Rotating your Wheels
When purchasing a pair of inline skates you should consider the money that you spend as an investment. Like most investments, you will want your inline skates to last for a long time before having to replace them. There are many ways to ensure that this takes place, but one easy way is to routinely rotate your wheels.
Wheel rotation on your inline skates is similar to the process of rotating wheels on a car. The process consists of removing your wheels and then positioning them in a different spot on your frame than they were before. The purpose of this is to make sure that the wear taking place on your wheels is balanced. Most skate wheels are made of a urethane material that while long lasting, begins to wear down after many uses. If you do not properly rotate your wheels, you will wind up with wheels that are severely worn down in one direction. This makes skating very difficult, and forces you to purchase new wheels to remedy the problem.
Ideally you should be checking your wheels before and after any skating session, but every couple of sessions is okay too. Checking before you skate will allow you to assure yourself that your wheels are in good condition to skate on. Checking after you skate will allow you to gauge how much your wheels are wearing down. The rate at which your wheels wear down will depend on the type of skating you are doing and the terrain you are skating on. If you are skating on an indoor skating rink, your wheels will not wear down as fast as if you were skating outdoors on pavement. Also, the Durometer rating of your wheels will play a factor in the wear as well. Keep these two things in mind when inspecting your wheels and making a determination whether you should rotate or not.
A standard wheel rotation should involve swapping wheel position, as well as flipping the wheel so that the inside edge now faces outwards. This will help keep the wear balanced and prevent you from having to replace wheels worn to a 45-degree angle on one side. Additionally, swapping wheel position is important because pressure isn’t always applied equally on each wheel. To remedy this issue you will want to swap wheel positions. You are welcome to re-position your wheels in any manner that you like, but the following method is the most common for 4-wheeled fitness or recreational skates.
1-3-2-4 Swapping Method:
For 4-wheel skates with wheels that are all the same size, you will want to utilize the 1-3-2-4 rotation. This method is known as the 1-3-2-4 because it requires the 1st and 3rd wheels on the frame to be swapped, and the 2nd and 4th wheels to be swapped.
There are other swapping methods as well, for 5-wheeled skates and Hi-Lo roller hockey skates as well. For a more in-depth review of those processes, please review Inline Skates 101 Guide.
Flipping and rotating your wheels is an easy way to save some cash, improve the performance of your skates, and increase the longevity of your skates in general. If you don’t feel like rotating your wheels, you are more than welcome to purchase new wheels every time, but don’t be upset if you spend more money on replacement wheels in 6 months than you did purchasing your skates.
Tags: bearing maintenance, bearings, inline skates, maintenance, rotation, skate, skates, skating, spacers, wheel rotation, wheels
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