There’s a recent trend in the downhill skateboarding of spherical bearings being used instead of pivot cups, and insert bushings in trucks. Examples being the Rouge ZM1s. Apparently spherical bearings give more responsiveness to a truck while not compromising on stability. Has anyone tried this on eskate trucks, if so, thoughts?
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Currently almost every raceboard uses 3-links, which Stooge developed.
Such a good idea, someone else had it already 
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It was a trend in 2007 or so as well before it died back.
IMO, modding or building bushing trucks with sphericals is… I think it takes away a lot of what kingpin trucks have to give, and if you want that sort of precision you’re better going with a different style of truck in the first place.
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Does anyone know why the trend died? As long as the spherical bearing allows enough range of motion, it seems that more precision added to a kingpin would be a welcome thing.
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I’m not too sure. Some downhill skaters describe the feeling as twitchy. I think I might rig some up on my board to test out how they feel for eskate
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No experience so armchair quarterback opinions here: part of the advantage of an rkp vs channel truck is the little bit if slop righ?
Hear me out, rkp slop will eat some if the shock from high speed road surface imperfections with a lateral deflection across the kingpin: The large opening in the hanger that the kingpin passes through is connected via the bushing and when not overly tight i.e. correct bushing duro so preload is correct and loose (opinion:-)) This lets one wheel hit something and deflect and reducing the leverage or counter forces on the opposite wheel
I have only used rkp and channel trucks (matrix 3) and never used Spherical bearing rkp trucks so grain of salt here
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I haven’t tried sphericals personally on anything but an ldp pumping board. (And 3 links) But I would be worried about breaking kingpins on an esk8 rkp with a spherical. LDP riders break kingpins all the time, certain LDP styles are kinda similar to carving hard on an esk8, and esk8s see a lot of miles where fatigue can build up. And I’ve seen multiple people break kingpins already on esk8 races without running sphericals.
A better way to achieve no slop in my opinion is dual pivot trucks, like the Tito Duality that I run on my racer.
The dual pivot cup design gives the truck such accuracy that it allows me to run the trucks very soft, giving insane lean, a lot of turn, and great stability. They also shine at really low angles, I am running 25 degree front 10 degree rear, which alone gives a lot of stability, but I still have great turning and reactivity for short track. Much tighter turning then anyone would think is even possible with such low angles and such a wide setup.
If I had the courage I could probably go mach 1 but that’s not my style… I am mostly into racing short to medium length track and carving hard. Keeping it mostly around 35 mph / 55 kph, I wanna ease into the 40mph / 65kph territory once I get some leathers, but I am not so much into speed as I am into turning and acceleration.
Channel trucks also achieve a no slop feeling, however I never managed to setup any channel truck in a way that leans and turns this well, and is still stable to high speeds. I always had to give up one or the other. Not with the dualities.
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