In this video we show you how to properly adjust the pivots on roller skate plates with adjustable pivots, like the Sure-Grip Avenger.
Hi! this is RollerGirl from RollerGirl.ca and I'm here today to talk to you about adjustable pivots.
Now, to start with not all trucks have adjustable pivots as you can see here this is the truck
from a Revenge plate.
That's the truck, this is the pivot, and as you can see it's all one piece.
There are no moving parts. This pivot is not adjustable.
If your trucks look anything like this then you don't need to watch this video.
On the other hand, I have here the DA45 truck from Sure-Grig.
This is the kind of truck that comes on Avenger plates, Invader plates, and many others
actually.
And as you can see, here's the truck, here's the pivot, you can see that it has moving
parts.
This pivot is adjustable.
If your trucks look anything like this, then it's really important that you know how to adjust
them.
If you do not adjust your pivots properly you can damage your plates:
You can put extra strain on your kingpins, which can break them, you can prematurely wear your
pivot cups, and you can just inhibit the performance of your plates.
They will not be as responsive as they should be if the pivots are improperly adjusted.
So, it's really important that you know how to do this.
So first of all, I just want to show you here just how adjustable pivots are.
So you can see on my left here I have a truck with the pivot in the fully retracted position,
and on my right I have a truck with the pivot in the fully extended position.
You can see there really is quite a lot of room for pivot adjustment.
Let me explain to you a little bit about the idea behind adjusting your pivots.
So my left hand represents the pivot cup and my right hand represents the pivot.
Now with the adjustable pivot we can move the pivot up and down within the pivot cup.
If your pivots are too short, and your pivot's way up here in the pivot cup, every time you put
pressure on that skate you're going to be causing vertical movement, up and down, inside your
pivot cup, and this isn't good.
That vertical movement puts strain on your kingpin and it can break your kingpin and also this
will just inhibit the performance of your plates.
You can imagine this up and down movement isn't great, right.
On the other hand if you have your pivot adjusted too long and it is driving, pressing, into the
pivot cup it's not going to pivot properly in that cup, and it will prematurely wear your your
pivot cup.
It also does put extra strain on your kingpin, so we don't want that either.
Ideally what we want is for your pivot to make light contact with the pivot cup, and this will
allow it to pivot properly, give you the best responsiveness for your plates, and it will make
your hardware last longer.
So this is what we want to do.
Now, when you're going to adjust the length of your pivots, first of all, we suggest that you put
all of your pivots into the fully retracted position.
So, once again: extended, fully retracted.
Okay, in order to do this let me show you how to adjust your pivots.
So, on your adjustable pivot you have two parts:
You have the locking nut, and the adjustment nut.
So, when the locking nut is tight you cannot adjust the adjustment nut, so first of all we want
to loosen the locking nut.
Now, this is the tool that comes with the Avenger plates, so the one that Sure-Grip provides for
this, but it's not really my favourite.
You can use it if you have it.
I'm going to use the real tools instead.
So, you use a 1/2" wrench to loosen your locking nut.
Once the locking nut is loose, then we can adjust the adjustment nut, and you know it's loose
because you can see it moves freely.
Then we take a 3/8" wrench and we can retract or extend, depending on which direction you turn,
the adjustment nut.
So, just give me a second here and I will fully retract my adjustment nut.
There you are, see fully retracted position.
So now, we're going to do this on the plates themselves.
Adjust them properly.
So, here's my plates, and as you can see they have sort of a medium length adjustment, right
now, they're not as extended as as I showed you before but they're not fully retracted
either.
We're going to want to adjust them, so the first thing that we're going to do is we're going to
move those pivots into the fully retracted position.
And as I just showed you, we're going to do that by first loosening the locking nut.
Once that is loose and you can see that it moves freely, and it needs to move freely we don't
want it pressed right up against the adjustment nut.
I don't know if you can see that here, this is where the locking nut is pressed into the
adjustment nut and if they are locked together they will not move independently, and you don't
want that, it makes it very difficult to properly adjust and lock down your pivots.
So make sure that they are moving freely of each other.
Now we are going to move that into the fully retracted position, and as you can see here, if you
look here, adjustment nut and the locking nut are right together against the truck, there are no
threads visible, there are no spaces.
It is in the fully retracted position.
If you look on this end we're seeing threads in between, we obviously know this is not fully
retracted, we're going to do the same thing to this truck.
So first, start by loosening the locking nut see it moves freely.
Now, we are going to retract the adjustment nut into the fully retracted position.
So, you can see we have both trucks with their pivots in the fully retracted position.
Now, let me just take a quick break here to tell you why we do it this way.
So, once again here's the pivot cup and here's the pivot.
And what we've just done is, it was sort of somewhere in here, and we have shortened the pivot
into the fully retracted position.
Now, when the pivot's in the fully retracted position you know that it's too short.
You know that you must lengthen it in order to get to the proper position.
If it's somewhere in the middle you might not know which way to go.
So it's nice to start here where you know we're too short.
Now we're going to lengthen slowly until we feel contact.
And what you do is, we're here, you're going to push on that and you're going to feel that
there's movement.
And then we tighten it, make it a little bit longer.
Push on it again, and you'll feel oh there's still movement.
A little bit more untill there's still movement, you keep doing that until you push and feel
that there's no movement into the pivot in the pivot cup, and at that point you stop and you
know you've just made contact.
So I'll show you that visually here.
So, you can see there is movement.
So we know that the pivot is too short.
Now, when you're doing this on your skates...
So you've taken your skates, you've retracted your pivots all the way, now is a really good time
to take a moment to finalize the adjustment of your trucks, okay.
Because the adjustment of your trucks does change a little bit the length of your pivots so we
want to do that first.
So we check on the adjustment of the trucks and, just checking here carefully, um I want mine a
little bit looser than that, that's not quite how I like to ride mine.
Okay, good, that's exactly how I want to ride my trucks.
So, I know I've adjusted my trucks, my pivots are in the fully retracted position, now is time
to lengthen them into their proper position.
So, to do that we once again need to make sure that our locking nut is loose, so that we can
adjust the pivot, and we are going to slowly, very slowly, extend the pivot.
We want to extend it little bit by little bit so that we know the moment that we feel
contact.
So, you see here that there is all that movement, and see that vertical movement of the pivot
moving up and down inside the pivot cup, that's no good.
We're going to get rid of that.
So, we're going to move little bit by little bit.
So, do one turn, check it, still tons of movement.
We'll do another turn, check it, lots of movement but already I can feel that it moves less than
it did before.
Do another little turn, still movement, and we keep going...
We're almost there, you can see there's definitely movement but way less than before.
And this part of it can be a little fiddly, it's not super important that you get it
perfect.
I like to get it perfect, but if you're a little worried "is this good enough?", the big problem
is when you have it really wrong:
When your pivot's really really short or really really long.
So, for this part, like I said, you could see the obvious movement, and then you get to the
point at the end where, it's not like before, but if you look really closely you can see it's
still moving.
So, we know we're still a little ways away so we're going to go a little bit more... oh, so
close!
I bet that'll do it... nope.
I think that did it, yeah I just felt bottom, excellent.
So once you feel that you've made contact, there's no more movement in there, you tighten back
that locking nut and you're good to go.
I'm going to show you the other one, just because.
Because this is a little bit tricky for some people, so seeing it twice is a good thing.
We're going to start by loosening up that locking nut, making sure it moves freely.
You see, lots of movement.
And then, here we go we're going to tighten it down, one turn at a time, until there's no more
movement.
So, you feel that the pivot has made contact into the base of the pivot cup.
Getting close, that did it!
So, once again, pivot is adjusted properly.
Now we tighten down the lock nut, and you are good to go.
It is important to adjust your pivots every time that you take the whole plate apart.
So, if you're going to change your cushions, which are these buddies in here, that's a good time
to adjust your pivots.
When you put them back in: adjust your trucks the way you want them, and then adjust the
pivots.
Or, if you're going to dramatically change the tightness of your trucks:
So say you've been riding with really really tight trucks, and now you want to ride with really
really loose trucks, you'll want to change the adjustment of your trucks, and then adjust your
pivots.
So that's everything for today.
Happy skating!