New Quads Pull Hard Left...

[fierocious1]

Originally Posted by Joey

I use spacers on everything - quads, longboards, and inlines. Got quad spacers from SkateRatz

http://www.sk8ratz.com/bearing-space...-skate-wheels/

No way am I running skates/skateboards without bearing spacers. Nyloc nuts may or may not come off, but a seized or slow bearing will spin on the axle, which can't be good.

Also, there is A CHANCE, that a slow bearing on the left side of either quad can twist off a worn nyloc nut. No thanks. I could be bombing a bridge at 20 mph. Or a longboard same thing. Installing quality spacers also force both bearings in each wheel to be exactly parallel to each other (increasing efficiency), instead of whatever goofy alignment a plastic hub might cause. And you don't need any special skill to tighten down a nut. Without spacers, who knows what stress is being put on the inner race of the bearings. Too loose, too tight? Try explaining that in a YouTube video.

I do not get the big aversion to spacers for quad users. They seem necessary to me. I also use speed rings on the outside of both bearings to make a perfect contact with the truck and the nut. Unless I am running precision trucks. Nuts are never precision.

I skated 7mm roller bearing back in the day, bent axles and lost bearings too. I skated spacered bearings when precision bearings first came out, bent axles and lost wheels. Now I skate 8mm, never lost a wheel, never bent an 8mm axle or lost a nylock nut. Wheels run looser without spacers and allow the wheels to get a better bite IMO. Tighten til snug, back off 1/2 turn exactly, done. No fuss, no wasted time figuring out something that already works well. More time for designing new plates and mods. oh yea, flips...

[Joey]

Originally Posted by fierocious1

Wheels run looser without spacers and allow the wheels to get a better bite IMO.

These things happen without bearing spacers. They may or may not be serious issues in the long run:

1. Bearings are totally dependent on the hub for keeping them parallel to each other per wheel without spacers. Machined aluminum hubs are likely a non-issue here.

2. Bearings will slam into the nut, then slam into the truck on every push or turn. It may be a tiny movement, but the frequency is high. So the inner race is getting "knocked out" from under the bearings over and over and over. Maybe quality bearings are so strong it doesn't matter? Even if they are tight enough to not get slapped by the axle, then the nut, all of the side-load goes on ONE bearing per wheel at a time.

3. Bearings will move side to side on the axle due to #2 as well as spin on the axle if the bearing gets slow. Therefore a slow bearing will be wearing the axle in two directions at once.

4. Skate wheels will click and clack as they slap into the axle and nut alternately making skates sound like cheap junk.

5. With spacers installed, each bearing shares the side-load with each other and the hub as well. Without spacers the inner race of each bearing takes a lot of unnecessary lateral stress - like hammering on them.

[fierocious1]

Originally Posted by Joey

These things happen without bearing spacers. They may or may not be serious issues in the long run:

1. Bearings are totally dependent on the hub for keeping them parallel to each other per wheel without spacers. Machined aluminum hubs are likely a non-issue here.

2. Bearings will slam into the nut, then slam into the truck on every push or turn. It may be a tiny movement, but the frequency is high. So the inner race is getting "knocked out" from under the bearings over and over and over. Maybe quality bearings are so strong it doesn't matter? Even if they are tight enough to not get slapped by the axle, then the nut, all of the side-load goes on ONE bearing per wheel at a time.

3. Bearings will move side to side on the axle due to #2 as well as spin on the axle if the bearing gets slow. Therefore a slow bearing will be wearing the axle in two directions at once.

4. Skate wheels will click and clack as they slap into the axle and nut alternately making skates sound like cheap junk.

5. With spacers installed, each bearing shares the side-load with each other and the hub as well. Without spacers the inner race of each bearing takes a lot of unnecessary lateral stress - like hammering on them.

1. True.
2. The bearings are running in the race and moving just as they would if they were being used with spacers. The bearings are not creating more clearance than they already have, so the race is pretty much staying confined to it's original position + normal bearing clearances. The bearings are hardened steel as is the races. The inner race on a set of bearings in a wheel that has no spacer is moving with the wheel unless there are very loose bores. Yes the load goes to one side alone, so? The bearing is well rated to take that side loading, with only one bearing taking the full load. If you could run with only one bearing, and keep it all aligned, it would be sufficient. I would be more worried about using the smaller bearings, their ratings are less but still plenty strong.
Electric motors actually use one bearing to maintain alignment by being "clamped in" with a bolted retainer, the other bearing floats. This lets the rotor shaft expand when the motor warms up to prevent binding the bearings into the races, side loading the bearings.
The clicking has never damaged my trucks, broke my flips or loosened my nylocks. I have only replace a few nylocks over time, reason, excessive wheel changes. For a while I changed wheels 4-5 times a session.
3. True, however bearings don't get slow, they work or they are not bearings, but are junk and should be trashed. A frozen bearing will spin on the axle, giving you warning to replace it.
4. Opinion, the wheels will slide back and forth, if too loose will make noise. But knowing the noise is part of it too. Experience would tell you what the noise is, or weather it is a cheap noise or an expensive noise. But no, 1/2 turn out, no noise. Flips, no noise, but I can make them noisy.
5. The best for last! Maybe. Depends on a lot of factors here. Are you good enough with your measuring devices to really set this up correctly? 95% are not competent to do it right. That being said, IF you get the correct measurements to each wheel or have each wheel corrected to a .001 tolerance, WITH metal hubs, get the bearings measured, inner and outer races, then calculate your spacers, you could get very close. However, you would miss one fine detail, you would have to measure the races loaded on both sides compared to the outer race to get your bearing tolerance, so you could find true center of EACH bearing. If you can do all this, you will be very close to loading both bearings the same in each wheel. But do you realize what that means? That means 2x more bearing drag because you are now loading 2 bearings rather than one.
Want to know why a lot of the car makers went to v6 engines? Less bearing drag on the motors, as rpm goes up so does drag. A v6 is more efficient because, of less bearings in the block. The more bearings you have, the more drag you have. An inline 6 has more bearings than a v6. The turbo cars would rather use the inline because the block can take boost and the bearings can take more load. But in normally aspirated motors, v6 gets better mileage, not by much but a little.
As I have always said, the spacers were used in the beginning to keep the bearings at bay and in place in non-hubbed wheels. What happens when you have a non-hubbed wheel, with bearings and no spacers AND standard nuts? The nut will come right off. The nut was locked by cranking it against the bearing spacer stack. Byproduct, strength though, stronger than just the axle by itself.

IMO, a bearing spacers original intent was to prevent the nuts from coming loose, now we have nylocks. But now the use is strength, I agree with that totally. But going through all the measuring to find true center on each set of bearings to say you have better roll, no, I don't buy it at all. If you are successful, you now have twice as many ball bearings making contact instead , causing the very thing you were trying to cancel out. If your wheels are running straight, no turns, you will have no better roll than a non-spacer skate. In turns, if you set up perfect, you will have twice the amount of bearings now in contact and loaded = more drag.
Also IMO, if I were to set up with a spacer, I would put spacers that were about .002 to .004 wider than the trued up hubs centers, that way the bearings could find center by eventually moving enough in the bore, but your tolerance would not be there for both bearings to contact races at the same time = one bearing loading.

[Joey]

Thanks. Will digest your post.

I come from the world of inline skates, and especially longboards (skateboards). I do not see quad skates wheels and bearings as much different than a longboard really. Many fine longboard bearings come with spacers and speed rings built in: Zealous is a very popular brand. They will not fit into quad skates, nor inline skates for that matter as the hub dimensions on longboard wheels are a bit larger than roller skates or inlines.

Obviously, bombing a hill on a longboard at 50 mph is putting a ton of stress on the bearings laterally in turns and while bleeding off speed for hairpin turns. I can tell you from years of experience with the longboard community that not even ONE skater is riding without spacers between their bearings. We use nyloc nuts and crank them down hard as we want. The wheels still spin freely. And they are NOT coming off.

In case you have never seen such a thing, here is one of my favorite vids that illustrates the lateral stresses on longboard bearings perfectly:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMyIFrEZtnw

So I guess my dilemma is the inability of my brain to distinguish between the needs of a longboarder or a quad skater insofar as bearings are concerned. I enjoy bombing local bridges (no hills around New Orleans) and generally hit low 20mph speeds. I do not want to be thinking about a wheel popping off or a bearing grinding down my $400 precision trucks on my boards. Same on quads.

If Louis Pilloni in the video had a dirty bearing try to seize up, it would not take very many curves to unscrew a loose nyloc nut, even an new one. I know spacers are not traditional in modern quad wheels. I just can't make any sense out of it.

[fierocious1]

Originally Posted by Joey

Thanks. Will digest your post.

I come from the world of inline skates, and especially longboards (skateboards). I do not see quad skates wheels and bearings as much different than a longboard really. Many fine longboard bearings come with spacers and speed rings built in: Zealous is a very popular brand. They will not fit into quad skates, nor inline skates for that matter as the hub dimensions on longboard wheels are a bit larger than roller skates or inlines.

Obviously, bombing a hill on a longboard at 50 mph is putting a ton of stress on the bearings laterally in turns and while bleeding off speed for hairpin turns. I can tell you from years of experience with the longboard community that not even ONE skater is riding without spacers between their bearings. We use nyloc nuts and crank them down hard as we want. The wheels still spin freely. And they are NOT coming off.

In case you have never seen such a thing, here is one of my favorite vids that illustrates the lateral stresses on longboard bearings perfectly:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMyIFrEZtnw

So I guess my dilemma is the inability of my brain to distinguish between the needs of a longboarder or a quad skater insofar as bearings are concerned. I enjoy bombing local bridges (no hills around New Orleans) and generally hit low 20mph speeds. I do not want to be thinking about a wheel popping off or a bearing grinding down my $400 precision trucks on my boards. Same on quads.

If Louis Pilloni in the video had a dirty bearing try to seize up, it would not take very many curves to unscrew a loose nyloc nut, even an new one. I know spacers are not traditional in modern quad wheels. I just can't make any sense out of it.

I get carried away sometimes. Some will not agree with my opinion. I regularly skate above 20mph indoors during sessions. The bearing are plenty strong enough to handle whatever you want to throw at them. The axles on skates are another thing, the old 7mm, I bent plenty of them. I have not bent an axle since I started skating again app 8 years ago. I have bent a kingpin. Nylocks get it done, I don't trust the all plastic nuts. They scare me. i bought some once, then just could not bring myself to use them. Bearings will let you know it they are going out. I chunked some a few weeks ago, had them forever and never did anything to them except skate'em. Use'em and chunk'em. Spacers are a matter of choice, but you have to fully understand the work that goes with that choice to do it exactly and correctly. Some here do it, correctly. I just don't have the time to dedicate to that particular setup. I spend it on plates and tuning. Trying to get the plate to work just a little bit better, turn just right. It also takes time to do. Most just skate them like they got them not realizing how much better their skates could be to skate on.
All these components work together. Bearings are the least influential of all the parts that let you skate well. Boot fit, plate selection, offset, forward or not, heal or none, cushion/bushings selection and my favorite, wheels. Wheels are number one on the list if the boots fit good. IMO, good boots and wheels share the number one spot. Wheels next and then plate and tuning. Bearings last. IF all are working well, you can haul a__ and make tremendous speed, and still be slower than inlines....

[Joey]

Originally Posted by fierocious1

I get carried away sometimes. Some will not agree with my opinion.

I value all opinions. Two weeks back on quads after 25 years there is a lot to catch up on. Got 135 miles on them now! Feet feel good, crossovers are getting power now, and all is well except working on emergency stopping now.

So keep the opinions coming! I can handle a difference of opinion while geeking out about skate stuff no problem.

[wired]

Originally Posted by chuckboucher

No one fully tightens down quads wheels anyway. This is why we use nylock nuts. Believe me, blue loctite is security enough, even when skating on rougher pavement outdoors.

There are several discussions on the forum about using bearing spacers in quad wheels.

A bit of confusion.

While no one "fully tightens down quads wheels" one should have axle threads all the way through the nut. If not the nut is too thick, the axle too short or the bearing spacing too wide. Reversing nuts or otherwise trying to fix the first two are a bad practice as you won't have good thread engagement. When faced with this I simply fixed the bearing spacer in the wheel. Easy and safe.

OTOH if you have a load of .400" spaced wheels you could face the trucks to effectively "lengthen" the axle. You can use a properly sized piloted end mill to do this without removing the axle. Mort has one of these in his tool kit. I doubt you would have to remove much to get proper fit while gaining good 90 degree bearing contact. Or press in longer axles.

.

[fierocious1]

Originally Posted by wired

A bit of confusion.

While no one "fully tightens down quads wheels" one should have axle threads all the way through the nut. If not the nut is too thick, the axle too short or the bearing spacing too wide. Reversing nuts or otherwise trying to fix the first two are a bad practice as you won't have good thread engagement. When faced with this I simply fixed the bearing spacer in the wheel. Easy and safe.

OTOH if you have a load of .400" spaced wheels you could face the trucks to effectively "lengthen" the axle. You can use a properly sized piloted end mill to do this without removing the axle. Mort has one of these in his tool kit. I doubt you would have to remove much to get proper fit while gaining good 90 degree bearing contact. Or press in longer axles.

.

Mort faced my trucks, they look very nice. Not sure if the do anything for me since I don't use spacers but if I did it would do a correct keeping everything aligned better.