While on my previously posted trip to Austin and ditch session, I decided to try out some 77a Gravity “Burner” wheels I bought a while back.

77a Burners - on Tracker 149s and Mini-Carve. Good wheels.

For quite a few years I used to be a big fan of the Gravity Street-G wheel. Even when companies like ABEC-11 started coming out with some more expensive wheels made of a higher grade urethane, I still liked the Street-Gs a lot. Gravity made them for many years, so I was pretty shocked actually when they dropped the wheel completely and came out with an almost entirely new wheel lineup.

The Gravity’s 66mm Burner is one of the wheels in the new lineup. To the untrained eye, it looks a lot like the 66mm Retro ZigZag. It has a wide contact patch, kind of square lips. Looks like a slalom wheel to me. I’m posting a few pics of them on my Mini-Carve, so you can really see how they look. They are mounted here on Tracker 149s.

The 77a white formula really rolls smoothly over rough surfaces, but to my surprise it didn’t feel mushy at all. Sometimes a real soft wheel will feel like a marshmellow — like it wants to just pull right off the core under pressure. Sometimes you can feel a softy really deforming badly as it squishes around while you ride it. Not so with the Burners. True, the lips of this wheel do flex a quite a bit, but somehow the wheel’s shape doesn’t allow it to deform too badly. The result, I think, is a wheel that grips pretty well without squishing away all your speed.

Burners - Sideview.

While I was at the ditch for that session, my friend Army was riding the blue 83a Burners on his Mini-Carve. They also seemed to function real well. Very smooth, but with a little more slideability, due to the harder formula.

Another nice thing about these wheels is the price. They aren’t as expensive as some of the premium-grade wheels out there. Granted, they aren’t quite as fast either, but they are about $10 less expensive. I think it is a good tradeoff. They are still plenty fast. Unless you are actually racing, these wheels are just fine for most applications. When you use high-grade, expensive wheels for every day riding, I don’t think you ever really get the maximum benefit out of them, but you use ‘em up just as fast. My friend Mike “Grumpy Ol’ Bastard” Moore says I “ride light” because I don’t go through boards very fast. Perhaps that’s true, but I pump real hard in ditches, and I really can burn through wheels fast if I’m riding like that a lot. So its nice to save $10 where I can.

So I would say the Burners are a really good all-around wheel. I can see using them on carving boards, hill boards, ditch boards, whatever.

Mini-Carve with Burners.

On a slightly different topics I want to talk about riser pads on Mini-Carve decks. In short, you don’t need them. I have one thin riser under each of the trucks on my board, and really I could just get rid of it. The wheel cutouts in front and the tapering rail of the Mini-Carve just make wheelbite nearly impossible with most trucks.  I’ve run Randal trucks on mine, and no bite either. Army was riding Ace 33s or 44s on his board – no risers – trucks so loose the lock nut was about to fall off — and he said it will barely rub if he really gets down on it.

Now, Gravity sends these boards out (if you chose non-Randal trucks) with wedge risers to improve the turning. The wedges do, in fact, improve the turning. I rode mine like that for years.  Now, however, I like to keep my board as low as possible. And thanks to the many options you have for really great bushings, you can run a standard truck with no risers and still get great turning. On these Trackers, I am using the Tracker inverted “Grind-King” style kingpin with a Retro Lime tall bushing on bottom. The bushings really improve the turning to the point that wedges just aren’t really needed. If you really want to spend some $$, you could put some Ace/Core Hybrids from Milehigh Skates on there and still keep the ride low.

The standard Gravity setup isn’t bad. It works very, very well. But if you want a low ride, you can go that way with no problem. I’m not sure if I’d recommend the no-riser solution for wheels larger than 66mm, but I can tell you that up 66mm it works well.

Milehighskates.com coined a popular phrase in the longboarding world: Loose Trucks Save Lives.

Based, however, on Milehigh Mark’s own work, I would have to add ” , but Good Bushings Make it Worth Living“.

For a while now, Milehigh has been selling some hybrid trucks, based on either the Ace or Indy hanger, and the Core baseplate. It seems that many standard trucks these days do not ship with the oldschool mounting hole pattern in addition to the current standard. As a result, those trucks can’t be mounted on a lot of longboards, which use the oldschool pattern.

Ace/Core hybrid, with longer kingpin, Reflex bushing on bottom, Ace bushing on top. Killer turning.

I already had some Ace trucks, so I decided to give this a try. I ordered some Core baseplates from Milehigh. Of course, Mark doesn’t just sell you the baseplate. He improves them by replacing the kingpin with a longer, grade-8 kingpin to accomodate taller, softer bushings, and puts in a much better pivot cup.

I used some Reflex bushings on bottom, from Retro, and put the stock bottom bushing from the Ace trucks on top (they come with really good bushings).  Used flat washers on top. These trucks are the Ace 44s. The hangers are 5 3/4″ wide — just slightly narrower than 150mm.

I put these trucks on my Comet Voodoo speed board, with 1/4″ soft risers under them, and some 65mm 78a Road Rider wheels I’ve been holding on to for about 9 years. The wheels are OK. Not great. They are fast, but with the rounded edges they don’t grip all that well. They are smooth as hell. I’ve used these before, and they wear down pretty quickly. I’ll probably put the Retro Zig Zag 66mm back on when these are worn out.

With really good bushings like this, you can tighten the trucks enough that there is no “slop”. They aren’t floppy feeling at all, but they still turn really well. Obviously, running a tall bushing on top isn’t practical for a street board or a pool board on which you’ll be doing grinds, but for a downhill setup it is killer. If you are a street skater who likes loose trucks, I’d recommend changing the bottom bushing to Reflex. It will improve the handling of your board.

Comet Voodoo, with Ace/Core hybrid trucks and Road Rider wheels.

After setting this board up, I met my friend Chris over at a nearby bike path with a nice mellow downhill section, about 1/4 long.  Even without wedge risers, I found these trucks turned as well or better than my 150mm Randal-IIs. To be fair, the R-IIs don’t have the awesome bushing upgrades, so it isn’t really a fair comparison. My point, however, is that with good bushings, a standard geometry truck can turn really, really well.  This is something Bennett Truks (yes, that’s how they spell the word “truck”) has known for over 30 years. This does make me want to try the new Bennetts, even though they ride pretty darned high. Generally I’d prefer a lower truck, and then adjust with riser pads. If I can pick up a set of the Bennett  6.0s cheap I might give them a shot.

I know that a lot of longboarders have been switching to Milehigh’s Hybrid trucks. They are expensive, as Mark has to take a normal truck, pay for a new baseplate, and add a better kingpin and better bushings and pivot cup. So they are about twice as much as a normal set of trucks. But I’d have to say at this point that if you can afford it, the Hybrids are worth the cash. They just carve like butter. All the benefits of a loosely-adjusted truck without any of the flop.

An added benefit: A friend of mine has a Comet drop-through deck with Hybrids on it, and the board sits much lower than it would with Randal-IIs. So if getting low is your goal, this would be an excellent option for you. I don’t see any reduction in turning at all.

A few words about Ace trucks:

These are really nice trucks. They machine down the ends of the hangers so that speed ring on the inside is almost unnecessary. The pivot point is round and smooth, which without a doubt helps make ‘em turn really nicely. Next time you have a truck taken apart, check this — a lot of trucks have rough, crappy pivot points. I know a lot of street and pool skaters are switching to these trucks, and with good reason. They are killer. The bushings are good enough that they’d be good on a longboard even without the hybrid modification.

So overall I’m really happy with this experiment. I’m going to consider putting Hybrids on at least one of my other boards.