ISSA - International Slalom Skateboarding Association

I have 4 Road Rider wheels that I found on an old 70's board and I was wondering if they would be good for slalom. I dont know much about them at all on the side of the wheel it says "Road Riders 6" and they're red. I have a Roe Unlimited with tracker RT-X and RT-S.

And the height is 66.04 millimeters and width is 53.34 millimeters.

If those wheels are in good shape, you could probably sell them on eBay and buy some newer wheels.

Q

The 3dm wheels, especially Cambria were inspired by the Road Rider wheels. It would be interesting to see just how similar they are.

Road Riders were the classic slalom wheel back then and were available in three different sizes (2 - 4 - 6). I only ever had (or saw) 4's.

Park Riders replaced the Road Riders as my preferred choice for slalom.

Can you post a picture of the wheels? Ideally next to a 3dm Cambria or Avalon.

/Jani

ya sure i can it will be up in a little bit

um....how do i post a pic its not working

Noah says he has 6s, which are almost identical to a "shaved down" Avalon. The difference is about 3/16" in width. Gilmour told me that he was working from the dimensions of the RR 6 when he originally laid out the dimensions for the Avalon.

Also, there seems to be some disagreement over duros for the RR and PR. I thought they were around 78 and 88, but JG says they were closer to 85 and 92. Then again, RRs were prior to the great "resilient" revolution in wheels after Kryptos, so I'm guessing the chemistry of the RR was different than what ride today as "quality" racing plastic.

from an ebay auction



Q

ya those are what mine look like but not as clean. i couldnt get a pic up it wouldnt work sry

Noah Koski wrote:um....how do i post a pic its not working

Noah,

If you want to include a picture in your post you need to upload the file to a server of your own or send it by email to one of the guys with FTP access to the file storage area on this site. You can always send me pictures (or videos) for uploading. Email me at jani@slalomskateboarder DOT com.

/Jani

Uh... I contend the Cambrias were mocked after the C62's (by Kryptonic) and agree w/ J.G's assumption of duro..

Dave Gale wrote:Uh... I contend the Cambrias were mocked after the C62's (by Kryptonic) and agree w/ J.G's assumption of duro..

Absolutely, I remembered that the RR's were closer to the C62's, but now that I see them, not so.

Simply an odservation and an interest!! RR 6's were a wonderful wheel on smooth surfaces as were others. RR 2's are still my fav for freestyle and 4's..well....they're classic anywhere
Let us not forget 'bout the Henry Hester's!!! Now that's a slalom wheel hey?

Noah ! you should keep your RR, those are collector !!

No offense to Gilmour, but there's no way that RR's were 85, and PR's were 92. 78/88 is more like it.

ya i do think that i am going to keep the wheels i just orderd a roe unlimited and i am going to use them at first cuz i havent got any other wheels for it

Nick Krest wrote:No offense to Gilmour, but there's no way that RR's were 85, and PR's were 92. 78/88 is more like it.

Let's take a durometer to a rr4. You couldn't easily deform the lip like a 78a krypto. It's gotta be harder.

I took the double inner face for the Avalon off of the RR6 mostly because I liked the predictable handling of the RR6 at speed (yet somehow the double angled lip of the inner face was lost when I faxed it off)- The height of the RR6 was I believe 68mm and was about as big as wheel as you would want without sacrificing much nimbleness.

The problem with trying to check the duros on those old wheels is that the urethane formulas were pretty unstable. PowerFlex wheels were advertised as 82a, and the RRs were definitely in that ballpark. You can't ever be 100% sure, because even now, carefully mixed urethane batches can vary by +/- 3 points on the Rockwell A scale (confirmed by John Tiedemann at Creative and Tim Dawe at Electric). So let's say RRs were somewhere in the 80-85 range, John?

Another thing to take into consideration was that the Krypto urethane starting in November of '77 had a super-high resilience, which was something that had never been done before. You could run a higher duro (78a red, 86a blue, 91a green) and still maintain grip, as a higher-resilience wheel springs back from deformation more quickly. I agree that you could pull an uncored red Krypto right off the bearings while still mounted, because I've done it. Early loose ball wheels (Cadillac, Roller Sports, Metaflex) didn't pop their races too often; I wonder what duro they were (knowing full well, of course, that Metaflex were quite a bit harder than the more popular Cads and RS).

Now you're going to make me go buy a new tool - a durometer.

Sorry about that double-stepped lip not making it into production. Jay Shuirman was indeed a mad scientist, and had an intuitive feel for products that worked. SCS wasn't the same without him.

i think your wheels are out of "best of date" thou old wheels loosing their grip.

I had a NOS set of RR6's and they looked very very close to my Avalons , about 1mm out.

rmn

I know this is an old thread, but I wanted to post up my old board from 1976...
I rode slalom in Buffalo NY back then and did a wrist plant off this board onto a cast iron sewer pipe and shattered the outside of my hand... 2 weeks before my art finals for college!
I last rode it on my wedding day in 06 in Laguna Beach and lost it off a hotel balcony (don't ask!) and have since shelved it for the time being...
The RR4s were the hot setup at that time and have held up amazingly well for 33 years.