Pneumatic wheels

A wobbly wheel translates to a lot of vibration to the board. Gets worse as you go faster. I’m surprised that other people haven’t mentioned this before. Perhaps it was discussed on Endless Sphere forum.

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I agree. I think someone should figure out how to properly place a counterbalance… The wobble is quite bad just by spinning the wheel with hand…

Picked up a set of 5" Skike, and some bearings from them as well, just in case, while I wait for other perhaps better stuff to be back in stock (Psychotiller and DIY-ES). Also just to see how they’ll fit the board I picked up for this (been stuck for a while with indecision what to get, eh, have to start somewhere :slight_smile: )

Will have a go at removing the necessary material with a Dremmel and report back about wobble etc…

@cdn @Okami @dsmudger I’ve been riding the skikes for a while and I’ll confirm what @cdn says about wobble. The quality control reflects an obvious truth; they are meant for a kid’s scooter not a grown person, and certainly not for esk8. Here’s me quoting myself because it’s relevant:

*note: they appear to be in production again after a long time being OOS.

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Why is it I hear about the balance issues just after I put an order in for some! :smiley: Fingers crossed I get a good batch.

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I don’t think it will be such a big deal. You are not supposed to go 25mph with them and even if there are vibrations they will probably still be a lot lower than what you’d experience with standard wheels on anything that is not perfectly smooth tarmac. Also it is probably not the wobble in the wheel but the valve that is causing an unbalance.

The wobble is definitely in the wheel. As mentioned earlier, with the wheel placed on the truck and spun by hand you can see a definite wobble. With 2 sets of wheels, all of them had a wobble in them. Not what you call a quality product. Got to remember these wheels weren’t designed for e-boards. I did complete my build with these wheels and did test the board out. In my opinion, having a wobbly wheel makes it a dangerous board that can cause serious injury to yourself or somebody else.

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I wonder if a bit of time on the lathe would sort out the wobble.

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I have 9’’ primo striker wheels and the wobble is definetely because of the valve’s weight. Would be great if someone came up with a position and correct counterbalance weight, otherwise at higher speeds it might be noticable.

Have not had a chance to test these wheels yet, unfortunately still have not got my motor and I accidentaly messed up one of the hubs.

yeah I just noticed that on my drive wheel. Once I put on the screws to hold the pulley and left the one closest to the valve out the wheel wobbled way less. The bolts basically acted as a counterweight. I am now thinking of applying this even to the non-drive wheels. The holes in the skike rims are perfect for M5 screws. Not a beautiful solution but could be easy enough to justify it. Will report back once I actually tried to ride them - maybe the wobble isn’t even that bad at the low speeds I am planning on going.

Yeah, I was thinking the same way - to use the existing bolts / bolts holes to counter the weight.

Don’t know how the screws are placed for you wheel / or are there any clearence left but it should be possible to insert a longer screw with added metal ring to increase the weight. It just needs to be the correct weight, as the screw is not at the same position as the valve.


I’ve had this problem for a bicycle. As far as I remember the ‘‘feeling’’ of wobble changed depending on added weight to the seat. / weight distribution.

Ride characteristics was not that much influced, although it was quite annoying to feel that your wheel has excess ‘‘spin’’ / weight all the time. For smaller wheels this could be less noticable, as the wheels are not as big. But Im not so sure, so someone might correct me.

I think it is an even bigger problem the smaller your wheel gets, due to the fact that the total weight becomes usually smaller while the valve stays the same. That is why on a bike you usually don’t feel the valve at all - the total weight is large in comparison to the valve.

https://core.skike.com/img_pool/thumbnail/263RTMGZAR78QU61-169.jpg That is the wheel and you can see the 5 small holes closest to the center. That is where you can fit 4 M5 screws as a counterweight - which does not need to be perfect anyway. Anything will at least improve the situation.

These skike hub holes seem to be very handy for placing screws in them and thus limiting the imbalance caused by the valve


Agree about weight importance of valve. For my wheel valve seems to be even bigger/longer than what bicycle’s have, as it has an angle, too.

Im not that good at physics (dont remember the formulas) - but there was a thing related with anglular velocity at different points / diameter of the wheel

So someone with better understanding of speed / physics could correct me and point out why exactly it is worse for smaller wheels.

I somehow messed up the concept for small vs big wheels and which one of them needs to spin faster to achieve the same speed in terms of km/h or mph, so that’s from where I made my assumtion that it could be less worse for small wheels.

Here’s an illustration for that.

So I asssumed it could be worse for bigger wheels but did not take into account that smaller wheels has to spin faster to achieve the same km/h / mph (I hope im not wrong on this one)

Hello from Trampaboards! We use stick on lead weights to balance the wheels. They are standard in the car industry. Some riders used coins to figure out the weight needed. You can buy some lead stripes and strong double sided tape, eg. mirror mounting tape. Wear some gloves, don’t touch the lead! The non split rims, having no flat inner surface to stick the weight to, are not so easy to balance. The whobble is really intense because of the small size. The small wheel spins so much faster at the same speed, compared to a bicycle wheel. The wheels high rpm is the issue. We should consider selling some balancing weights.

Frank from Trampa

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Trampa, what technique for working out where the weights need to go do you use? As predictably some of my skike wheels are well out of balance?

its a known annoyance for the old evolve boards - comes 100% from the heavy valve and its quite easily balanced with the typical 5gr motorbike counterbalance adhesive weights. you get them in great numbers for pretty much a few cents on ebay. on my evolve, a weight of 15-20gr counterbalanced the valve, leading to a much smoother riding.

the new evolve gt wheels have included counterbalance weights to the valve within the rims - pretty cool imo! :slight_smile:

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I put three M5 screws and nuts through the opposing holes in the rim - that helped a bit as well. It is definitely noticeable but compared to the vibrations with standard wheels on rough ground not that bad. And cruising throught the forest is hella fun :smiley: - only the decreased range (like half of what I usually get) is annoying (time for my spot welder to arrive ;))

Sorry for the vertical video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AenCYgMHgjE&feature=youtu.be

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Hi Gordy, just place the weight opposite the valve. On our Superstars there is a spoke in this exact location, since it is a 5 spoke hub. So you have to split the weight in two pieces and stick the half’s left and right of the spoke. Frank

Ah ok that makes sense. Some of my wheels are out of true even without the valve, I think I will get the tires fitted and then retest.

Are the skike wheels still the best option? I’m really looking for a decent set of pneumatics, but I’m looking for the best options possible.