Introduce
Many people say that tightening the wheel will help you skate better. But sometimes, the wheel is too tight, which will bring a terrible skateboarding experience.
So, what should we do? How to loosen skateboard wheels? Follow Skateboard Cast’s detailed guidelines in this article to loosen wheels quickly!
How To Loosen Skateboard Wheels?
If your skateboard wheel is too tight, you can loosen it with these 4 easy steps:
- Prepare gear and skateboard
- Determine the wheel that needs loosening
- Loosen a skateboards wheel
- Check and adjust to the appropriate loosening
Honestly, loosening this skateboard wheel is not difficult at all. The steps to make it are basic, and you can do it yourself at home.
Loose or tight skateboard wheels are up to the player’s preference. The same degree of tightening, but one person feels it lose, and the other feels it tight. So you should adjust to the level that you think is suitable.
Here’s our step-by-step guide to loosening your wheels. It’s swift and effective.
Step 1: Prepare Gear and Skate
Preparing your tools is the best way to get the job done quickly. To loosen a skateboard wheel, you will need essential tools like a wrench or 1/2 inch socket. If you have the right skateboard gear, use them.
Next, turn your skateboard upside down. It would help if you placed a skateboard on a table about as high as your chest when sitting. It will make the wheel loosening process go more smoothly.
Step 2: Determine the Wheel of the Truck That Needs Loosening
Sometimes not all skateboard wheels need you to loosen. It’s possible that one of the wheels is too tight and you need to check them.
Checking and finding the wheel that needs loosening will save time and effort. You can check the tightness of a skateboard wheel by spinning it.
Spin each wheel, and if it suddenly stops and tends to reverse, it is too tight. You need to loosen that wheel.
Step 3: Loosen a Skateboard Wheels
Take the tool you prepared earlier. A wrench or 1/2 inch socket will do. Then place the wrench on the nut of a skateboard’s wheel and push it counterclockwise.
Note that you should only push it slightly. Moving the tool too much can cause the wheel to loosen more than necessary.
Step 4: Check and Fix
To check how loose a skateboard’s wheel is, turn it on the shaft again by hand. If it still stops quickly, continue to use the wrench to loosen it. You will continue to put the wrench in the nut and turn counterclockwise again.
When a skateboard’s wheel spins at a steady rate and slows down before stopping, you’ve successfully loosened it.
To be more sure of the fit of the wheel after loosening, try sliding it a few turns. If during the move you still feel some instability, continue to recheck it.
Note for you that you should only loosen it little by little to edit. It is possible that after loosening, the wheel will become too loose. At this point, you can tighten it by turning the nut clockwise with a wrench.
Losing or tightening a skateboard’s wheel is not difficult to do. It doesn’t have a set of rules that everyone has to follow. You can adjust the wheel tight or loose depending on your skateboarding preferences.
Why Must We Loosen Skateboard Wheels?
Wheels affect the efficiency when the player skates or performs tricks
Wheels are a vital part of a skateboard. It directly affects the efficiency when the player skates or performs tricks. So what are those reasons? Follow our analysis below!
Personal Interests
Skateboarding is also a freestyles sport. You can play it casually and creatively. So whether you tighten a skateboard wheel tightly or loosely depends on your skateboarding style.
You’ll probably prefer freedom and flexibility over precise and rigid shifts. Of course, only loosening a skateboard wheel can give you free flexibility.
The fact that you like the loose wheel is not that it will loosen too much. Skateboard wheels still need the correct tightening for them to work. The loosening here is always within the range that allows the wheel to work correctly.
Increased Flexibility for Skateboards
Tightening the wheels will bring many benefits to a skateboard, but it also brings many limitations. When you tighten a skateboard’s wheel too much, a skateboard loses its inherent flexibility.
When you tighten a skateboard wheel too much, a skateboard loses its inherent flexibility
It is evident in the fact that a skateboard is moving but suddenly stops. Because you tighten the nuts too tightly, they inhibit a wheel’s torque. The friction force of a wheel is also increased.
As a result, a wheel experiences more resistance, so it often moves slowly or stops suddenly. It will also take more effort for you to generate thrust for the wheel to move.
Turning the direction of a skateboard also becomes much more difficult. Because the wheels are too tight, the direction adjustment is also somewhat rigid. Maybe you require some time to adjust to this.
Easily Push Skateboard
One thing that everyone realizes is that the wheels will spin faster when you loosen them. When loosened, the friction force of the reels will be reduced to the lowest, and wheels are almost free to operate.
Loose wheels will help your skateboard maintain a steady speed and for longer. The quick turning of a wheel also helps you quickly accelerate without much effort.
Wheels will spin faster when you loosen them
Loosening the skateboard wheel can be difficult for beginners. However, once you have mastered the basic techniques, you can try them. Maybe it’s a style that’s perfect for you.
When Do You Need To Loosen Your Skateboard Wheels?
We need to tighten a wheel when the skateboard is unstable. What about loosening the skateboard wheel? When do we need to loosen them up?
You can find signs or cases that need to loosen your skateboard wheels in the following shares!
The Skateboards Suddenly Stops And Hard To Push
If your skateboard often stops suddenly while in motion, you need to loosen its wheels.
When a wheel is too tight, it will create great friction on a wheel when moving. It will create more drag. So a skateboard will stop suddenly when it reaches the extreme point, and the thrust is not enough.
You must use more force in pushing a skateboard to move. Tightening wheels usually have a lot of resistance from the nut and shaft. It won’t be easy to make quick rotations.
When the skateboard’s wheel is too tight, it will create excessive rigidity and fixation of a wheel. You can imagine it like a doctor splinting your neck, and you can’t turn your head.
Wheels that are too tight will lose flexibility
So the skateboards will lose flexibility when you want to change direction or perform tricks. Excessive fixation of the wheels causes a skateboard to act rigidly. If you are a person who likes flexibility and freedom, you will hate this squeeze.
Pressure Appears At The Tail Of A Skateboard
When a wheel is too tight, you will feel pressure in the tail of a skateboard. It makes it harder for you to do tricks with skateboards.
In addition, this pressure also causes many difficulties in the process of changing the direction of the skateboards. It’s best to check the wheels and loosen them a bit.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. When checking a wheel, how long should the skateboard’s wheel rotate?
A wheel that performs well and has a moderate grip will spin freely for 10 to 20 seconds. When inspecting wheels, apply force by hand and observe how it rotates. If they rotate in the period I mentioned above, they are stable.
Conversely, if they stop suddenly or spin for no more than two seconds, it’s already overstretched. Now you need to loosen them.
2. Besides loosening a wheel, how can we avoid a wheel of the skateboard being too tight?
The easiest way is to loosen the skateboard’s wheel and check it regularly. However, you can add washers to a wheel. It will avoid pinching a wheel and bearing.
Using washers is a pretty good extra repair method. Nowadays, many people use it for their skateboards.
3. How tight should the Longboard wheel be?
A longboard is a type of board that is not like regular skateboards. However, its adjustment depends a lot on the preferences of the user. But the longboard can only be free when its wheels are tight.
It means that the longboard wheel should be in tight condition, even if you need to tighten the wheels very tightly to the axle.
4. How to find out if the skateboard wheel is too loose?
You can check if a wheel is loose by holding it and shaking it. If a wheel you are clamping swings to one side, it is too loose. You need to use the tool to turn the nuts clockwise to tighten them a bit.
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Summary
Tightening the skateboard wheel is essential. However, wheels that are too tight will also not work well, and you need to loosen them. How to loosen skateboard wheels?
Skateboard Cast has shared with you our detailed instructions and related information. Hopefully, they can help you make better skateboards.
Thanks for reading!
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