I’m a huge believer in open beta testing, especially if you’re not a large enough company to host your own internal testing.
My single largest criticism of the Esk8 market is a lack of testing or a lack of clarity surrounding the level of testing that has already taken place. So much is rushed to market without any due diligence in testing at all.
So start putting your trucks under people’s feet, just do it with full disclosure that you’re asking them to beta test, scale within your limits, and take user input.
That’s essentially the plan we’ve tried to stick to with FreeSK8 development and I’d say that our community of beta testers is one of our most valuable assets as a project.
With the nuts captured in the baseplate you could have a version with three kingpin/nut locations then as well as being able to make a triple bushing hanger (for 0 reason) it would make it possible to move the two kingpin hanger up and down easily when you are swapping bushings. I know the way trampa sells it it has nuts roadside but it would fit the other way around, ignoring issues with compressed bushings preventing kingpins from being loosened. Not an amazing idea, but unique enough.
Just trying to get this idea that popped into my head out.
Frank could you tell me what the kingpin center distance is? if I wanted to design a adjustable baseplate for them. I actually could make it fit both yours and the Apex PKP.
Well, I suppose to do that I need to start making trucks that focus on a couple Ideas I want, instead of having the purpose of each new truck be to just explore new ideas.
Yeah, Nothing I’ve got is even beta ready.
Thankfully I do know an awful lot of people in the various skate communities when I get to the point of needing that feedback.
I think I probably can handle pre-production R&D without having to reach out to others.
But production R&D, and actual production, I think I’d much rather go with kickstarter assuming anything even gets to that point. Last time I was helping with a truck design, outside money coming in was were everything started to go wrong.
I would only go preorder/kickstart route if you are absolutely confident in the trucks performance and your ability to manufacture them without any hiccups. These posts are a bit offtopic here tho
I would say money is one big limitation, and unless you have a reputation and can do some sort of open testing with people paying or have cash to invest, you are pretty much cornered
Prototypes are extremely expensive, and don’t take that extremely lightly
Also there is always the risk that something big may have to be changed and all the tooling, jigs and else that was made for the first units will have to be scrapped and that will be sunken cost. So you have to be able to deal with that and keep it viable even on that case
One truck. 3 hangers. 6 pins. King, queen, prince, princess, duke, and dutchess. And the baseplates called a conte, for some reason. Conte de skaté trucko.
That’s my picture. The bolt I removed was a grade 5. I have since ordered some grade 10.9 may go 12.9 if they don’t hold up. My reason for grade 10.9 over 12.9 is that I would rather them bend than snap.
For context : I hit a tree stump at about 18mph that stopped me dead and cartwheeled me off into the bushes, I’m not sure many bolts would have held up to the forces they were subjected to in that collision.
Are you really just gonna rob me of an opportunity to slam Frank here? Damn you and your facts, it sure looks like stainless from here. FWIW I wouldn’t expect any kingpin to hold up to that abuse.
And sorry; could you specify on the material used on the stock kingpin bolt you received? Grade 5 carbon steel?
Damn you and your facts, it sure looks like stainless from here. FWIW I wouldn’t expect any kingpin to hold up to that abuse.