Well I recently built a speedboard which turned out to have some flex. Not a lot of flex, and mostly lengthwise. It's about 1/2" thick of bamboo and birch with some triaxial glass to keep the torsional flex down. The thing is it still has some lengthwise flex when I jump on it. Not a lot but enough to feel it.
So I was wondering what you guys think of flex on downhill boards? The common wisdom has always been the stiffer the better but I have some friends that swear by a bit flex for DH and refuse to ride completely stiff boards. And after trying a Rogger Bros for the first time a couple of months ago I was surprised by how much flex it had. I bottomed it out.
So this got me thinking... and I want to know what you guys think of flex? No flex at all? Is flex lengthwise okay as long as you dampen the torsional flex? I am still waiting for the glass on this board to cure to full strength and then I'll be taking it up to speed where I will decide whether I need to make a stiffer board or not...
pretty much whatever your comfortable on is what's for you. If you like flex, ride it. I personally don't like the feeling very much, but there are tons of people who ride boards with mild flex or even some rocker in their boards.
Overall, I wouldn't be too worried about it. Once you get used to it you'll probably like it.
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[swisschez] 12:35 am: time for wall-e
[swisschez] 12:35 am: fvck ya
[Bottom Of The Hill]: swisschez has left at 12:35 am
After riding a 09 hellcat (stiffest board I've ever felt), I'm of the mindset the stiffer the better. Ideally no flex at all. It makes for much more acurate road-feel feedback so you can better guess what you can get away with. Also flex from the board will translate to steering input - that's unwanted steering input, input that's out of your control.
Think of race car frames. Race cars want their frame to be as stiff as possible while retaining as much lightness as possible. Hence race cars using tubular frames or exotic honeycom alluminum designs and on some of the much more expensive exotic cars going all out using full carbon fiber frames like the F1 McClaren. You want your suspension doing the damping not your frame! Same goes for our boards except the suspension is our legs. Your legs already have enough work to do by damping the lumps and bumps of the road, you don't want to add another element on top of that were your legs now also have to dampen the flopping motion of the board. Again for DH efficency, stiffer the better. All of this translates to greater predictability and overall stability. That's my 2 cents coming from a car enthusaist point of view.
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Working on my next mountain dew commercial with this hill.
After riding a 09 hellcat (stiffest board I've ever felt), I'm of the mindset the stiffer the better. Ideally no flex at all. It makes for much more acurate road-feel feedback so you can better guess what you can get away with. Also flex from the board will translate to steering input - that's unwanted steering input, input that's out of your control.
Think of race car frames. Race cars want their frame to be as stiff as possible while retaining as much lightness as possible. Hence race cars using tubular frames or exotic honeycom alluminum designs and on some of the much more expensive exotic cars going all out using full carbon fiber frames like the F1 McClaren. You want your suspension doing the damping not your frame! Same goes for our boards except the suspension is our legs. Your legs already have enough work to do by damping the lumps and bumps of the road, you don't want to add another element on top of that were your legs now also have to dampen the flopping motion of the board. Again for DH efficency, stiffer the better. All of this translates to greater predictability and overall stability. That's my 2 cents coming from a car enthusaist point of view.
with you logic, our bodies are frames..
Like wooden said, in my experience some dampening flex is good, but torsional is bad, it can cause weird turning/drifitng with tight busings. IF your worried about a bumpy ride, use shock pads or get some smoother roads..
and to the OP, you bottomed out a rbros?? if you bottom out an rbros theres no going back...unless its a asym
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Crew England
[ton] 10:48 pm: goddamnit derv you need to hurry up and choke on your own semen
a lot of boards have rocker.. comet..deity..never summer.. all use rocker in their decks. i'm not sure how much "flex" my deity actually has. but its got 3/4in rocker (don't quote me on that) and i can flex it a tad by jumping on it. but there is this guy i met at an outlaw who was DHing a never summer heist. it was a super fast hill 40-45mph.. he was on stock paris's and a heist.. its really whatever you feel comfortable on. don't sweat it if you have a little flex. if you like it. do work
After riding a 09 hellcat (stiffest board I've ever felt), I'm of the mindset the stiffer the better. Ideally no flex at all. It makes for much more acurate road-feel feedback so you can better guess what you can get away with. Also flex from the board will translate to steering input - that's unwanted steering input, input that's out of your control.
Think of race car frames. Race cars want their frame to be as stiff as possible while retaining as much lightness as possible. Hence race cars using tubular frames or exotic honeycom alluminum designs and on some of the much more expensive exotic cars going all out using full carbon fiber frames like the F1 McClaren. You want your suspension doing the damping not your frame! Same goes for our boards except the suspension is our legs. Your legs already have enough work to do by damping the lumps and bumps of the road, you don't want to add another element on top of that were your legs now also have to dampen the flopping motion of the board. Again for DH efficency, stiffer the better. All of this translates to greater predictability and overall stability. That's my 2 cents coming from a car enthusaist point of view.
thats an excellent post and an excellent comparison... I build boards for a lot of guys who want 'em dead stiff. But, most of the time I prefer a slight bit of dampening myself. Does anyone remember the Wefunk concept of "programed flex"?
On chattery new england roads sometimes that "feedback" you mentioned becomes not only a distraction but, a real issue. That a slight bit of dampening can help you relax and glide through it.... just my two cents...
thats an excellent post and an excellent comparison... I build boards for a lot of guys who want 'em dead stiff. But, most of the time I prefer a slight bit of dampening myself. Does anyone remember the Wefunk concept of "programed flex"?
On chattery new england roads sometimes that "feedback" you mentioned becomes not only a distraction but, a real issue. That a slight bit of dampening can help you relax and glide through it.... just my two cents...
True. The feedback can be hard to handle, especially if the road is really tore up or gritty. It's just like how many experienced riders on the fish that say precision trucks can actually make you ride worse if you're not ready for it. Being that it has virtually no slop and translates every single little bump as it articulates the surface of the road though it's unforgiving spherical bearings - this can cause some ppl to feel *very* uneasy and may even create a speed wobble situation they never had. But for those that have spent considerable time in a race car or a passenger car prepped for competitive racing (any American Iron enthusiast here?), it's no walk in the park! Usually the ride is so damn stiff, the car is going to be beating the hell out of your kidneys leaving you wondering if you're going to be peeing blood tonight.
Regardless i'd still prefer there be no flex from my board if i can help it when riding down hills at your limit. If i want any other damping help, I'll take the absorption of my softer urethane wheels, the bushings and perhaps a padded riser or something if the road is really tore up like in the scenario you mentioned. A flexible board is the equivalent of a leaf spring and requires you, the rider, to dampen the otherwise out of control movement. Just in princible it doesn't sound like something desireable. Now trail riding, pumping, carving and/or general fun factor that comes from such a thing (ie. vanguard/dervish) that's a whole different story.
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Working on my next mountain dew commercial with this hill.
Like wooden said, in my experience some dampening flex is good, but torsional is bad, it can cause weird turning/drifitng with tight busings. IF your worried about a bumpy ride, use shock pads or get some smoother roads..
and to the OP, you bottomed out a rbros?? if you bottom out an rbros theres no going back...unless its a asym
i agree with the shock pads.
Our bodies, er the upper torso, i'd say is sprung mass within the carriage of a car, while our legs is the suspension components, the unsprung mass. Envision alpine slalom skier and notice how much their knees are bouncing up and down. Our leaning back and forward, left and right is moving that sprung mass to our advantage to help turn.
I know the car analogy doesn't compare perfectly but I feel it helps me work out the physics of what's necessary but I do like other ppl's perspective cuz I'm no expert, i'll be the first to admit and someone may help me see at another angle i missed.
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Working on my next mountain dew commercial with this hill.
After riding a 09 hellcat (stiffest board I've ever felt), I'm of the mindset the stiffer the better. Ideally no flex at all. It makes for much more acurate road-feel feedback so you can better guess what you can get away with. Also flex from the board will translate to steering input - that's unwanted steering input, input that's out of your control.
Think of race car frames. Race cars want their frame to be as stiff as possible while retaining as much lightness as possible. Hence race cars using tubular frames or exotic honeycom alluminum designs and on some of the much more expensive exotic cars going all out using full carbon fiber frames like the F1 McClaren. You want your suspension doing the damping not your frame! Same goes for our boards except the suspension is our legs. Your legs already have enough work to do by damping the lumps and bumps of the road, you don't want to add another element on top of that were your legs now also have to dampen the flopping motion of the board. Again for DH efficency, stiffer the better. All of this translates to greater predictability and overall stability. That's my 2 cents coming from a car enthusaist point of view.
IMO this is wrong...car frames are rigid ok, but the susp in a car link the frame to the wheels, but thats not what your body does in skateboarding. And on a skateboard, you stil dont have this kind of system.
The susp in a car maximizes the contact between road and the wheels. On a skateboard, you are acting like if u were a sencond suspension, but where the main one doesnt work, since trucks only act like a steering device (at the moment).
Remember that an efficient racing car is not a rigid one...
but thats not what your body does in skateboarding...
...The susp in a car maximizes the contact between road and the wheels...
How is your body *not* the suspension?
Take turning out of the equation for a moment. If the skateboard is fixed without any suspension, your body is the only thing really absorbing the bumps where the skateboard as a whole is like one giant tire (the wheels are close together, it might as well be). If you were to ghost ride a skateboard down a hill, as soon as it hit one sharp bump, it would likely just get knocked up in to the air and off course. Your body is the only thing that pins the board back on to the ground like what a spring and strut would do in a car. And it's within our ability to act as a dynamic system of suspension that compensates for the HORRIBLE steering design of skateboards. I mean just by nature, skateboards suffer from the worst possible case of "bump steer" possible.
Anyways back to the point of this whole thread, maybe we should re-phrase the question for those who believe some flex is better...
How does flex provide an advantage over a rigid board in DH? Try and answer in layman's terms please, I don't want to turn this in to a Corner-carver's forum and give ppl massive headaches.
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Working on my next mountain dew commercial with this hill.
How does flex provide an advantage over a rigid board in DH? Try and answer in layman's terms please, I don't want to turn this in to a Corner-carver's forum and give ppl massive headaches.
simple, it helps your body absorb the shock
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Crew England
[ton] 10:48 pm: goddamnit derv you need to hurry up and choke on your own semen
So this makes for a more ... comfortable plush ride?... and at the cost of precision. If you were to see the board flexing motion is super slow motion you'd see it the board continuously bounce up and down with smaller and smaller frequencies long after you've passed the bump. And before the board is settled, you've hit the next bump adding more of this movement and so fourth. So the whole way down the hill the board is bouncing up and down and never fully recovering. Even worse as your board bounces up and down, it's changing the angles of your trucks like: wedge, dewedge, wedge, dewedge. Now of course it's not dramatic like a dervish or anything but you can see 'just in principle' it seems counter productive and only takes away precision and predictability.
So besides making the ride softer (more caddy like), how would a flexible board *help*?
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Working on my next mountain dew commercial with this hill.
How does flex provide an advantage over a rigid board in DH? Try and answer in layman's terms please, I don't want to turn this in to a Corner-carver's forum and give ppl massive headaches.
A slight amount of flex will absorb a fair amount of the road vibrations caused by imperfect pavement. Hardly any roads are blacktop or have been repaved within the last year here in the Pacific Northwest, and having a dampening flex to absorb the imperfections and the occasional pebble makes the rider have to compensate for these problems less. Less compensation, more concentration.
Quote:
Originally Posted by WTF
So this makes for a more ... comfortable plush ride?... and at the cost of precision. If you were to see the board flexing motion is super slow motion you'd see it the board continuously bounce up and down with smaller and smaller frequencies long after you've passed the bump. And before the board is settled, you've hit the next bump adding more of this movement and so fourth. So the whole way down the hill the board is bouncing up and down and never fully recovering. Even worse as your board bounces up and down, it's changing the angles of your trucks like: wedge, dewedge, wedge, dewedge. Now of course it's not dramatic like a dervish or anything but you can see 'just in principle' it seems counter productive and only takes away precision and predictability.
So besides making the ride softer (more caddy like), how would a flexible board *help*?
You're not always looking for precision in your setup. When I'm bombing on my Randals I'm not expecting to feel every little nick in the road, every tiny crack. I know Randals are far from precise, but what gives? I'm just as stable on a set of Randals as I was on my Smokies, which is one of the reasons I sold them. I liked how they felt, but on crappy roads it was all I could do to keep my feet from going numb. Randals and other cast/non-precision trucks don't translate every imperfection from the road to you like sphericaled precisions.
It's all personal preference. If you want to feel every little crack in the road, go ahead, get yourself a set of Smokies and the stiffest deck you can find. If you'd like your board to absorb some of the vibrations so you don't have to, get trucks without sphericals, a deck with some dampening flex, and some shock pads.
Flex on Downhill Boards
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