Jason Mitchell, Seismic Nationals 2007, Hybrid Slalom.  Photo by Greg Fadell Northern California Downhill Skateboarding Association
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Page to oldest posts   Page backwards 25 posts   Page forwards 25 posts   Page to newest posts     Posts 14316-14340 of 15215 Add your own post! 
 
Truck Reviews (15215 Posts)
Truck Review
did i miss something?
On 12/4/2006 herbn wrote in from United States  (64.12.nnn.nnn)

all that talk of harsh responces, makes me think some interesting responces were perhaps pulled by webmaster,oh well. nice to see a few others with similar ideas about the breakage. I was thinking if the bolts are a custom bolt there might be a slight possibility that the defective bolt claim could be for real. I just thought of another fix,it might be tough to do,if you must use balljoints in that place,you might be able to get could get balljoints with a notched outer race,sort of like a wheelwell for the kingpin,if it could be convinced that breakage occurs from repeatedly steering against the limit of the balljoint. If the kingpin is a shouldered bolt, the shoulder could extend further into the baseplate.

 
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Breakage
On 12/4/2006 WAX wrote in from United States  (67.176.nnn.nnn)

Lots of good points here...I like Geezers fix, and I agree with CC about using a standard sized skate tool bolt..
I look forward to seeing the Fyre in person, from a distance it sounds like a great idea, and looks like it was well executed...and has some results to back it up..as does the GOG ...lots of great choices now unlike in 2003 when i started slaloming its awesome...

and fro the record...ARAB didnt fight at a race!

 
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And so it goes...
On 12/4/2006 Chuck Gill wrote in from United States  (192.249.nnn.nnn)

You know, Civ, *Arab* did "plenty of good" for skating, and slalom too...it's just that he could be such an @$$hat when he was online (oh, and that whole fighting at a race thing). I would hope no one else would stoop so low as to go that route...but apparently the supply of people willing to do so has not yet evaporated 'round these parts.

I'm not sure where I said I, or anyone else, was "better" than any other person. And I'm not gonna find fault with a truck ending up costing more than projected or a development article breaking...the economics are what they are and untested articles just might fail in real-world use. The only fault I am going to find is with anyone who would attack the messenger, especially using the "Arab technique", rather than admit they were wrong or their claims were exaggerated in the first place and move on with grace and dignity. Try not to take it personally, I'm sure GOGs have the potential to be very good race trucks, and I'm sure that with a little development any problems that crop up will be fixed. The backpedaling and needless personal attacks are weak, that's all I'm saying.

Your prize is wherever you find it...

p.s. "Unfair"??? I hope I'm not the first person to tell you this, but "No one ever said life was fair." However I think the analogy, in the context I made it, was perfectly fair.

p.p.s. I'm old, fat, slow, suck at skating, and was uncool in high school (heck, I was even in the band). Maybe someone can find a way to use those to attack me too. *Arab* would have ;-)

 
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Low Blow
On 12/4/2006 Civ wrote in from Canada  (24.141.nnn.nnn)

comparing Donald to Arab is unfair. Donald has done many good things for slalom over the last few years, including trying bring a new product to market. If you just want to sit back, not race and criticize others thats fine, but that doesnt make you a lick better than the ones your bashing. Like you said, you dont race. Where is my prize?

 
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The best way..
On 12/4/2006 cnova wrote in from United States  (65.91.nnn.nnn)

.... to prevent components from breaking is properly engineering them in the first place. It takes a couple of years of theoretical studies & years of practical experience to get it right.

CHIxILL

 
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Don't Blame The Bolts
On 12/4/2006 Chris Chaput wrote in from United States  (71.254.nnn.nnn)

It's a design flaw. If you keep perpetuating the Radikal's flawed design, you get what you get. I don't care if you try titanium, chromoly, grade 8 hardened steel, or "uberanium" - you're asking for trouble. There are a number of ways to solve the problem, but it takes more than just using stronger material or offsetting the thread depth. We're lucky that more people haven't been seriously hurt.

The kingpin is just a piece of metal. So is a metal coat hanger. If you want to break a coat hanger, what do you do? You bend it back and forth, over and over again. It starts to warm up and if you keep bending it, it will snap off. If you were to cut or nick it anywhere near where you started to load and bend it, it would break even faster.

When you have a cantilevered kingpin (as opposed to a kingpin that is supported on both ends) and the hanger is also left unsupported on one end, you're asking the kingpin to support the weight of the rider. In trucks that don't have a spherical bearing trapping the hanger onto the kingpin, the load can be shared by the hanger nestling down into the pivot cup, and/or the bushing seats resting on top of the bottom bushing. When a spherical bearing is holding the hanger onto the kingpin, the pivot cup and bottom bushing aren't allowed to share as much of the load. The spherical bearing in the pivot cup area allows the pivot rod on the end of the hanger to slide out, which means that the shoulder of the pivot rod isn't being supported by the bearing, especially when the hanger is anything other than perfectly perpendicular to the kingpin. This means that having too tall or too short of a bottom bushing makes the problem worse. Any time that you loosen or tighten your trucks, you change the hanger angle. If your bottom bushing is harder than your top bushing, the hanger angle changes. Even simply riding the board weights and unweights the trucks, and the hanger angle changes.

What all this means is that you're putting most of the load of the rider downward onto the kingpin, and then you begin to turn to the left, then turn to right, with a cut (first thread) in the metal right in the area of where you are bending it. It's a recipe for breakage.

You'd be better off (structurally) just sticking a kingpin up through the bottom of the baseplate and having only the top part threaded to tension the bushings. You'd have to take your truck off the board to change a bottom bushings though, which is why Geezer's solution seems more practical. If you take that route, please use a 3/8" hex head machine screw so that our skate key fits it.

There was a time when I was very serious about "fixing" the flaws in others' trucks. I was one of many frustrated guys who were paying way too much money to have something that was a pain to work on, was dangerous, and cost a lot of money. I was doing more in the Downhill and Longboard market, but decided to change gears midstream and to help support the slalom community more. I'm doing everything that I can to bring a precision slalom truck to the market that won't break the bank, or the kingpins.

 
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GOG
On 12/4/2006 Chuck Gill wrote in from United States  (192.249.nnn.nnn)

Geez has it right...threads loaded in tension, good; loaded in bending, bad. There *are* things that can be done to make threaded fasteners better able to handle bending loads but I can not legally discuss them here (no, I'm not kidding).

On a related note, GOGs have now been demonstrated to *NOT* come in lower-priced than Radikals, nor to have "fixed" Radikal's kingpin issues, despite days and days of blather to the contrary earlier this year. Any who have made note of this since the actual public release of the trucks have been exposed to Donald's "Arab-like" responses.."Oh, you're not really a racer", etc. Weak...really weak. Man up, admit the flaw, address properly, move on.

First person to point out I haven't been to a race since 2004 or whenever, so my opinion doesn't count, wins the idiot prize...

 
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Here's a good way
On 12/4/2006 Geezer-X wrote in from United States  (65.127.nnn.nnn)

Kingpin is slip fit in hard-anodized baseplate. It's retained by a #10-32 or 5mmx.8 screw with a machined tip.

 
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You simply cannot....
On 12/4/2006 Geezer-X wrote in from United States  (65.127.nnn.nnn)

Cantilever a load on a threaded interface.

A threaded area on a fastener can be loaded in only one way. Period.

Tension. That's what threads are for. They're for holding an assembly in compression. Even if you "bury" the last thread a short distance into a counterbored area, if there's a any bending load at the thread it will break there. Again, period. The first thread is a textbook stress raiser.

Now, there's a possibility that if the truck were run very loose in a cyberslalom environment where very hard pumping was combined with low speed and maximum lean angles, the kingpin spherical bearing could collide with the kingpin. This could cause the problem as well.

I hadn't looked at a GOG truck disassembled before I bought one. I assumed that on the basis of Radikals problems that the kingpins wouldn't be threaded into the baseplete.

What exactly is the fix? does it still involve a kingpin that threads into the baseplate?

I'm going to disassemble mine tonight and measure the angular clearance, as well as seeing what sort of kingpin retrofit is possible to get rid of the threaded interface.

A kingpin that was a slip fit into a hole in the baseplate which was retained by a wire clip would be perfectly safe as the wire clip would be loaded in double shear, but conventional thinking skaters would probably reject it "cause it doesn't look like a Tracker or radikal..."

 
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defective bolts
On 12/4/2006 herbn wrote in from United States  (205.188.nnn.nnn)

very very rare,never seen one. Manufacturing bolts is fairly straight forward,it is a heavy industry and they have it pretty wired,so two defective bolts, so soon after the introduction of a new product.... The little bit i've seen of Radikals they use an oversized bushing sort of molded around the balljoint a bit,makes me think the ball joint in a radikal is a bit bigger,it may allow a slightly greater angle of deflection. I don't like the use of ball joints,especially two, the pivot is sort of ok. Between the bushings is so so,i think the bushings should be close together ,i think they snap to center better.If you're gonna use balljoints,Chaputs' design seems be a good way to go.

 
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pins - conditions
On 12/4/2006 peters wrote in from United States  (24.18.nnn.nnn)

yes- course is smooth and flat. in a garage with no expansion joints or sidewalk cracks. cyber slalom, to be exact.

 
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Busted pins
On 12/4/2006 WAX wrote in from United States  (67.176.nnn.nnn)

Were the pins snapped on a slalom course?

 
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OMGOG
On 12/4/2006 peters wrote in from United States  (24.18.nnn.nnn)

Donald, my contact information was clearly included as an email link in the post. With failure and repro cases its better to step up and announce this to keep it from happening. This is the QA issue.

The customer service solution below is excellent -- there's no doubt sk8kings is top notch on response.

James Peters

"please be so kind to give your real name next time when you post"
"we are aware of this situation and we will change it."

 
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quality issues and customer-service
On 12/4/2006 donald20 wrote in from Germany  (84.62.nnn.nnn)

so this is where the customer-servie steps in:

causes of the problem are the kingpins themselves,nothing else.
we made a mistake in changing the original size kingpin we used from day one to a more skatetool-friendly kingpin.
as it seems this kingpin breaks too easy.
we are aware of this situation and we will change it.
please send your baseplates to sk8kings and they will replace them with new inserted/stronger kingpins.
your cost of shipping will be #1 reimbursed or #2 applied on the next order where you get a 10% rebate on one gog truck.
the next trucks coming will be the adjustables.

please be so kind to give your real name next time when you post,or even better than that,contact the folks where you got your product from to address this issue,so that we can take care of it.
sounds fair?

 
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hhmmm!!!
On 12/3/2006 herbn wrote in from United States  (205.188.nnn.nnn)

most of the time kingpins snap because of metal to metal contact when steering. Like the 90 lb kid that comes in with the ventures that have been cranked tight with the stock bushings,reducing the angle the truck can lean(lien still seems better to me)i kind of doubt gog people are tightening their bushings,its slalom,not straight line skating. I doubt the bolts are cheap and/or defective,it's gotta be the balljoints,not enough angular movement before they stop.

 
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gog pins
On 12/3/2006 OMGOG wrote in from United States  (24.18.nnn.nnn)

Two pins snapped at the first thread where the pin seats in the baseplate, within the first half hour of riding. Both were wedged at steep angle. Course is smooth and flat. Rider #1: 160 lbs. Rider #2: 110 lbs.



 
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Seismics for Mikey....
On 12/3/2006 T.O. wrote in from United States  (12.148.nnn.nnn)

Two 30* bases should work ok at what I'm assuming will be a 15-16in WB
if your kinda into pumping it around, don't hesitate to ADD steering to the front one if you feel it's kinda slow... (I run a 45* base on the front)

I learned to slalom on the then (2003) new metal Seismics and had instant success learning to pump. Expect more of a point and shoot accuracy...
In my experience Seismics really worked well when paired with a flexy deck for pumping the bike trails and such...also, I use dry graphite lube on the kingpin/hanger pivot bolt and between the hanger and the plastic on the baseplate to keep them workin SmOOtH :-)

 
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In GOG we trust
On 12/3/2006 Eddy Texas Outlaws wrote in from United States  (70.115.nnn.nnn)

No assumptions here bro. Just Facts and the men who post here usually post their email address. Eddy Texas Outlaws.

 
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Oh Please
On 12/2/2006 Tyler wrote in from United States  (24.144.nnn.nnn)

Oh please, You guys have no idea. Herb has come up with way more innovative stuff than the GOG. Making assumptions about people based through the internet is lame.

 
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Hi - Low profile trucks
On 12/2/2006 Pre-School Rider wrote in from United States  (75.68.nnn.nnn)

Tom, the axles are at different heights, so this means that the trucks better fit smaller wheels (low) or slightly larger wheels (high) on kickflipper decks. By way of example, a re-issue truck like the Bennett Vector would be a Very High profile truck, Randals would be a akin to having a lift-kit from a 4x4. It's funny, because I come from the days when Bennetts were one onf the trucks to have, and Trackers were 'low' by comparison. We added risers if we needed to gain steering clearance for a set of wheels. No one in their right mind rode wheels smaller than 60mm. Now, in kickflipper deck set-ups, I see wheels, NEW, as small as 45mm, and 55mm is big. I toss wheels out if they get smaller than that! Thank God that Longboarding, Luge, Racing, Slalom have all conspired to keep making tall, turny trucks with fat, big, soft wheels available! The new-found resurgeance of 'Old-School' products is also cool to see. Who would've thought I'd ever see brand-spanking-new Midtracs or Vectors again? Yeeaah!!

 
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GOG...
On 11/30/2006 Kevin wrote in from United States  (72.197.nnn.nnn)

"...when cruisin to the liqour store or to donut-heaven."
...mmmmm, donuts.

 
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Seismic Trucks
On 11/30/2006 mikey mike wrote in from United States  (69.250.nnn.nnn)

hey whatsup, i have a small board, its 7.5 by 29.5 cruiser. and i just ordered seismic 105mm 30 degree trucks. can anyone tell me what they think? what kind of carving and dowhill performance i will get out of these. i basically dont non what to expect out of them....let me know

 
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trucks
On 11/30/2006 tom wrote in from United States  (69.161.nnn.nnn)

hi, im not a boarder but my friend is, and i dont know what the difference between hi and low trucks is, cud one of yu guys help me out?

 
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carver trucks
On 11/29/2006 mikey mike wrote in from United States  (69.250.nnn.nnn)

yo whatup, i just bought a zflex jay adams crruiser just for fun and interested in some carver truck. anyway its a small board so i was wondering about the carver c4 short board trucks. does any no if those would work well and give me some carving power? let me know what u think

 
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POGO BASE PLATES
On 11/29/2006 sean wrote in from United States  (63.105.nnn.nnn)

Pogo base plates, 3 sets left at www.longboardlarry.net $115 shipped. $25 cheaper than any other place-if you can find them.......................

 
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