Experimenting with Gear is almost as much fun as actually riding the boards. Pumping is much about gear. Dialing in the right set up is all important. A pumping board needs a turny front truck, an almost dead rear truck and fast, grippy wheels. For my purpose, pumping max. speed on a short track for an hour, I prefer topmount decks. And I don’t use a deck specially designed for LDP. Those are usually flexy. But I don’t want flex in the deck. I’m convinced that flex makes me slow.
I chose a Rayne Vandal V2 as my “parking-lot pumping”-deck, as it’s stiff has lots of concave and no rocker nor drop. It’s 37x10’’ with 24,5-27’’ wheelbase. Recently I changed to the longest wheelbase. The board is assembled with a Bennett 5.0 (+11°) in front and a narrow Seismic G2 with yellow springs in the rear. The Seismic is 45°, not one of the 30° that are designed as rear trucks. Therefore it needs lots of dewedging (-20°). That makes my Vandal a very high ride. I did some improvements to the Bennett: installed a selfmade plug in the hanger, put some love in polishing the pivot and put I one of the expensive Riptide pivot cups. I ride them with blue Sunrise bushings (75a).
Recently I got hold of a Fullbag Fȏboo for cheap. It’s 38 x 9,75’’ with 31’’ wheelbase. The Fȏboo is setup with a Surf Rodz TKP 139mm (+11°) in front and a modified Randal 35° (-8,5) in rear. I bought the Surf Rodz at Bolle & Scheese as LDP optimized. It’s got a Surf Key, RipTide APS bushings (85a) and a RipTide pivot-cup installed. The Randal was modified by myself. I narrowed the Hanger, which was 125mm originally, widened the hangerhole and put a selfmade plug in it. At the moment bushings are a RipTide APS Chubby 80a (boardside) and a Sunrise Gummies Barrel 80a (roadside). It’s got a RipTide Pivot cup installed as well. Set up like this, the Fȏboo is pretty low for a topmount pumping board. Because of its shape wheelbites aren’t much of a problem. That’s good because I want to use it for longer rides in the surroundings of Cologne where I need to push sometimes. With it’s mellow concave it’s more comfortable than the Vandal as well. But I don’t think the Fȏboo is the right deck for fast pumping. Still I want to test out, whether the longer wheelbase does make a significant difference.
In performance there isn’t much of a difference between the two boards. The Vandal has been slightly faster in my first little test (five laps on the nearby parking-lot). But the 2 seconds difference isn’t really significant as the riding time has been a little less than 4 minutes.
At the moment both boards are equipped with bubblegum Seismic Avilas in the rear and lime ABEC11 BigZigs in the front. But I’ve got yellow BigZigs, bubblegum Seismic HotSpots and mango Seismic Blast Waves as well. So wheels will be tested soon.
