Dev Update on wheel for more comfort, speed, & grip - Grip testing: How did popular wheels compare?

Update #7: Momentum prototype - how do they grip to some well known wheels?

^One aesthetic design we’re thinking of… will have a design poll in the next post

We want a little bit more comfort (so our feet aren’t numb and to protect our board) for the commute, but we also want to have fun and love the connected to the road grippy feeling they give us. So we are trying to figure out that special formula for the e-board masses. We are confident with enough testing and your feedback, we can pull it off.

The last thing we want to do is take away the shear amount of fun we get and a lot of that is ride quality and grip. We want to be able to carve and not feel like the board is heavy and tank-like, but we also don’t want to feel like our foot is going to fall off.

We tested between our Momentum prototype wheels, BOA Constrictors, Orangatang Kegel, and Orangatang Caguamas. We couldn’t get an ABEC, Trampa Gummies, or Centrax wheels in time for the test, but that will come in the next months and… if we can figure out how to get them onto a Boosted Board.

Skidpad (grip testing) in Action Video: Comparison between some top wheels

Take a look at how each wheel performed in our video!

What is a skidpad? Why does it matter?

Taken directly from Car and Driver Magazine:

“Skidpad: Finding a car’s maximum cornering ability, known as “lateral acceleration” and expressed in “g,” with 1.00 g equal to the earth’s gravity, is as simple as driving around a circle as quickly as possible. When a car reaches its cornering limit, its front or rear tires will begin to lose traction.”

Of course, there are many tests to determine maximum grip and handling, but this is a very common one in the automotive industry and the skate industry doesn’t have one, so… why not?

We went to a local parking lot and mapped out a large circle 70 feet in diameter. The idea of this skidpad test is to travel in a circle as fast as you can. When you get to the limit of grip, the wheels will start to slip. The faster you can complete the skidpad circle means that you have more grip.

We performed the test back to back on each wheel. Did 12 laps each. As we got better in the art of controlling a board and managing weight transfer, we would repeat the test until our skidpad time start to level out. Then, we took the average.

I’m going in circles!

Helmet cam footage

How they stack up?

Skid pad times:

Results from our last post on vibration and bump impacts on a rough road:

Boa Feedback:

By far, the BOA Constrictors felt the worst. The combination of heavy weight, hard durometer, a really made the board feel unstable at grip limit. It felt like the board wanted to slip away and it was hard to carry a lot of speed when the board was slipping. Twitchy is the best way to describe it. We were riding on the same pavement and every time it would hit the white paint, it would suddenly lose grip. Kind of scary.

Orangatang Kegel and Caguama Feedback:

The Kegel and Caguama wheels felt pretty similar but it is no wonder why they are a downhill long boarder favorite. When they approach the limit of grip, you can progressively feel the sliding occur. Even the with the hard compound of the purple, they did really well. Whereas, in the boa wheels, the slip would occur very suddenly, making the experience less fun and more scary. The sliding characteristics were very predictable.

Momentum Feedback:

With our design, we have a thinner contact patch but after experimenting with multiple parameters such as durometer, contact patch, diameter, and more. We found that the skateboard wheels width is much wider than it needs to be. We didn’t find that extra contact patch really improve grip too much. Certainly, it added more weight would which would sacrifice the connectedness.

How can you help?

What kind of tests do you want to see done? What other wheels that I haven’t mentioned do you want to be tested?

If you want to keep up to date on my project, then please sign up. Sign ups let us know that we should continue building. I’ll give exclusive updates and a big discount when we launch in a couple of months! https://free-range.landinglion.com/momentumwheels/

What’s in the next blog posts?

Acceleration Testing

Back to back testing on how our acceleration will do against Kegel, Caguama, and Boa. We are still conducting this test, but probably will be slower than Kegal and Caguama, but hopefully faster than Boa. We’ll see…

Aesthetic Design

What colors do you want to see? What kind of patterns do you like? We’ll be holding a community poll to see which is most popular.

Top Speed Testing

Back to back testing on how our top speed will do against Kegel, Caguama, and Boa. Stay tuned!

Looking for Third Party Tester with E-skate/longboard following

We are looking for a third party tester with a good social media following. We’re looking for people that live near really shitty, bad conditions so they can test them. Think you qualify? Contact us and we’ll send you a set of Momentum Wheels. Contact us at [email protected]. Only serving the United States for now.

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46 posts were merged into an existing topic: New wheel development: Comfort, Grip, Speed with hopefully minimal impact on Acceleration