Can You Use Skateboard Wheels in Roller Skates?

This post was is re-composed, with permission, from a facebook post by a knowledgeable and trusted friend. Text and images are largely her own, but may have been edited for clarity when changing from facebook to blog format. Original post can be found here

Can You Put Skateboard (or Longboard) Wheels on Roller Skates?

If you have regular roller skate trucks, this will depend on the core placement. Skateboard wheels come in 3 different core placement types:

• Centerset
• Offset
• Sideset

You can use skateboard (and longboard) wheels on quads if their cores are sideset. If they're not, it might still work if your axles are long enough or - mostly with longboard wheels - if you cut the insides down on a lathe to make them side-set. Otherwise, it may only work for something like Penny or Ridge trucks, since they are actually skateboard trucks and therefore their axles are long enough to use with any skateboard wheels.

For example, my new skateboard wheels fit my Playmaker plates fine, but with other plates, it might be a problem that:

• They're wider in the centre - most skate- and longboard wheels take 10 mm spacers between the bearings, whereas most quad wheels take 8 mm ones. That might mean that the nyloc part of your axle nuts won’t be able to do its job. Solution: Astro/ Zero, or whatever nuts that are all nylon
• They're centerset , so have more urethane on the inside that might rub against your trucks. Solution: washers - if your axles are long enough all in all. Stacey Skates shows this in her Fundae review video, part one.

Neither the Fundaes nor the Moxi Trick wheels are properly side-set, btw., which is very unusual for roller-skate wheels.

How Can I Tell If Skateboard Wheels Will Fit My Roller Skates?

You can actually calculate (& measure your trucks) to know in advance if a skateboard wheel will fit on your regular roller skate trucks, if you know the width of the skateboard wheel. If you use the simple formula of (wheel width - 24 mm) / 2 (The width of your wheel, minus 24mm, and all of that divided by 2), that gives you the clearance you need between inner bearing and where a wheel could rub on the truck.

Which Skateboard Wheels Will Fit My Roller Skates?

The following is a list of skateboard wheels which are known to be compatible with roller skate trucks: (It will be added to as time goes on)

• Mini Logo 58 mm A-cut (Sure-Grip trucks)
• Generic 58 mm x 34mm wheels (Sure Grip Probe, Powerdyne Thrust)
• 56mm Orbs Apparition Splits (with 1 washer on each axle for Roll Line, without washers for Sure Grip DA45 Invaders*)

* The Sure-Grip axles are a bit short, of course, so the nyloc on the nuts doesn't catch, but that's a problem you'd have with Luminous or the like as well. Can be solved my using Astro/ Zero/whatever nylon nuts or using spacers, cranking the nuts down & checking regularly.