Doesnt Matter got pike

Welcome back to another episode of the mo-jonny show. today we bring you our thoughts on the recent-ish-ly  released Omen Pike.
this is a two part review, starting off with mojuu-raptors hunter-killer thoughts.

As my human associate sleeps I type this out to you. now i dont need to babble out the dimensions of the board to you, do your homework! but my opinion on how the specs FEEL is always open for you to read.

The biggest feature for me was the TRUE, flat top w. I may remember wrong but the killswitch was said to have *flat top* w in its release video a few years back. Omen’s rendition of flat top w feels right. with  my us9 size feet, i can find a cosy spot to lock the balls of my feet between the w and the drop during pushing, almost like that gap was molded to trap my foot in there.  during the ever important sliding moments, the w gives you good geographical markers and is effective at acting like w-cave.  i found the micro-drop to be fantastic, between that and the concave, you’ll find a zone of no-cave. you can use this to wedge your feet against the concave where it begins to aggresively take off again.

having run this board on paris and caliber 44′s DT style, i found the paris to be nice, no wheelbite issues. great for people who are fans of high angle trucks. on cali44′s you will very easily get railbite issues, and maybe wheelbite depending on wheels/bushings.

all up, i thought i found the last board id ever buy. but alas! TIS TOO LONG.  for a raptor, standing a mere 175 human cm tall, the sweetspots on the deck for my feet are too far apart to feel comfy. and so im sigining off for the hurn to round off this review. end thoughts for raptor? feels slick under foot, but forces feet to be too far apart

Hello Peoples this is Jonny now, OMG a review within a review, review-ception

Anyway, I have to agree with the Raptors thoughts above. I got on this board and was SO excited big locked in pockets easy to push.
I started with it dropped through on Paris and quickly moved it to top mount and I rode and rode and the more I rode the lower my stoke factor went, at 41″ long its a big board, even with the tails taking up a few inches the platform is still (slightly) bigger than a Nemesis, and even that’s to long.

I would like to say for people 5ft 10 and up this will be a really nice board or if you want a longer board and enjoy the wider stance you’ll love it, really useful yet small tails, fantastic concave just (for me) 3 Inches to long,
When/if a mini Pike comes out I will go nuts! especially if its a tad stiffer. The pike did have some flex. Very noticeable when you stand right in the middle but in a normal stance its quite a subtle give this I liked to a point… The board got a little weird to tuck on cause my back foot was right in the heart of the flex zone. Don’t get me wrong this board is very stable at speed and has 0 torsional flex it just takes some getting used to.

All in all we both like the boards design features but its a few inched to long for our tastes or rather our stance.
that said it has such a nice concave if your taller or like standing wider you’ll love this board.

Happy skating,

Jonny and Mojo

Vault Ghetto Freeride

Hello and welcome to 2012!

So over the summer we all need a project right?

As you may know I work for Skateboard Express. In the process of designing some new wheels we came across these abominations…
http://www.skateboardexpress.com.au/VGF.html
But The Dave knew the thane was good, even  though they were hidden behind a stupidly large lip.
If you cut 11mm of the lip off you end up with a fantastic center set freeride. Check out the video bellow if you want to see how we did it.

Be safe, wear a mask cause thane dust is evil.

Enjoy

Jonny

vault bearings

Quick and simple post for now guys:

On a rainy Noosa race day, I was wondering which set of biltins to wreck, then my homeboy jonny chucked me a set of new Vault Bearings.

vault abec 5 bearings  to be exact.  They rolled just fine on race day, and to be perfectly honest, the rest of the weekend i didnt feel any difference between my biltins and the vaults with speed rings and spacers. on the hill the only thing slowing me down was my parachute shaped tuck due to poor physical conditioning. previously ive ever held a race worthy tuck for more than a minute. keeping tight for 3 minutes was just too much without any prior practice or conditioning.

What can i say about these bearings? wow bearings, they roll they are pretty cheap. i havent pulled them apart to check if they have metal or nylon cages for the balls. but really. bearings are bearings. metal balls hold up better to abuse than ceramics because they wont shatter. sure shelling out a pretty penny for cerams that last longer versus metals in that *they fail due to CORROSION* slower, but would probably shatter after a few well placed early grabs.

ending statements?  RAWR skate bearings these ones are nice and even after an entire day sloshing about, i havent cleaned them and they are fine.

mojuuraptor out.

P.S Footage of trip, race and general skate trip actions located here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zAbqPZCHsQ

and Part 2 here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v51-KSZP7co

Comet FSM Review

A few weeks back I borrowed what has become affectionately know as The FSSM the Flying slutty spaghetti monster.
This board has literary been through hell three times. Its been skated in the rain, ridden down stairs, jumped down stairs and two of the best freeriders I know have ripped this board all the way around Sydney. It was past to me third hand on a set of Paris 180 hangers that are now very very bent. I’ve been shredding it with Abec 11 FreeRides and my favorite Vault 82a wheels, I know its a board that has been out for years and well a lot of what I’m gonna say is self evident, but I wanted to say a few things for myself.

Comet FSM Review

I’ll start by saying a few things broadly about the FSM.
At this point you will all know the basics.  40″ long 10′ wide, a beautiful 1″ of rocker and .75″ of mellow concave.
Put simply some solid R and D work a few years ago has meant this board hasn’t dated and is regularly the subject of other companies “Inspiration” The Original freerides and the new Lush Elevator are two recent examples. The FSM was clearly built for skaters and by skaters the concave, the rocker, Its such an easy board to skate!  The FSM has little wee tails that provide a good amount of space for all kinds of no-comply and shuvit based maneuvers. Its not quite enough for me to be able to ollie but I’m sure it can be done…no idea why you would want too… I could continue to blabber on about how comfortable this thing is to skate but it’s all been said before. So, I will sum it up by saying, the FSM is a no nonsense board, It works and its excellent. Functional + Simple + listened to skaters = F***ing WIN.

As I said above this board has lasted a long dam time, its lived through a lot of curb hits, up side down landings, rainy days and car park collisions, the board now has gas pedals from being slammed upside down so many times. I have heard people criticize Comet boards due to there lack of longevity… I can’t speak to broadly for Comet but in this case they have done a dam good job.

I started skating the FSM on the loosest set up I’ve ever skated and now all my set ups are getting looser. This is a board you can grow into and continue to progress on. It is also a board you will always wan’t in your quiver

Happy skating!

Munkae Trucks

MojuuRaptor Back for another review!

Munkae Precision Trucks Review

This review is part review, part journal. I am a confessed worry wart, a few crashes early in my skating life left me with some scar tissue a broken helmet, some unfounded fears of speed and an obsession with being able to control it or deal with it.

So these trucks are precision? does it automatically make them good? NO. When a truck is marketed as precision it simply means they are manufactured by taking a solid block of aluminium and telling a CNC machine to cut the trucks out of that block. This allows for very strong trucks with fewer material defects and more precise curves and shapes to be made in comparison to cast trucks. This process creates a lot of waste material, pushing costs up. When compared to cast trucks, which are basically just like pouring water into an iceblock mould and freezing it. (replace water with molten metal, and freezing it with cooling down) you get things like air bubbles and contraction of the trucks as they cool. precision trucks are not automatically better than cast, they just have the potential to be better. A poorly DESIGNED precision will alway feel worse than a better designed cat truck. Now with the facts out of the way…

First off, specs.

My munkaes are 190mm wide and have a 42.25 degree base-plate. I trust the manufacturers specs but lets be honest, that quarter of a degree doesnt matter, treat these trucks as a 42deg truck. With a bit of fiddling with some calipers the ride height measures out as a bass tone of 48mm. this is a full 10mm lower than a randal 42 truck!

CAUTION REVELATION AHEAD: flipping a hangar with rake does NOT change the angle of the truck, it merely makes the ride heigt lower/higher. this alters the leverage you have over the trucks and creates the illusion of a different *turning angle* by changing the amount of push required to make the trucks turn. the BASEPLATE determines the turning circle, other factors like ride height deck mounting and bushings affect RESPONSE ie how your setup responds to steering commands from you the rider.

I digress, the hangar has zero rake, meaning flipping them does nothing to the ride height.  Munkaes also have a system of removeable axles.

After having a bash around on a few trucks before, namely paris, then bear, then surfrodz then munkaes, I feel i’ve found what i wanted in a truck. A few words of advice when setting these bad boys up, pick bushings that are one maybe even two durometers softer than that which you normally ride. The first thing i felt when having a preliminary push on the munkaes is how restrictive the bushing seat is. The bushing seat is basically the result of someone drilling a perfectly fitting hole about 3mm deep. This straight walled “well” fits bushings so well that you can jam some into the hangar, shake the hangar around and be surprised that the bushings are still sitting in the bushing seat.

These trucks really can do it all, or rather do all the things that i like, being freeride ,bomb, and with a bit of extra effort; pump the flats. I hover around 75kg and am running purple venom barrel/cones all around, i think they are 87a from memory. I’ve got a 2.5inch kingpin with the nut just showing half a thread. that is to say, the bushings are being ever so gently pressed against the hangar when centered. as loose as it gets without risking the nut falling off on its own.

Story Start, skip ahead for more review

I’m not gonna lie, these trucks have changed the way i ride. I know that riders >> gear but this is an exception for me. The turn on munkaes is smooth and controlled, the tight bushing seat ensures there is a well defined centerpoint that the trucks want to sit at when not turning. When i first got them that was my impression, I was running double 90a barrels at the time. Many friends faster than i who also rode munkaes suggested way WAY softer bushings. im glad i took their advice (thanks jacko, pat).

These trucks with softer bushings are intense for freeride! a consistent dive into a turn without any sudden movements allows for confident hill smashing and wheel wrecking. After some time freeriding the hills of sydney city I took them up to the mountains to test the trucks and myself.

Still not having the confidence to smash the hill at the theoretical top speed of 60kph i took a few runs down carving, i also cranked the kingpin nut down about 2 full turns after minimum engagement.  By the end of the day, I had the kingpin nut done up to ensure maximum looseness and was rocking runs in a very lazy tuck with no footbraking or carving.

Suddenly I felt this amazing amount of control, the ability to dodge obstacles on the road and still blast hills that i was constantly dropping pendies to keep to a *safe* speed on.

Now i keep the trucks as loose as possible and only crank it down half a rotation when I know im gonna be racing.

Story end Review starts again.

For those of you who skipped the story, munkaes offer a gorgeous build quality, the way everything fits so nicely and rides so low allows for soft bushings and smooth carves at speeds of 15+kph. anything below running pace and the trucks do suck though. These are great trucks but not for croozin the beachside with an icecream in hand. These are trucks to pull fat slides and blast down hills with a feeling of control and safety like never before.

a final note before i wrap this up, these trucks are tough! i’ve rammed them into curbs and rocks harder than i’ve ever done to anything else. when the guys at DDC say they coat it with a HIGH IMPACT coating, they are serious. It feels bad to damage anything you buy, ‘specially when these set me back 300 bucks 2nd hand

Closing words? Get these if you like; going fast without having the requisite skill to do so, and have the money!

Vault Slide Gloves Review

Firstly – A Welcome to James, Were gonna be turning out double the content – We have a whole lot of reviews coming for bearings,boards, wheels and trucks so get stoked click follow!
On with the matter at hand!

Vault Slide Gloves 
So recently I’ve been shredding a little Vault gear. In the interests of being ethical I will tell you It was given to me for free to review. I will also say I would never miss-lead people by making false statements about a product, what I write here is my honest opinion.  When I first started Longboarding I was warned off Vault stuff. Being a broke ass student there products had always appealed to me because they were so much cheaper than the alternative and over the months Vault gear has increasingly been surprising me.

Their slide gloves are one such item. $10 cheaper than the cheapest alternative the vault slide glove win on price.
To start with the gloves have both finger and thumb pucks in addition to the standard palm puck so the first thing I did was pull these off. I hate finger and thumb pucks but if your just learning, leave them on and save your gloves until you get you technique down! So after removing the grom guards I took to the streets. If you like you fingers and thumbs behind pucks you will love these gloves. They have so much velcro on the fingers and thumbs you can position the pucks perfectly to fit you.

They are comfortable to wear and are relatively breathable. There is a removable pad on the inside behind the palm puck it makes falling on your glove a wee but more comfortable. If your like me and like you pucks closer to you wrist the little pad actually makes quite a difference.

The pucks that come standard are decent. If your just starting out these pucks will be perfect. If you’re heading towards race speed you will notice the nylon compound has a tad more grip to it.

So negatives or negative in this case;
Velcro on the fingers reduces grip, if you’re looking for a monster early grab you’re gonna need good technique.

Positives;
They are cheaper, if you like finger pucks the negative isn’t a negative. They last and don’t tear easily. In the interest of testing i dropped a glove down for a toe side without the puck. While I would not advise doing this as it is both stupid and dangerous, the glove held together well and only had a bit of wear to the velcro.

Overall these are good gloves. They are cheap and they work. They may not suit you for racing or urban early grab mayhem but if your taking to the streets for a healthy session of thane shredding why not save $10 buy these and still have money left for lunch.

One thing I will add is that I have the large size Vault glove, my lush gloves are a small size…just keep that in mind when/if you order.

Peace,
Happy skating!

Metro Motion Wheel Review

Howdy ya’ll First post up here, Im James resident skating raptor and new author to the blog. hope me and jonny can bring you twice as much postage in the same amount of time! To prove that im not here to bore you with introductions, here’s a wheel review!

Metro Wheel Company,  Metro Motion 70mm centerset wheels

So what wheels are best for (insert any and all disciplines)?   One of the most asked questions in the skater-verse is wether or not (insert wheel here) is good for downhill or sliding or both. Ladies and grommets I present to you your answer.

Introducing the Metro Motion. A centerset 70mm tall, a 40mm contact patch wheels coming in 2 duros, 78a and 80a and 5 different colors; blue, red and grey for 80a and pink and yellow for 78a.
For those of you wanting a wheel that slips and grips the 78A is the wheel of choice. Unlike other wheels ive had a roll on the metros have a very gradual and predictable slide. When you push them hard enough they will let go, but even better is when you are railing that corner with your eyes tearing up from the speed these wheels will tell you whats going on. The 78a metros wont transition from sticking to the road then jump straight into a slide, theres a middle ground where you can feel the wheels begin to let go of the road. A very good thing to know

As for the slide, these things are like sliding on cushions made of bananas. Metros have the smoothest slide I have ever slid. Probably thanks to the super tight bearing seat/core which really supports the wheel. Right out of the box 78a metros are quite slippery but a few slides later you will be pulling fast controlled slides, able to shave off the right amount of speed everytime. The 78’s are perfect for the rider who wants to shred around the steepest of city streets and carparks knowing their wheels wont be chug-a-chug chattering as they paint the road with clean white lines. For a wheel so soft metros are very hardy. If all you could ever want is a wheel that goes sideways more than it rolls then 80a is your key to high rollin. The 80a metros still produce the same gradual transition of moving from grip to slip, but do so at lower speeds.

All up Metro motions are a fantastic freeride jack-of-all-trades wheel. This wheel will have you blasting down carparks and slashing your neighbours driveways in style and in control. this wheel however is NOT a good wheel to be blasting down a racetrack on. that being said, if you have the skill to mob down a mountain road choice of wheel wont matter since your technique will force your gear to behave however you want.

Skate often, skate safe! ~Mojuuraptor

PS hopefully that picture album worked, for those of you who want to know exactly what you are getting for your money. the metro motion core appears at about 45mm wheel diameter. In relation to jonny’s previous Vault wheel post, i bought a set and wrecked them. the core shows up at 40mm.

Seismic Bootlegs Wheel Review

A shoulder injury and exams have been plaguing me, i am now a free and relatively healthy man In the next few weeks I will have a whole run of reviews coming, gloves, wheels,bearings and even a new board stay tuned!  Now to the topic at hand.

Ice Ice baby.I have Abec 11 freerides 72mm 84a and i love them like basically everyone else so when i saw the new offering form Seismic I wondered. 70mm, 84a, could this be the next big thing? what can go wrong…  On with the review.

Seismic Bootlegs 70mm 84a
First id like to admit I haven’t ridden these to the core, i haven’t even gotten close. I picked these up two weeks ago and have done a lot of hard ridding on them in that time trying to unlock the “smooth, controlled slides with great hookup and grip when you need it.” And I am yet to even get close to it. I shall continue to ride these until I can tolerate them no more If any part of there performance changes I’ll be sure to post it up. I will also admit i’m not really into hard wheels but given the recent wheels I’ve tried, all being deceptively buttery, I was hoping the streak would continue…C-c-c-combo breaker.
Lets start with positives -
These wheels will last you a long time and they are center set which means, provided you care, you can keep flipping and never have them cone on you.
Aside from durability what i can say is these wheels are slippery, insanely slippery, like skating on slippery dips instead of wheels. To some of you this may be the best thing you have ever heard.  Its so easy to push out your slides and the wheels just love to stay out there. These sound like good things don’t they? Well they are, when it comes to blasting out slides these wheels may chatter but mostly its a fairly nice ride. The issues all come on re entry. Just like landing a space-shuttle the safe and speedy re entry to grip town is a critical and often difficult part. This is where these wheels fall down. They lack the grip to be an all round freeride wheel.

Negatives, well there not bad wheels but they aren’t good wheels either. To really be a good wheel they need versatility. I’m not expecting them to perform as well as a grip wheel would i’m simply expecting to be able to turn without too much slip. This lack of grip makes slides easy initially but at higher speed they just felt lose. Bringing your slides to an end took a bit of getting used to as well. Unlike the Vault wheels, the Mega tsunamis or the Abec 11s there is no hint of grip to help lock that re entry in. In stead of  a smooth transition between grip and slide the transition is harsh and feels like you have to hold the board down untill its willing to go straight again. This is most noticeable when pre-drifting or checking into a corner. I was constantly wondering if i was gonna hook back up anytime soon and while for sliding this is fun it does limit the wheel to one application.
Basically these wheels come down to a lack of versatility for me. These wheels slide but that is all they do and when your not sideways your not having fun.
Maybe its just me but I love wheels I can session anything on I like to approach a corner thinking “What do i feel like doing? do i want speed or slide?” I love doing a sick car park bomb into a steep slide session into a casual bomb down the road and on these you only have one setting, sideways.

For some of you hearing that these have less grip that a yellow stim is good news. For me its not. As always this is just the humble opinion of one person. I can however say I would be very interested in trying the 80a version to see if they can compete with the magical buttery goodness of the Abec 11 freerides or the 82a vault wheel.

In short, i like pucks on my gloves not wheels.
I’m going back to the butter, I may be some time.

Vault Slide Wheels Review

Vault 65mm 82a Wheels Review.

These wheels are great, I’ll skip the introduction and just get to the point.
Vault have struck gold on this compound, they break out smoothly leaving thane plastered on the road in their wake. The slide is so easy you expect some ice on the re entry to grip town but this is not the case, these little monsters are brilliant and even better than the ride is….they are $30, you can buy three sets of these to each set of Otangs or Abec 11′s .

Ok, I’ll put my excitement aside for a moment and get on with the review.

I picked these up off a friend of mine and at first I was skeptical, as always, but i gave these a try.
To begin with these are 65mm x 36mm wheels, there small and their contact patch is tiny, as a result grip is not really something these little rippers excel at. These green little champions excel at getting sideways, even some solid carving will get you slipping so don’t go trying to grip tight corners at high-speed it’s just not gonna happen.

So lets talk strengths. Sliding, sliding and more sliding. Pushing out a slide is easy, very easy, so easy you would expect them to behave badly when you want to grip back up but they actually grip back really nicely for such a small slippery wheel. This means long controlled slides similar to that of the Mega Tsunamis I reviewed last, but these are less than half the price.

Downsides, yeah there are a two main ones. this first is there a 65mm wheel to begin with and they only get smaller, so they don’t create as smooth a ride as a 70mm wheel would offer, It may not seem like a huge difference in numbers but after a couple of hard sessions these will be at 60mm and at that point you will start noticing the difference especially on a bigger board. The second down side is their life expectancy isn’t exactly long. Depending in the surface you can absolutely shred these in a short space of time. However that down side is negated by the fact that there ONLY $30 and to be honest the Mega Tsunamis don’t last that long either at twice the price.

To sum up….BUY THESE WHEELS. They are by no means the best wheels ever, but they are very, very good and there so dam cheap you may as well buy a pair to find out for yourself.

Happy skating!

Rainskates Mega Tsunami review

This marks the beginning of my summer project. Reviews of boards, wheels, and other Longboarding gear completely independently and just because im buying this stuff and have a lot of spare time at the moment.
Current set up -
Fibertech DH 980
200m Surf-Rodz
Rainskates Mega Tsunami
72mm 85a

“The all-terrain, Atom smasher you’ve been waiting for is finally here!” Well like all advertising write-ups its one hell of a claim.
Freeride wheels are a heavily contested category and be under no illusions personal taste plays majority role in wheel selection especially when it comes to sliding. However word gets passed around about a particular wheel and people snap them up like the drunk chick at a Computer Science Society party. Poor taste metaphors aside let’s get on with it.
I picked these up about a month ago after hearing about how buttery the slide was and how smooth the transition between grip etc… Since then I have nearly worn them to the core and have one word to describe them, Smooth. Breaking them was standard, took a session to melt the ice and from then on it was as promised, all butter. If you haven’t heard yet these are not 85a! Well they may say that they are but take that with a grain of salt, these are soft. They ride soft, slide soft and they wear out like a soft wheel too, not to mention the nice big thane lines.  The Mega Tsunami’s break out with very little effort. Pushing out a slide requires more effort than a 86a Stimulus but not by much and this extra effort is rewarded with some really smooth and controlled slides. The Mega Tsunami’s hook back up very nicely and its this predictability that is their best quality. They don’t actively try to get away from you, you can grip turns down your favourite car park building or casual hill but these were made to get sideways so keep that in mind. Now the downsides, there’s really only one… Wear, these things wore down on me fast. Like I said the “85a” compound is basically made of juicy lard so don’t expect these to last as long as other high 80 duro wheels. All in all I liked them, smoother than a purple stimulus and more control than one too If you’re looking for a softer freeride wheel to whip your board some butter these are your wheels, especially at speed. If you’re looking at coming off hard wheels to escape the ice but don’t quite want to sign up to the church of soft wheel sliding these are your wheel, If you love your yellow Stimulus’s or yellow Krakatoa’s then I would recommend you try them as a softer alternative. Its hard not to like something so buttery, until there all worn out that is.
Any questions feel free to get it touch.