Custom Rocket Rhino Racetail, chopped to fit my stance.
Friend's board on the left, mine on the right.
26" long and currently set to a ~17" wheelbase I believe. Options go from 15.5" to 18" and all other specs are the same as the standard Rhino Racetail.
- Valkyrie Mk3.5 Slaloms, 49/15 and 115-125mm hangers. Might be set to 125mm here
- 87a Riptide Krank fat cone up front, 96a Seismic standard barrels in the back with shims.
- Valkyrie cupped washers
- 80mm Seismic Alphas in plum
- Zealous
- Rocket Gravity plate (~3lbs), no riser
Strictly hands-down, but I've found that the gravity plate seems to calm the steering down and add center without much downside so I've kept it on.
Here it is brand new next to my last board, a Rocket Micro. Kinda hilarious, the Micro is not a large board...
Insane, just skate a dighy at this point 😭😭😭.
I like short boards but damnn this is pushing the limits, why soooo short?? 💀💀
Are you a very small person or just have the most folded/compact tuck ever? At which point you decide it was a good idea to go even smaller than a damn rocket micro?
@F Llabata yeah I'm a small person, and my tuck is fairly compact as well so that just adds to it. I went to Maryhill for the first time last year on the Micro and got a lot of comments on my torque block being nearly halfway up the deck instead of over the rear bolts like most people have it. I decided to try this as an experiment basically. All the racers have their front foot on the front bolts and their rear foot very close to the rear bolts/just ahead of their rear wheels. In order for someone my size to replicate that stance and get that kind of performance, you gotta go smaller than what's available on the market.
I'm not alone either. Rydelle Abarico from the Philippines is a very small skater and her race deck is a chopped Madrid Truth. No idea what wheelbase she's running, but she's got the same thing going on with her feet over her wheels basically, and her stance is tiny as well. The "meta" dimensions for race decks seem to only fit taller skaters with longer stances.
The Racetail is a really cool feature but it basically forced me into a very compact board since I just measured from the rear foot position and had the nose chopped wherever my front foot ended up. With a normal add-on torque block I could've had a little extra deck and wheelbase at the back and it'd be slightly less crazy. My rear heel hovers over the void a bit currently.
I honestly haven't done enough side by side comparison testing to know if the wheelbase feels that different at speed, I just sorta jumped in and got used to it. At this point I can't definitively say that this is too far for fast roads but it truly is a weapon on a steep and twisty bike path. I'm gonna play with some harder bushings soon though.
@Niall Rawn I see, very interesting take. Congratulations for trying to build a setup that suits your needs and your ergonomics instead of settling for what is on the market, let's see where it brings you.
About the bushings. Maybe its not a feedback/force problem but more of a geometry problem. I mean that at this point your trucks may be so close that the turn radii of this setup is tooo small, you'll have to adjust their angles to gain stability and get the same turn as if they were further apart. Basically try to decrease the front angle with a wedge and see where it brings you. For reference, street skateboards baseplates use about 30º or so (with absurd rake) and well.... your wheelbase is probably right about the same size as the one in a popsicle skateboard lol.
Anyway, very interesting setup. Keep us updated!
@F Llabata Yeah it could be that too, that has also crossed my mind. Aaron Hampshire said something similiar after he rolled around on it, lowering the front angle. I've been reluctant to try that since slalom valks are so damn tall already but I think I'll definitely give it a shot now. The geometry of the truck is also so different than what most people are skating that I think that adds a layer of complication. Like, does it feel crazy becasue of the tiny wheelbase or because the single bushing Valkyrie feels pretty crazy anyways? Hard to really tell.
What about the rear angle? Would that be worth playing with? Going lower than 15 sounds weird but this is all uncharted territory in a way and I gotta remind myself that.
I think that the rear angle is so low already that lowering more won't give any benefits, at this point the rear truck turns way more just because of differential effect like a car than anything (when cornering the wheels on the outside of the turn go faster than the inner ones, allowing the system to turn). But sure thing, try if you can.
I have the don't trip mollys that have fully adjustable baseplates and played around a lot with angles, and i can say that everyhting under 20º feels close to the same except for the lean, but your experience may vary. Some people on LDP setups use 0º trucks sometimes, soo..
The weird design of the valkyre makes everything more difficult, maybe a more "dead" truck would be better for this setup but you may make it work playing with the bushings and angle, who knows.
@F Llabata Hey! I wanted to report back on some tuning changes. I'm now running a 46 degree front, de-wedged 3 degrees with a mint 90a Seismic barrel. What an incredible difference just 3 degrees made! I'm blown away and did not expect such a huge change, I've never tuck leaned this well in my life.
It basically seems to have calmed down the steering and now I have to be more intentional with my movements which is exactly what I wanted. At 49 degrees, whether I used an 87a Fat Cone or a 90a Seismic barrel, everything was just so fluid feeling at high speeds that changing bushings had very modest effects and the faster I went the less it seemed to matter. But now at 46 degrees it's not so hyper reactive and I feel like I have so much more freedom to move my body around at high speed whereas before I trained myself to be ultra still in order to remain stable.
I used those crazy thin Seismic wedges for this and I can highly reccommend those since they add so little height. I'll keep tuning things here and there and trying new angles and bushings but this combo is feeling so much better it's insane. I'll just have to see if it still works well below 25mph.
Cool! I'm glad to see that it worked. I was expecting a higer de-wedging to be honest, It's crazy that just three degreees made such a difference, makes me want to "micro adjust" mine now hahahhaha.
Since you're using the racetail, having your front truck a bit higher will just give you a more aggressive pocket in the front to hold your feet, basically like having more rocker, Owen Campbell has a video talking about this and makes ots of sense (I think is this one: You’re misusing risers on your DH setup.).
Maybe once you have your angle perfectly dialed up you can 3D print a wedge in one piece if you're not comfortable with stacking several wedges too.
And thanks for the update!! This is being very interesting.
