelbight with the 6’ pneumatics I want to start running, there’s no wheelbite with my MBS 101s
We developed a compound called KranK for just this type of situation. There are several ways to approach what you are confronted with. First of all realize and appreciate that it takes a high amount of skill to go fast on 50 degree trucks as they are inherently unstable. Caliber II’s address this a bit with zero rake making them a bit less responsive so they are more stable than a raked truck at the same angle base plate under most conditions. I would suggest as a “Synthetic Split” set up where you use bushings to simulate a de-wedged rear truck thus taking some of the steering input out of the rear. This is similar to what you are doing running the front truck looser. I would suggest RipTide KranK 90a Canons up front top and bottom, starting with flat washers and a KranK 90a Canon / KranK 90a Chubby rear with a cupped washer on the Canon and a the big flat that comes with the Chubby. Experiment with cupped washers up front to fine tune the feel. The KranK compound is our highest rebound compound and it is very responsive to clamp pressure of the king pin nut. The starting point for compression of the bushing stack is to tighten the nut just to the point where you can still turn the roadside bushing in the bushing seat by hand then adjust from there. The Canon is slight larger diameter than our Barrel so it fits the Caliber bushing seat better since the seat is a bit sloppy.
Whenever you change you busing set up, remember to check for wheel bite before you ride.
In any event with at least 3 different brands of bushings in your set up: RipTide, Ronin and Bear, I suggest focusing on one compound and maintaining the split duros. Try running KranK 90a/93a TallBarrels front and back. With a full Krank set up you can run it with a loose center and dive hard into it when initiating a slide and it will support you well.
OK @anorak234 some notes about the Torqueboard 50 degree V2 trucks and what RipTide fits where for upgrade purposes. The pivot cup that fits is our Indy 96a WFB pivot. It is dimensionally very close to the stock pivot and goes into the base plate a little easier than we like to see but it is tighter on the hanger pivot nose so it does make for a functionally good tight fit when assembled. As for bushings, the trucks will accept our standard longboard bushings both boardside and roadside. The hanger will take the following shapes that we make: Cone, Barrel, Canon, and FatCone. The tightest fit in the hanger is the Canon bushing which is slightly larger diameter than our Barrel. Additionally, the king pin length does not leave much room so you may elect to not use a boardside washer at all when using two .6" tall bushings or you can run our Street series bushings in the roadside position since they are .5" tall compared to the longboard series which is .6" tall
Additional notes on stability: With a symmetrical set you (50 front and rear) running a tighter rear than the front goes a long way to make a more stable set up coupled with keeping more than 50% of your weight over the front truck.
Since the Torqueboard 50 degree V2 trucks do not fit our Chubby bushing, the best next thing is the RipTide FatCone to run in the boardside position in the rear coupled with a RipTide StreetBarrel roadside. For the front I suggest a Canon boardside and StreetBarrel roadside. The boardside bushings in this set up are .6" tall and the roadside are .5" tall so you can run washers in all positions giving you additional options for dialing in the set up with flat verses cupped washers. For your weight I suggest KranK 87a.all around. The Fatcone is the key here to changing the response of the rear truck to a progressive ramp up in resistance where the front is a linear response
Thank you so much! You’ve given me a fair bit of info that I’d not likely stumble upon when searching. I’ll take this all on board and get ordering tonight . I’m happy to pick up other trucks if you have any you could recommend for my need?
Thanks again for a very detailed and informative answer.
No its a freeride set up for fun. Tried to get myself to like diffferent set ups. So far nothing pulls me away from my pocket ace bombsquad with prolights though.
This or baseplate splits even by a couple degrees offset the front and rear truck so they don’t oscillate off of one another like they would at the same angle. Certainly helps with speed stability.
Base plate splits are definitely better than a synthetic split, Usually the place to start is with a lower degree rear base plate or de-wedging the rear to make the king pin angle closer to perpendicular to the ground. This can get tricky since all the power is driving the rear wheels in most cases and the wiring may need to be modified.
That is true… But even the smallest split can make a board stable…haha ever seen someone go 35mph+ on a Loaded vanguard? While.i don’t suggest it because the vanguard is a noodle, a 46r/50f split makes it stable. I could barely hit 20’s when I had the same angles due to how much torsional flex it has and the front and rear oscillating off of one another.
The Bustin sportster 33 is easy to modiify to prevent wheel bite since it is Bamboo / Maple construction so you might want to consider making some changes to the deck. You can get more rebound by using either RipTide APS or KranK with KranK being our highest rebound compound to date. For your you weight on a symmetrical set up I would go with a Canon / FatCone set up in either APS 87.5a or KranK 87a. The FatCone Boardside will give you a lot more support and progressively ramp up resistance the further you lean. This works well for set ups that have a potential for wheel bite. Like I said, if you can modify the deck to eliminate the wheel bite issue first, you will be a lot happier in the long run. If you want a really stable, high performance set up, you may want to consider running a Caliber II 44 degree rear to take some of the steering input out of the back. If you do that, I would suggest running a Canon / Canon front and a Cannon / Chubby rear in the same compound /druos listed above. Since the rear is at 44 degrees, you have greater leverage over the bushings so you need to use either a larger bushing (suggested) or a harder bushing in the rear
. I’m happy to pick up other trucks if you have any you could recommend for my need?