The Pump Thread

[crote123]

my ride:

It's an old picture, I believe I have either .25" or .5" less now. I use much stiffer bushings up front and they are very tight. But the risers are needed:

And I wasn't even leaning hard. Notice the axle extensions(on a Bennett 5") to prevent baseplate/riser bite.

Check for yourself when using a 6" Bennett and no extensions. Look at the space between baseplate/risers and the wheel:

[Puddy Tat]

That is unbelievable! Would love to see video of you riding it. With wheels that size have you tried something like a GBomb? With the cut outs you'd get lower but would lose some leverage over the truck.

Way cool. How long is the hardware you are using?

[crote123]

I believe I screws use up to 3.5". As for G-Bomb, wheels would be too big and my front foot would probably hit that wheel during an heelside pump.

As for the video, I'll try to get one in the next few weeks.

[crote123]

my ride:

Note that the battery is being charged! kiddin!

[slopestar]

Thanks Puddy Tat. Did 12 miles on it yesterday and ate up the groundside tall Khiro white cone. Also need to decrease my truck angle up front.Im eating Bennett hangars for breakfast...not as efficient as I like and need more rebound.

[slopestar]

my ride:

It's an old picture, I believe I have either .25" or .5" less now. I use much stiffer bushings up front and they are very tight. But the risers are needed:

And I wasn't even leaning hard. Notice the axle extensions(on a Bennett 5") to prevent baseplate/riser bite.

Check for yourself when using a 6" Bennett and no extensions. Look at the space between baseplate/risers and the wheel:

I found that centered bearing wheels and I do not mix. I always go for something not centered. no issues with base bite on a 5.0

[ExcelsiorTheFathead]

Today I pumped the parking lot at Mt. Evans.

Overlook of the parking lot from the peak, 14,268 feet.

My Mermaid at the parking lot elevation.

Not impressed by pumping.

[Puddy Tat]

10k into work in the morning and 10k home this evening. ~51 minutes each way but there was stopping due to some lights and some hiking on hills. Anyways during these rides I've also got a long trip across a ~400m crappy wooden bridge deck. Today I pumped across the bridge deck, and actually passed a couple of teens pushing their longboards across. It was surprisingly easy to pump the board across, maybe because the front truck is always turning so it tends to hit the gaps in the decking at an angle? Anyways I threw them a casual "Hey guys" while I went by them without putting a foot down at ~14km/h (seriously the bridge deck is rough). Yes I'm an @ss.

Dave

Edited June 25, 2013 by Puddy Tat

[Puddy Tat]

42.9km today. Time was 3h 22mins but based on my km lap times I lost about 8 mins in the middle of the ride when I "think" I got wheel bite carving around a tight corner at about 20km/h roughly 23k into the ride. R.I.P water bottle. Also heard the back of my helmet hit the sidewalk (so glad I never ride without that). Hard slam that took a couple of seconds to get up from.

My legs were absolutely toast by the end of this suggesting I may have gone long a little soon. Thinking I should have called it quits and turned around to make my distance about 30k instead. Oh well to late now. Apparently the local endurance on the calves just got kicked into high gear.

I've also ordered those trucks from Don't Trip $230 total for a front and rear Precison Truck. As well Thane has shipped my Grennett. When those get here I'll let you know what I think of them.

If anyone here is recording their LDP rides on Endomondo, and wants to share rides to help maintain the stoke, send me a friend request. I'm on there as David Webb out of Edmonton; my profile pic is of a heelside carve on a metal topped Prior.

Cheers,

[slopestar]

David, Glad the wheel bite didn't get you. whenever i ride without knee pads or a helmet, something always hitting the pavement. Better safe than sorry?! Looking forward to hearing about the Grennett! as well as the Dont trip set up!

[Puddy Tat]

...

Overlook of the parking lot from the peak, 14,268 feet.

[ATTACH]35060[/ATTACH]

I'm looking at that road in the background in thinking that would be fun to carve all the way down. I'm not talking about bombing just nice lazy back and forth carves all the way down. Surfy.

Dave

[Puddy Tat]

David, Glad the wheel bite didn't get you. whenever i ride without knee pads or a helmet, something always hitting the pavement...

Oh I hit the pavement alright. I was carving hard into the turn, weight forward, and leaned a little harder to make the corner and the next thing I knew I was flying. It was mostly a slam on my side (or maybe rear right quarter, if that makes any sense), a couple of minor scrapes but nothing I'd call road rash. I'm pretty sore today,and a muscle in the right of my lower back, just on my hip is feeling a little charlie-horsed from the impact. I did some stretching to try and loosen up the knotted up muscles this morning. The board stopped so suddenly that I've been wondering if maybe my Bennett dove? I've been reading that the truck has a tendency to do that sometimes.

I'll grow up and start acting my age one of these days. I turn 43 in ten days, according to the Huffington Post apparently we as guys are supposed to mature at 43 (http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/06/12/men-dont-mature-until-43-_n_3430287.html). Based on what I like doing I don't think I'm going to make it. :rolleyes:

Protection

For LDP I normally wear a Protec helmet and full fingered cycling gloves.

I find some kind of glove is pretty much required for skating, a couple of years ago I didn't bother putting on a pair of slide gloves for commuting and I lost it on an exposed aggregate sidewalk and needed stitches in my palms.

I used to wear slide gloves for LDP, but I found that when I did go off the board the pucks would slide out leaving me sliding on my forearms and chest (ouch), so I've switch to full-fingered cycling gloves. Seeing as I haven't figured out how to Coleman, pendy, or any other hands down slide, I'm not putting a hand down to slide while I'm riding an LDP board anyways.

I treat Helmets the same way. I think they are required. I had two falls in the last week (but no falls other than those this year), and my helmet hit the ground on both of those.

I'm back at school part-time taking an MBA and I think the only time I haven't bothered with the helmet and gloves when I'm skating casually between two buildings on the University campus here. On the other hand it's a little stupid not bothering to put them on because they are in my backpack.

Dave

Edited July 1, 2013 by Puddy Tat

[Puddy Tat]

So is anyone pumping switch?

I ask because the back of my knee on my front leg is starting to feel a little tweaked after these longish rides. I think I'm going to get around this by working on my forward flexibility and trying to ride switch to take some of the strain off my legs.

Obviously this would be standing in your off stance on your board as LDP boards do NOT go backwards nicely at all. Uber turny truck in the rear with a dead truck in the front is all bad. I found this out when I jumped on a symmetrically shaped board I had set up for pumping last summer and laid into a pump. The board basically crabbed out from under me.

I tried even just riding switch last season, it was horrendous, completely awkward to push and I felt absolutely out of control standing on the board when it was moving even a little bit at all. So last season I spent my time pumping in my normal stance (goofy) and then I would alternate feet back and forth when pushing up hills switching on the fly, (5 normal pushes, 5 mongo pushes, repeat until out of hill or energy). This was initially pretty awkward, but because the board was getting slowed down on the hills it actually wasn't that bad.

So I went out this evening and tentatively tried it again. Hey it wasn't too bad to actually stand on the board, I pushed a bit and did a few footbrakes, then carved slowly down a tiny pretty much insignificant grade, then start slowly pumping. After about 45 minutes I was actually half-@ssed pumping switch. Sure I was flailing around like a dork again, but I could feel tiny bits of acceleration, and I could definitely feel when I cancelled my acceleration. But by the end of it I was sweating like crazy and maybe pumping at 5-7km/h switch. Sweet! I think I'm going to work on adding this to every ride for a few kilometers in the flats, along with switch foot braking until I get much faster at this.

Dave

[Michelle]

Today I pumped the parking lot at Mt. Evans.

Just the parking lot or the road down?

[Puddy Tat]

Well I met up with a LDP'er from Paved Wave a couple of evenings ago and we rode 12.8k (about 8 miles). This is the first time I've actually ridden with anyone else who I hadn't directly gotten into pumping (there is one other person).

It was really cool, and motivating, having someone to ride with. The average speed for the ride was 2 km/h faster than any of my prior average speeds (14.7km/h). But even more interesting was the difference in our pumping styles and board set-ups seeing as we both got all of our information from Paved Wave.

I've described LDP in other places on this site as feeling like doing fast cross-under carves on an alpine deck. In fact I came to longboarding and pumping as a way to get some carves in during the summer months, so I've ended up setting my board up fairly loosely, with a ton of turn allowing low-frequency large-amplitude "surf" style pumps. It lets me push the board out away from me as I'm in entering turn and then suck it back under myself as I exit the turn and transition to the next one. Because of this my riding style involves rotating my hip into the turn. I also tend to sit a little further back on the board say with the front edge of my front foot about 3-4" behind the back bolts of my front truck. I've found sitting back like that allows me to feel the nose swing back and forth. While I've never surfed been on a real wave, but the looseness in the nose make it reminds me of being on a wakesurf board. The only time I ever get right forward and over the truck is when I'm climbing hills. Because I'm pushing the board out, and sucking it back under me with my feet while rotating into the turn I was finding that my front foot was wandering off the board so I installed a footstop to keep me in place.

Evan's board was set-up to do high-frequency low-amplitude "wiggle" pumps. He uses a Subsonic Pulse with a Randall on the front and one of the Don't Trip LDP trucks on the rear. When I tried it it was so different in a turn that I almost fell over as the board wouldn't lean enough for the riding style I have; compared to my set-up it didn't initially feel like the board was leaning at all!. I think the Randall was limiting the boards lean compared to my Bennett. In terms of technique his board performed best when your front foot was placed immediately over the front truck. Interestingly well the rotation that I use wasn't really required; just going toe to heel with your feet was enough to keep the board moving, and moving quickly.

While I couldn't get his board going as fast as he could (and vice versa), when we were riding I think he may have had more top-end speed. That is to say that when we were riding in the flats I definitely bumped into a point where I could feel that I had hit the maximum speed of my surf set-up, but I'd be willing to bet he had about 10% more in the wiggle set-up. Based on our riding I think the surf set-up may have been more efficient at pumping up inclines (this may also have had to do with our individual conditioning though).

Evan described my board as feeling like sliding. Which is interesting as I didn't actually understand how to initiate a slide until I started riding this board and started pumping. I like the way my board carves on hills and can check slide to kill a little speed. I don't think I'd be as confident on his board, though his deck is extremely stable feeling compared to mine.

Having ridden my deck for the past year it was really interesting to see another take on how to set-up an LDP board. I'll probably tweak myself a little further in that direction, as I think I can get some more top speed out of it at the expense of a little bit of surfiness. But I think I'll wait until after I've had a chance to try out my Grennett and the two Don't Trip trucks.

Dave

[Puddy Tat]

Decided to see what I could do this evening for a fast sprint. I live in a river valley so anything I ride is going to have a bunch of climbing on the way out and descending on the way back. Anyways I did 5.2km out and back in 20mins 1 sec. Averaging 15.3 km/h. On a downhill stretch were I was tucked I hit 35 km/h with no stability issues at all.

Dave

[crote123]

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Add 6km roundtrip to get there. Usually, I only do 5 laps (21km, for 27km total)

I've been doing it for a few years now and still not bored going round and round... When you have almost no cars (I may cross one per lap and they have their own lane), very, very good pavement, some smalll clmbs and downhills and you pump hard, there's no time to get bored :) On this particular run, I had the advantage of the wind as I had a tailwind on the long straight which is not protected while I had a headwind on the other side but protected by trees. My estimate, it gave me about 0.5km/h advantage. I usually have a headwind on the long straight...

[Puddy Tat]

That's sick, your average speed is ~23km/h. That's more than 150% of what I'm currently pulling. Well definitely more work in order. I'm pretty sure I can't get much more out of my current set-up. So I'll be off tweaking more in the future. Going to play with a few things. I think I need to remove some wedging from the front and stiffen my front bushings. Currently running 75a and 80a, maybe bump that up to 80a on both as a start, or 80a/85a.

Would like to go to that height, but I can't see it with the amount of pushing I need to do on hills. Maybe I'll look into trying out some 83mm Centraxes though.

Dave

Edited July 8, 2013 by Puddy Tat

[Puddy Tat]

Don't Trip released their LDP RKP trucks which are called "Poppys". As I mentioned in an earlier post I've ordered a front and rear (an image from the website is below).

I've got the 125mm set coming, which should be pretty comparable if slightly narrower than my current Bennett 5.0 and Tracker RTS combo.

He's put spherical bearings in the hanger to maintain the hanger alignment, and there is a 95a Riptide pivot, as well as Riptide bushings. The Front truck is still a 55 degree truck and the rear is a 20 degree. I'm interested in just being able to stick these onto my board with a couple of risers and see what happens.

They've been stuck in a post office in Florida since July 4th so I'm not expecting to get my hands on these for at least another week. On the other hand maybe my Grennett will be here shortly.

If you're interested here's the link to the Poppys on his site.

http://www.dtskate.com/SearchResults.asp?Cat=1861

Cheers,

Dave

Oh and I went out for a 30.5k cruise today. Nice casual, hill climbs, downhill carving, pumping in the flats. Just chillin' at a pace I felt like I could do all day. I've hooked up with a couple of other guys and we get together on on the weekends and ride. Turning into a fun way to spend the summer.

Edited July 8, 2013 by Puddy Tat

[Puddy Tat]

"Holy Sh!t! - This is amazing."

My Grennett showed up last night.

The truck shipped semi-assembled (the hanger was off the baseplate) and arrived with the original red Bennett bushings. Thane had hourglassed the boardside bushing, and replaced the original kingpin with an aircraft bolt (epoxied and jb welded into place). It also has precision bearing spacers, Sorry I don't have pics of the parts as they arrived I was a little tired and busy last night and only had time to put the truck on my board.

Unfortunately I don't have a perfect comparison with my previous Bennett as between this truck and my Cinnett I changed the wedge angle of the truck by three degrees and had to go to slightly stiffer bushings. (My 80a roadside bushing was done and I was out of that duro.)

Here's a picture of the Grennett set-up on my deck with 12 degrees wedging, and Riptide APS bushings (80a boardside/85a roadside). I've also installed Thane's array washers on the top and bottom of the Grennett.

I thought I'd have a nice casual cruise into work this morning as I wasn't feeling all that motivated so I ended up walking out of the river valley and just casually cruising into work. When I stopped my Garmin I had beat my personal best for the route by 5 minutes (46:35 was my previous PR today I cruised it in 41:49). Admittedly there was a short new section of re-paved road so my overall route was 9.44k instead of 9.79k and this different route took waiting at two lights out of the mix but on the otherhand I wasn't even trying this morning.

The truck is quiet, smooth and responsive. The carving feel is really different from the standard Bennett; I think this comes from having the ball pivot installed in place of the stock pivot point. I'm going to have to take it easy carving on steeper hills until I figure out what is going on. It didn't seem to build up resistance as it went into a deep carve the same way as the standard Bennett. It just wanted to keep leaning over. But when I let off the pressure it wanted to smoothly center itself. Really nice carvey feel.

Overall the Grennett beats the hell out of a stock Bennett or even a home modded Bennett with a self-polished pivot point. With all the mating surfaces faced and ground smooth the truck has an amazing silky smooth feel. It also comes with precision bearing spacers and copper locknuts for your wheels. It's currently got a home as my new front truck.

Cheers,

Dave

EDIT: I have noticed that the holes drilled for the two pins which hold the ball pivot appear to be a little oversized for the pins installed. This is allowing the pins to work out as the truck turns back and forth as I pump. I pulled the pins out this morning and re-installed them with red loctite as a permanent fix. Still loving this truck as it is smooth, fast and snappy.

Edited July 10, 2013 by Puddy Tat
Added some more info

[Puddy Tat]

I'll admit this idea is outside of Bomber's core competency of producing snowboard interface hardware. But seeing as Fin has at least one CNC machine and a mechanical engineering background I think it'd be cool if Bomber came up with a set of precision trucks for pumping.

Actually there is potentially more market in the downhill/freeride market, but I think that market might be starting to become saturated with precision truck manufacturers. Fin could go chat with companies like RoeRacing who do slalom, LDP, and are just getting back into downhill freeride and speed boards about whether it would be worth developing trucks for this market. There is only one manufacturer that I know of in North America who just started making a CNC'd reverse kingpin truck for Slalom/LDP (see my previous post).

While the potential customer base is large there could be issues with getting acceptance in the downhill skate community; but if you were connected with a well known brand it would ease that transition. With LDP the customer base is much smaller but the community is a bunch of tinkers and tweakers who seem more willing to try things that look like they might work, so it could be easier to transition into that market. The comparision between the relative size of the longboarding Downhill/Freeride and LDP communities is probably pretty similar to the snowboarding Softboot/Hardboot communities.

Anyway I'd love having Bomber products on both my winter and summer boards!

Dave

[pokkis]

Think it will be very tough call to compete some one like DontTripSkateboards

Their slalom ones are worth of every penny, and due almost same construction i assume same applies to LDP ones too.

Been running one to one tests with these to GOG's and slalom width Ronins and these things rock.

It takes quite long time to design, build and test something for production if one is not invoilved to business deeply.

Edited July 10, 2013 by pokkis

[Puddy Tat]

Think it will be very tough call to compete some one like DontTripSkateboards

...

It takes quite long time to design, build and test something for production if one is not invoilved to business deeply.

No argument. Just dreaming.

Nice set-up you've got going there. Looking forward to having my LDP setup configured much the same way in the next few weeks.

Dave

[Puddy Tat]

BTW Pokkis. The rear Don't Trip truck is a 20 degree truck. I see you've de-wedged it further. Was wonder how much you de-wedged it? I'm interested because I think I might be around 20 degrees with my Tracker RTS (15 degrees de-wedge) and was thinking with the Don't Trip Truck it would be easy to get even lower.

Dave

[Puddy Tat]

9.5k into work this morning, and 10.2k home this evening. On the ride home I noticed the rear of my board was feeling squirrelly and I was having a tough time getting any acceleration out of it. I flipped the board over and took a look and saw I'd split the roadside bushing.

Does anything destroy bushings as fast as LDP?

Dave