Why I Don't Use Bearing Spacers!

spacers do you use them or not a great idea in theory let me show you how they actually work in practice the idea is to form a solid connection from your hanger to your nut so it goes washer bearing spacer which connects these two inner rings of your bearing bearing washer and nut forgive me if you saw this one on the short but now we can see the bearings still spin freely so as a unit mechanically this works really well I'll show you where we get into problems let me set up the wheel so before we put this together I want you guys to take note of the core of the wheel this should have an exact thickness and it should be the exact same thickness as the spacer it's not always depending on the brand so that's where we run into problems but let's let's get this one set up so again we've got our washer bearing and bearing spacer and even though the graphics worn off I Gotta Have It graphic in okay so let's get this one cranked down tight and see if the wheel still spins not really so that's kind of annoying right it should be spinning better and that tells me that the core is probably not the exact same thickness of the bearing these bearings are getting torqued on because it's not identical and it has to be so close that maybe it's not reasonable to expect every Wheel manufacturer to make the exact same consistently sized core so now let's check these other two top wheels these ones have spacers in them as well I'm going to crank this one down tight that one is spinning it doesn't sound quite right but it is still spinning that one's actually spinning a little closer these bearings are a bit dry so it would sound a bit better if they were like cleaned and properly lubricated let's do this bottom one get that cranked down tight like it was so that's the one that isn't spinning and now this one has this is kind of like our control wheel it has no spacer in it so I could just keep cranking it down and what starts to happen is basically you will start putting so much tension on the inner ring of the bearing that you're kind of starting to break your bearings like eventually your bearings will collapse in on themselves if you keep turning it so I'm going to have it just enough that it's solid because this is the next thing I want to show you about spacers is it changes the way your board sounds and in a way that I personally don't like because it doesn't sound like a skateboard to me anymore so let's put this thing on the ground all right listen to this does that sound like a skateboard it sounds like a log now so that's one of the things that I've never liked is the way it changes it here's one without spacers with the wheels having a tiny bit of Slack and now it it actually has that like skate sound that's a skateboard but now I'm gonna ride this around and see how it feels so in all honesty it actually feels kind of slow to me that one feels and sounds better okay here's another thing that spacers do um first let's listen to this board I'm going to do some power slides it says no spacers and a little slack in the wheels yeah there's gonna be a bit of discrepancy because it's a different formula wheel different brand but now listen to the spacer wheel it takes away that Reverb because your wheel isn't moving a little bit side to side it's that tiny bit of chatter that creates the nice bark when you power slide so that's another thing you're going to lose when you use spacers so one of the arguments for spacers is people say that if you land on your axle really hard that it's going to stop axle shift so axle shift is when this piece of metal in here literally moves from side to side and what it does when it hits really hard is it'll make it loose on one side and bind on the side that got hit so let's look at this one right now this one's not really spinning freely this one is let's try hitting this side and see if we can get this to spin freely and this isn't a dig on Slappy trucks all trucks still have a minute amount of axle shift it's very minimal but it's enough to cause a problem let's see if it actually works it might not yeah maybe it's actually working in this case let's try it on the side with two spacers okay that they're not spinning good because of the bearings but actually working and maybe the Slappy trucks do actually have some really good resistance to axle slip so all that being said I still have had axle shift occur even using spacers so you know depends let me know in the comments if you've used spacers and still had axle shift or if it sorts it out for you so for about 10 years I actually did use spacers but I never actually snug them down tight so I used to use them with just a little bit of slack you know a hair so they could spin freely but I still had the spacer in there now most people will say that there's actually zero benefit to that because unless you have it cranked down tight you're not actually engaging the spacer therefore not getting the benefits and I actually agree and the other thing that I noticed happened was when I started riding Spitfires because I used to ride bones and these are Swiss bones bearings that's where the spacers are from I don't necessarily think Spitfires have the exact same core size as a bone spacer so I found it problematic to use the two things that would happen to me was one if it was really cold out let's say it was Winter and I would take my board into a heated indoor space to skate there was expansion somewhere and all of a sudden my wheels would seize up and if I didn't have a skate key to give it like that little you know less than a quarter turn loose then my wheels would be on there too snug and they weren't rolling properly so that was something and those are all the reasons I stopped using spacers so I haven't noticed any decrease in performance from not using them it's less than of a headache to set up um yeah it's just generally better so I'm not a spacer guy if you are a spacer guy let me know in the comments and uh I know some of you are wondering come on Ben how are these Slappy trucks well let's do a few slappies to close out the video huh foreign that should be grinding better honestly you know those hot summer days when the wax gets like baked off the curves [Applause] every time thank you I have missed literally every Slappy crook I've tried on these what's up let's try a couple feebles that's better [Applause] and something is not working how I'm used to it I'm gonna try uh some Aces with some giant wheels I got all right foreign [Applause] that's what I get for leaving these beans laying around the park I was having the worst time trying to grind this and I want to see if it was just dry concrete or if it was actually the metal or the truck so a few grinds on here with the aces now this thing needs some red brick action okay that's it um that was up until the last few minutes why I don't use spacers hope you guys are doing really well maybe you could see why I haven't been riding those other trucks either might just be the wheels though these big old wheels are feeling good anyways I'm done uh yeah that was a super kind of ADHD tangent at the end of the video but I know some of you needed your skate fill anyways I'm done without drying it out any longer I'm going bye

Channel: Ben Degros

Views: 32,182

Keywords: bearing spacers, bearing spacers skateboard, bearing spacers roller skates, bearing spacers vs no spacers, bearing spacers for inline skates, bearing spacers and speed rings, bearing spacers longboard, bearing spacers or not, drp bearing spacers, are bearing spacers necessary, what do bearing spacers do, drp performance bearing spacers, skateboard bearing spacers or no, bearing spacers and

Id: L6ZVdQc9oDY

Length: 9min 56sec (596 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 14 2023