Power Kite Forum

doom wheels breaking

saskalex - 23-7-2007 at 05:45 PM

I want to borrow a pair of roller hockey skates from a friend (I think they are ideal, and they are at my house and he no longer lives in the city) to make a pair of doom wheels with. I was just wondering if anyone's had or heard of the tracks breaking on the rollerblades as a result of kite skating. These are very high quality and have metal tracks, so I think they should be fine, but they would be expensive if I had to replace them.

And another question. What do you think of using ready-rod (long threaded rod that you cut to length) instead of bolts to mount the rails to the skate tracks? This way you wouldn't need spacers because you coud put nuts around everything to hold it in place. With the skates in question I'd have to use 1/4" ready rod, and I'm just worried that it might not be strong enough.
Thanks, Alex

Cornel - 26-7-2007 at 07:16 AM

On my doom wheels I used 8mm bolts with spacers and works well. Your 1/4 is 6.35mm so if you are not that heavy it may work since you spread the load on 4 rods (4 if your boot has 4 wheels)
Another think to consider is the place you ride and how aggressive.
If you ride on a really bumpy field or you will do a lot of jumps with hard landing I would beef-up the rods since the shock loads will be high.

Cornel - 26-7-2007 at 07:18 AM

Here is my set-up

Boot mounted to rails_2_Copy.JPG - 54kB

Cornel - 26-7-2007 at 07:21 AM

Another one

Boot attachment.JPG - 186kB

flyhigh142 - 26-7-2007 at 11:55 AM

It seems to me adjusting all those nuts would be a real pain. I started to use a chop saw to cut the tubing to length, but after nearly being hit with a flying piece of it, grabbed a tubing cutter and was able to do just what I wanted very quickly. Good luck! If for any reason yours don't work out, I'll sell you mine for $100. Size 12

saskalex - 27-7-2007 at 07:49 AM

What kind of tubing did you use flyhigh? And thanks Cornel, I'll probably stick with 1/4" bolts to test it out, and if I like the whole kite skating thing I'll pay my friend for the skates and drill some bigger holes in them.