Let’s face it, it’s no fun when your skateboard wheels aren’t spinning as fast as you want them to. You lose speed while pushing, you can’t bomb hills as fast, and you just can’t cruise as easily. Luckily there is one very easy method to make your skateboard wheels spin faster right now.
To make your skateboard wheels spin faster, use a silicone-based bearing lubricant such as Bones Speed Cream. With a few drops of this lubricant, excess dirt and grime will have less effect on the efficiency of your bearing meaning your wheels will spin noticeably faster.
You can pick up a bottle of Bones Speed Cream here on Amazon, or at any local skate shop you visit.
With that said, lubricating your bearings is only one of a few solutions to make your wheels spin faster. In some cases, lubrication won’t make any difference if there are other factors at play such as the tightness of your wheels. So to help you start shredding, let’s get into five different ways to make your skateboard wheels spin faster.
How To Make Your Skateboard Wheels Faster
1. Lubricate Your Bearings
Like I mentioned earlier, Bones Speed Cream is the go-to bearing lubricant for many skaters, including myself. It’s super cheap and a single bottle lasts for ages. 3 or 4 drops of this stuff in your bearings and you’ll feel like you’re riding a new skateboard, and I’m not exaggerating.
Now the reason lubricating your bearings helps improve speed is simple when you think of the mechanics of a bearing. Inside a bearing are a handful of steel balls that rotate along an inner and outer race. As they rotate along these outer rings called races, friction is created causing rolling resistance.
When a bearing isn’t properly lubed, the surface the bearing balls roll on has more friction, making it harder for the bearing to rotate. After lubrication, the races have a filmy oil on them that helps the bearing balls roll smoothly, with far less friction than before.
Over time this lubrication wears out, which is why you should stay on top of lubing your bearings for optimal performance. I would recommend lubing your skateboard bearings every 3-6 weeks if you’re skating frequently. That will ensure your wheels are spinning fast and smoothly at all times.
Before you start thinking that you can use other lubricants like WD-40, consider the type of lubricant. Non-silicone-based lubricants (such as WD-40) will actually dry out your bearings and make them attract more dirt and dust. In the long run, these lubricants will do far more damage than good, so it’s best to avoid them altogether.
2. Clean Your Bearings
Lubricating your bearings will only get you so far if your bearings haven’t been properly cleaned in a while. Luckily cleaning your bearings is pretty easy to do and can be done at home with a few items from the hardware store. I explain how to clean your bearings more in-depth in another post, but let’s walk through the basics.
Getting a bottle of isopropyl alcohol and a small plastic container, fill the container with enough cleaning solution to cover your bearings. After popping out all of your bearings from the wheels and removing the shield of the bearing, place them in the isopropyl alcohol and give them a swish.
After letting them sit for a minute or two, take out the bearings and pat them try with a paper towel. Once dry, take your silicone-based lubricant of choice, such as Bones Speed Cream, and add a few drops to the bearings. Slowly rotate them to ensure the lubricant gets around the entire bearing.
Once this is done with all of your bearings, you can place the bearing shield back on and put them back into your wheels.
After cleaning your bearings, you remove any traces of dirt and dust that could be clogging them. Anything that’s getting in the way of the bearing ball’s rotation is going to be a hindrance to how fast your wheels spin. That’s why a deep clean like this is always the best solution if you want your skateboard to go faster.
3. Loosen Your Axle Nut
Even with the most well-lubricated and clean bearings, an over-tightened axle nut can make your wheels spin painfully slow. That’s because when the nut is too tight, it pinches your bearings to the point they can’t freely spin. This results in your skateboard wheels not going very fast, and not spinning for long periods of time.
You can confirm that this is the problem by grabbing your wheel and trying to wiggle it. If there is no room for it to move side to side along the axle, your axle nut is too tight. Ideally, there should be enough room for your wheel to wiggle slightly along the axle and make a “clicking” sound when you try to wiggle it.
To loosen your axle nut, grab a skate tool or a 1/2″ socket and rotate the axle nut counterclockwise until the wheel can wiggle slightly. Now repeat this for any wheel that seems to be overtightened.
After this quick fix, your skateboard wheels will spin a whole lot faster since they aren’t being clamped down by the axle nut!
4. Get Larger Diameter Wheels
If you’ve cleaned your bearings, lubricated them, loosened all your axle nuts, and your wheels still aren’t going as fast as you hoped, it may be time to get larger wheels. Larger wheels naturally go faster than smaller diameters since there is more rotational force and contact area for equivalent speeds.
To try to explain this in simple terms, a larger wheel covers more ground per rotation than a smaller wheel. That’s simply because there is more surface area as the wheel diameter increases.
A larger wheel also has more leverage over the bearings rotation as the wheel spins, allowing it to pick up speed faster than a smaller wheel. Think of a teeter-totter and how it’s easier to lift up the other side the further down the teeter-totter you sit. That’s leverage in action and is similar to what a larger wheel does when rotating your bearing.
For a regular skateboard, try going with a wheel diameter between 53mm and 55mm. This will make a noticeable difference in speed compared to smaller wheels, even if you never cleaned your bearings.
5. Get Higher Quality Bearings
Not all bearings are made the same, and if you are using cheaper bearings, you are naturally limited by the materials they’re made with. The ABEC rating system is standard for bearing speeds, and for most standard high-quality skateboard bearings, you’re looking at ABEC-5 bearings.
Now you can upgrade these to ABEC-7 or ceramic bearings that are made with different materials that can rotate faster under load compared to ABEC-5 bearings. With this rating jump comes a significant cost bump too, making it a bit unappealing for most skaters. Especially when you consider that this speed difference can quickly dissipate as a bearing gets dirty.
If you are using a random set of bearings from Amazon or have purchased a toy deck from Walmart for example, it’s likely that your bearings are low quality. Instead, you can quickly improve your wheel speed by getting something like Bones Red Bearings, one of the fastest and most affordable bearings on the market.
6. Use A Harder Wheel Durometer
The final thing to consider with wheel speed is the hardness of your wheel. Wheel durometer is the measurement of wheel hardness, and most skateboard wheels sit in the range of 98a to 101b. The higher the number, the harder the wheel and the faster it will spin.
The reason for this is because of how much resistance is against the ground. If you have ever tried to ride a bike with a flat tire, it’s a lot hard to pedal because the decompressed tire absorbs your momentum. A softer skateboard wheel has a similar effect, absorbing your momentum and requiring more force to continue forward.
So if you want to get a faster set of wheels, opt for something with a higher durometer the next time you buy wheels. A high durometer with a larger wheel diameter will make a massive difference in wheel speed regardless of which bearings you’re using. Just remember that with harder wheels comes a less smooth ride on bumpy surfaces like your standard patch of road concrete.
So with these 6 tips to make your skateboard wheels faster, you’ll notice a big difference in how fast your skateboard rolls. In many cases, just maintaining your bearings will make the most significant difference at the cheapest price. You can pick up a bottle of Bones Speed Cream for a few bucks on Amazon, and keep your wheels rolling smooth as butter all year long.
Happy Shredding!
– Brendan 🙂
