Hi everyone,
It’s that time again. I’m going to upgrade my setup and change a few bits on my board. I’m going to be getting new trucks (12fiftys), wheels (gummies) and motor mount/pulley all from Trampa.
My question is regarding the wheels. The MegaStars look amazing, but is it worth the price tag? £300 for a set of wheels is pretty expensive compared to the £170 for the SuperStars. What’s people’s options on them?
Cheers, Daniel
Imo they look really nice, but their just too expensive for most people. Atleast compared to other similar products. You can get full cnc’d aluminium hubs from @3DServisas for £170.
In racing cars, they try to make wheels weigh less. In e-mountainboard, innovations tend to make wheels heavier. Weird… In my opinion, the lighter, the better.
You can’t go wrong with either:
There isn’t a more beautiful wheel in the world for your mountain board than the Trampa CNC SuperStar or MegaStar. You can color match spokes to the rest of your build; rims available both in black and polished. Stellar.
I love my 3Dservisas wheels, they’re absolutely terrific. Everything from 3Dservisas I’ve purchased (both sets of wheels, HD gearbox, etc) is exceptionally crafted, very rugged and heavy duty.
My concern is that the SuperStar hubs will flex like the normal plastic ones do. Or at least that’s what I’ve heard? I’m half tempted to get the normal SuperStar hubs and then upgrade the rims if I find them to be too weak.
Also, this is going on a road board. I’ll probably make a off road board at some point but not right now.
Augh this is so difficult to decide! I’m going to check out the 3dservicas ones
I presume I can upgrade the rims at any point to make the SuperStars into MegaStars, right?
Superstars are also fairly unbalanced, I think trampa say the megastars are balanced though. It’s no big deal to balance a wheel, I used between 4g and 6g of lead weight strips used by golfers to balance mine.
They don’t, but they do have small deviations leading to a bit of a wobble if you directly attach a gear (only a very very small issue it you are using gear drives). For belt or chain drive, it’s 100% fine. Pneumatics come with vibrations anyway, regardless of how well the hub is crafted.
Some people have complained about the precision of the area where the bearing is seated. Superstars are drop in, with some hubs requiring bearing retention glue to fixate them and prevent them from creating a clicking noise.
@Tangent how would I test for them being unbalanced?
@telnoi I’m not going to be using them for off road or anything so I’m guessing they’ll be fine? It’ll be with a belt drive system aswell.
I’m going to order the SuperStar version now and maybe change the rims if I find they’re not quite right.
Cheers, Daniel
Superstar will be totally fine. It’s a myth that they are out of balance or wobble. The wobble is always in the tire and imbalance is caused be the valve. If you tighten down the 5 bolts in a star pattern, the hub spins perfectly round. Some users go in circles and create a wobble by uneven bolt tension.
Nah, I tested them with the tires taken off and there are others who measured them accurately. There is one bogus video by kugl3s floating around where he tries to sell his cnc’d hubs by unfair comparison with the tires installed, but that’s about the extent of the false information.
The imbalance is at most a few mm.
In my case, I indeed tighten them in a star pattern, but by hand there will always be a small difference in amount of turns etc leading to the inaccuracy. Full cnc will just not be susceptible to something like that.
They will be fine in all cases, even with the small deviations I spoke of earlier. Imo full cnc is for show and nice to have, but not necessary at all unless you want pressed in bearings.
If you tested this, did you record any empirical data?
Could you provide sources for the others that measured this?
Genuine question.
Also @topcloud couldn’t agree more. I just picked up another 2 full sets of Superstars w/ Gummies & 6.5 Urbans. Love em. I’ve been eyeballing the Megas thinking about going back up to 8" tires.
Regardless of the “imbalanced hubs”, I’ve ordered them anyway. I’m never going to notice any difference if there is any. I’m also having gummie tyres.
I’ve placed my order for SuperStar Gummies, 12Fifties trucks and a motor mount to suit. Can’t wait to receive it all!!
We have new Megastars in production. 8", 8" deep dish, 9" deep dish. Won’t take long.
It was enough to take a ruler and hold it a fixed distance from the hub. More or less the same way I test if my mtb rims are true after working on the spokes and how it’s generally done at bicycle repair shops.
Kugl3s shared some measurements, no time to look it up but you should be able to find it.
The two plastic halves and the fact that we are all hand screwing them together will cause deviations, even if these are perfectly manufactured. It’s a downside of how these are put together. Again, not even worth investigating, since the precision has proven to be good enough for my purposes regardless of a tiny wobble and I’m not in the business of pointing out product issues for the world to see. I put stuff together and take note of any peculiarities I come across.
Hey my friend 
Whilst it is true that polymer cannot reach CNC tolerances, I do ask everyone to please consider purpose: try mountain boarding, for real, and see if you can feel the difference for yourself between polymer and aluminum (the only difference I detect is weight).
On normal street, Trampa Orrsums on Urban Tredz cruise to 30 MPH and do not miss a beat on polymer rims, no more than Evolves presumably do with their AT wheels, etc.
Polymer is the standard, today and performance is well within tolerances. Thankfully, I’ve never heard of an accident caused by poly rims, from any vendor.
The only place I like precision is beyond 30 MPH, where I like the weight of aluminum wheels. Hope this helps!
I was referring to the wheel balance when fully assembled with tube and valve stem, they will of course be out of balance, the point I was making was that the Megastars rims boast a counter balance for the valve stem. @MrDGOrman super easy to balance wheels, suspend one on its axle ensuring it is very free to rotate, and the heaviest point will find its way to the bottom, attach a weight vertically above this point directly opposite, and repeat until you can turn the wheel to any angle and not have it rotate when you let go. The more freely the wheel can rotate the better the results.