How To Make Longboard Faster? | Easy Tips 2024 |
Last Updated on July 8, 2024 by BoardsRiding
are you looking for guide on how to make longboard faster? Once you learn how to ride a longboard, you get this urge to move faster and zoom past other riders but it just isn’t happening.
The frustration of lagging behind makes you question if you’re doing something wrong but even if you play your role perfectly, there’s a good chance your board is at its maximum speed already.
In that case, it’s time to stop stressing and start making some changes to make your longboard quicker and faster!
Longboards are very different from the traditional skateboards and are becoming more popular than ever among sports enthusiasts because of their stability and are proven much smoother than skateboards. But it’s all in vain if you can’t even take advantage of these features, right?
Do not fret because after reading this article, you will be able to make your longboard faster than ever and will see a brilliant improvement in your rides.
Different Techniques To Make Your Longboard Faster:
1) Loosening The Axle Nuts:
The first thing you can do to improve the speed of your longboard is loosening the axle nuts. Axle nuts are tightened over the axle to prevent the wheels and the bearings from falling off but if the nuts are too tight,
they may end up restricting the wheels from moving freely. That can result in a considerable loss of top speed for the longboard.
That is why it’s better to slightly loosen the nuts on all four wheels of your longboard. Make sure however, that you don’t completely loosen the nuts because again, that will just end with the nuts falling off after some time and then the board won’t be stable anymore.
2) Tightening The Truck:
Loosening the axle nuts a bit can help regain the lost speed but if the truck of your longboard is loose, the speed loss will continue.
Truck nuts might become a little loose over time which means that the wheels are going to be turning more and are going to be all over the place which will make your board wobble a lot. Imbalancing and wobbleness will affect the overall speed.
What you need to do is tighten the truck nuts so that your longboard doesn’t wobble as much in the early stages of your ride.. The sturdy wheels will prevent shakiness and hence your board will be much faster.
3) Cleaning And Lubricating The Wheel Bearings:
The third most important thing is thorough cleaning of the parts of your longboard, especially the bearings which allow the wheels to move over the axle. However, if the bearings are not cleaned with time, the clogged dust and mud will affect your overall speed.
Cleaning:
First, take off the axle nuts. Keep on wiggling the wheels outward until the bearings stay on the axle, then you can take out the wheel bearings, do it simultaneously for all four wheels.
After you have the wheel bearings, dip all four into some solvent or alcohol. This will get rid of the dirt and grease and make the bearings as good as new.
Lubricating:
Cleaning and drying the wheel bearings is half of what you need to do to make your longboard faster, the other half involves lubricating the bearings to avoid wear and tear and make the spinning of your wheels smooth.
As we want to prioritize top speed and better functionality of the bearings, it’s best to use a silicon-based lubricant and avoid using water-based lubricants. Water-based lubricants usually end up rusting the bearings from the inside, that’s why WD-40 is not recommended by other skaters.
Take all the four bearings one by one and remove their bearing shields. Take the lubricant and thoroughly lubricate the bearing from the inside, this will make the bearings more efficient and help increase the overall speed. Put the bearing shield back on and then mount the bearings on the axles.
4) Replacing The Bearings:
If cleaning and lubricating the bearings doesn’t make much difference, you can also try upgrading the bearings. Usually, the stock bearings might not give you fruitful results after being used up for too long and hence you might have to replace them with new ones.
Before replacing them however, make sure you do a little test to see if they really need replacing or not. When you’re riding your longboard at a high speed, if the bearings squeak then it’s definite that they need replacing. Some things you need to know before getting new wheel bearings are:
- The factors that determine a good bearing are curvature, plastic cage and removable rubber seals.
- Best quality bearings are usually manufactured in Germany and Switzerland.
- The bearings with built-in spacers are preferred over bearings without spacers.
5) Upgrading The Wheels:
Another method to get a considerable increase in the top speed of your longboard is to replace and upgrade the wheels with high quality ones.
Usually, the stock wheels that come with the longboard wear out because of being used up over time. These rugged wheels create more friction with the road and hence decrease your overall speed.
There are two factors that you need to keep in mind when you want to upgrade the wheels:
- Wheel Diameter
You can either put on wheels with smaller diameter and have more momentum or put on wheels with bigger diameters which increases your speed in the long term. Apart from speed and acceleration, larger wheel diameters also cover more ground and promise stability by moving over small bumps easily at high speeds.
- Product Quality
Even if you put on large wheels on your board, it will not make much difference if the quality of the wheels is poor. Spending less money on such products means the products will be made of low-quality substances which will only protect your wheels for a limited amount of time.
- Wheel Hardness
The overall speed definitely depends on what kind of wheels you have on your board. Softer wheels tend to provide more grip on the ground which provides stability but results in speed loss. Whereas, harder wheels don’t compress as much and can easily get you a top speed on smooth tracks.
- Wheel Cores:
Since wheel cores are hard-built components, larger wheel cores usually help you ride more smoothly over smooth surfaces than small wheel cores because of less compression but since we’re talking about longboards here,
they’re usually ridden more on roads and rough pavements, you’re gonna want to prefer a wheel core that is not too small and not too large with medium-hard wheels, to help you attain top and high speeds with ease.
6) How You Ride Your Longboard:
Last but not least, apart from the changes to your longboard, you also need to take some time to ponder over your riding style. How you ride your longboard is an important discussion to have with oneself. Are you fighting the wind properly? Are you staying in a good position when you’re riding your board?
All these things must be taken into account when you want to improve your rides, especially increase your top speed. You will only see the best results when you:
- I think a lot of people can relate to me on this part that we’ve all been scared of going too fast and then not being able to stop or brake in time. Apart from proper practice, confidence is key in longboarding, you need to make yourself believe that you can brake well. Only then will you be able to break your speed records.
- The second most important thing is that you must be in a good tucking position if you want to defeat the air. Become more aerodynamic, wear the right helmets to cut through the air and you shall see the obvious improvements in your top speed.
- Wearing the right equipment such as elbow pads, knee pads etc is obviously very important to protect yourself AND use them to get good at longboarding, not to mention the constant danger of getting yourself injured without the equipment is also very non-appealing.
Conclusion:
In short, making your longboard faster is no difficult task. You just gotta have complete knowledge of what you’re doing and this article is here to help you with that.
Making a few changes here and there and upgrading some things is going to make your longboard faster than ever. Not to mention, cleaning and lubricating the bearings of your longboard again and again with time is going to keep it fresh and new.
Apart from that, it’s pretty easy to experiment with your longboard once you get the proper idea of longboard parts and make your longboard faster than ever!
I’m Mike Dave & Focused on Riding Boards we are on a mission to grow the love for different types of board riding. We want to build interest by providing complete guides of boards so, if you want to increase your knowledge about riding boards, this website is a perfect selection for you, do hit a survey on this website and you will surely love it.