Unlike some ball sports, skateboarding gives you room to adjust your primary equipment. You can set the height of the board, manage the wheels’ rebound, or tighten and loosen skateboard trucks.
And we know that these modifications entail changes in your overall performance. Like when tightening the trucks, what we get after is a less wobbly skateboard.
Have you seen some skaters gliding at sharp angles and asked yourself, “why won’t my skateboard turn like theirs?” Read on to learn why.
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Why Your Skateboard Won’t Turn
Why is my skateboard not turning? Before we dive into solutions to stiff skateboards, we need to identify what causes the problems first. Here are some of them.
1. Tight trucks
As mentioned, rigid trucks are stable. But that does not always mean they’re the best skateboard configuration. At least for once, we’ll have to loosen them to turn on a skateboard easier.
2. Wrong positioning
One of the fundamentals of skateboarding is turning on the board. And you know that putting your feet and body stance in the wrong position is less likely to yield quality turns.
3. Old wheels
The wheels are among the primary drivers of the pivot motions. Leaning on one side of the skateboard more frequently will cause the urethane to wear out unevenly, affecting your turns. If you want to replace your skateboard wheels, don’t forget to find these guides and reviews, such as how to change skateboard wheels, the most trusted ones, and more.
How Do You Loosen a Skateboard So It Turns
If tightening the trucks is the best way to fix a skateboard that turns by itself, the ultimate solution to steer a skateboard easily is to loosen the trucks. Here’s how to do it.
- Grab a skate tool or a wrench
- Flip your skateboard with the trucks up
- Align and fit the skate tool or wrench head to the kingpin nut
- Rotate the nut counter-clockwise
- Note: minimal turns make significant changes in the truck’s tightness. So, try testing the trucks for every quarter turn you make.
What to Do to Make the Skateboard Turn
To make your skateboard turn better, we also have a few more solutions besides tightening the trucks.
1. Proper positioning
Turning on a skateboard is a simple skill requiring basic steps to execute. To turn well using your board, begin by putting your dominant foot across or perpendicular to the deck, on top of the front bolts.
Next, put your back foot mirroring your front, but on the tip of the deck instead. At this point, your feet will look like the primary position for a skateboard kick turn.
Now, you can push down on the tail and steer the front of the deck to move the board in the direction you want.
2. Changing your wheels
Wheel wear-out is inevitable. But that doesn’t give us any reason to keep old, worn-out rollers on the trucks.
Like turning on the skateboard, wheel replacement is also a fundamental skill for maintenance. In a nutshell, this is how the process goes.
- Loosen the truck axle nuts
- Pull the old wheels out
- Clean the bearings of dirt and gunk
- Install the bearings on the new wheels
- Slide the new wheels into the axles
- Lock the wheels with the axle nuts
Other Possible Ways to Help Your Skateboard Turn Better
1. Change your bushings
Replacing your wheels with a new set is already an opportunity to give the trucks a revamp. At the same time, you may also change the bushings to a softer version.
Like replacing the wheels, you only need to remember the appropriate sequence of the parts to guide you in the installation process. From the baseplate and kingpin, here’s what’s next.
- Large washer
- Large bushing
- Hanger
- Small bushing
- Small washer
2. Cleaning the wheels
The wheels make direct contact to the ground. And so, all the dirt you pass by can get on these urethane surfaces. What’s worse is they might stick and build up on your rollers.
So, try to free the wheels from gunk and dirt before skating. While cleaning them, you might as well clean and lubricate the bearings. That way, your skateboard rolls smoother and more precisely.
Conclusion
Skateboards may change in ways we don’t want. They could be the performance or overall configuration. But the good news is, these aspects are controllable. And like the wheels, relaxing or tightening the trucks have its advantages and downsides.
Now that you know that loosening your trucks is a fundamental step to better skateboard turns, you can finally answer questions like, “why won’t my skateboard turn?”
Besides this method, keep exploring other ways to expand your knowledge in these technical aspects. You can adjust other parts or even practice better skating skills.
Hi, I am Charles Harris. I opened this site to write as much as I can about my biggest passion – skateboarding!
I started as a clumsy yet passionate rookie 10 years ago to now a still passionate yet much better skateboarder! But I have to tell you, the whole journey has always been fun and rewarding, indeed not without hardship.