About 2 weeks ago I was out on our beach with my Leap skates. It was an awsome ride, but I kept getting bogged down & had to pump my kite back & forth tons just to get minimal movement whenever I hit soft sand. This led me to building a new set of wheels for those long soft sand rides. I found 13 inch hand truck wheels that are 4 inches wide on ebay (toolamerica is the seller for anyone interested). They were only $36 for a set of four - score!! They arrived yesterday, so off to building I went. Finished them last night & tried them out today, they definitely move much better in the soft sand. They don't edge as well as the Leaps do, & the extra weight makes it much harder to launch in the air (a light wind day may have had something to do with the second part - at least a little). They sure were fun though. The bearings that came with the wheels are completely worthless. They seized up after the first session, so I'm ordering some real bearings. I'm sure a therell be lots of other minor adjustments here & there but overall I think they'll do the trick. I opted for a single rail, with downhill ski boots instead of rollerblade boots, so they're a real simple build. Here's some photos:

I just posted some footage from my first run on these on Youtube, says it's still processing, so it might take a bit to show up. The wind was somewhat light, so I couldn't launch myself as high as I've done in the past, but I did get a few good hops in nonetheless. The weight of these sure makes it a lot more work to get off the ground though.
Here's the vid:

Cool! I was looking at the Leap skates etc the other day too ... gonna be real tough trying to decide on skates - might be easier to make some :D

super cool, those are TRUE all terrrain I need those wheels on my ATB.


10"or 12"?

Ride On

Awesome! Bigger is better!
Nice job on the single rail.

PHREERIDER - they're 13". they're 4" wide as well. Would work great on an ATB I imagine.

how did you mount the boot to the plate

so far all of the downhill boots I've aquired have a plastic insert inside the boot on the bottom. They're usally ribbed, with enough clearance for a bolt head (that's how I bolted my last set to my Leapskates). This particular set of boots also has 2 plastic pieces on the bottom of the boot that are screwed on with 4 screws. I took those off, drilled some holes, put 4 bolts sticking out & screwed them back on. Then I just cut a 4x4 piece of angle iron to the desired size & mounted the whole thing to the rail. I'll take some closeups of the mount next time I have the skates & a camera in hand & post them here. I think I'm also going to replace the steel rail with an aluminum one to see if I can reduce some of the weight. I just bought the aluminum, which is 1x1/2 & seems stout enough to hold up. The steel rail that's on these is 1x3/8, so the aluminum will be slightly thicker, but substantially lighter. When I go to redo them I'll take the boots apart & take some snapshots. I've yet to come across a pair of downhill boots that don't have space somewhere on the bottom for putting bolts through....

I just finished the mods on these, so as promised here's some photos. I replaced the steel rails with slightly thicker aluminum & the difference in weight is very noticable - much lighter. I nixed the cheap bearings & got some decent sealed bearings in their place, hopefully these will last. I also cut all excess steel off the angle iron, which lightened the load a little bit. The other major mod was to use a tap & die set to put thread into the mounting points for the axle bolt. It feels much sturdier now.
Anyways, heres a few pics of the boots & the way I mounted them to the angle iron:






And some pics of the new final rig:




Can't wait to take 'em out again - maybe Friday if the wind is blowing. Will post more footage to youtube as I aquire it & post links...