Easy streets 99a

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Comments

  • 90a Rat Bones for Life!
  • @ovaldragon You love your Rat Bones dude. I see you mention them a lot. What kind of setup do you normally run them on? I have a blue set on my Lance Mountain Future Primitive. They're killer. But I can't see running them on much else?
  • Hoo boy. 97A OJ wheels are really really really hard. I couldn't get down with those. Like SPF's on steroids.
  • Anyone want to test out some new improved Ditch Tech Formula wheels? We have been working on a new middle ground hardness (93 - 95a) and I have a few sets of 54 and 56mm in the new V6 Wide-Cut shape that i would love tested out. First come first served. Hit me up at rob@boneswheels.com. Best if you rode and loved the old Ditch Tech Formula.
  • u gotta email him
  • Kams sending me some baseplates already
    so maybe I'm in to win
  • lol might just be ur lucky week
  • edited October 2019
    yeah!
  • I'm really enjoying these new Ditch Tech Formula wheels. These make me far happier than Easy Streets.
    Looking forward to them going on sale... I'll buy a couple sets right away!
  • Tell us more, slack
  • Currently shredding the bones 99a easy streets 54mm V5. Great all around wheel that will work on rough streets and smooth parks.
  • I got to test ride the prototype DTF's. Here's the write-up I did for Rob after a few weeks. Warning - LONG read.

    Hey Rob,

    I never got to skate the actual gnarly concrete drainage ditch, but I don't know when I will because it needs to be cleaned up badly. I only skated it once, with spitfire f4 99's, and in the confined space it was really hard to get speed. I only mention it because after skating these wheels in some other places, I bet they'd have performed beautifully. I'll tell you where I did skate and the SPEED, GRIP, SLIDE, FEEL and WEAR.

    1. The street (the real street)

    SPEED: I cannot commute around my town with regular street wheels (99a and harder) because I will rattle to a stop. I actually lose speed going downhill half the time. Getting from one place to another means constantly working against this, so there's way more pushing than gliding. New asphalt is the exception and all the spots are rough asphalt or pavement. Skating the harder wheels is just too unpleasant and difficult for me to want to do it much, and the ML 90a's were much faster but would deform a bit when sticking something hard. I thought that with craggy streets there was no good compromise, but these wheels are. They were faster everywhere on the street than any of hard wheels AND the 90a Mini Logos of about the same size. I measured this using an inertia test. I would start at the top of a stretch and just roll, and then see how far I went up the opposite uphill side. The DTF's definitely felt faster, took me way further up the other side than the Bones STFs I have on another board, and also further than the 90a ML's (though not as far). They are fast and I would pick these over any other wheel for "real" street skating because nothing is faster. The only thing that would probably beat them downhill are my large 85a Bombers on my big cruiser board, and I don't have the guts to go that fast these days anyway.

    GRIP: Grip is awesome. I have slid out hanging hard turns on harder wheels before, and these stuck. I could feel that they were sticking (more on that below) and so I was able to lean into turns harder while going faster with much greater confidence. I never lost it and they never squirreled out from under me. I have a small quarter pipe surfaced with masonite and these definitely gripped better than my hard wheels.

    SLIDE: I'm not a slidey skater. For power slides could make my back wheels break loose on asphalt but not on smooth concrete. To me this is good, because I've slid out and eaten shit on hard turns before. I'm sure others could get real slides out of them. They still slid well enough for me to scoot into the direction I wanted to be going when I landed 180's and I could still do 180 slides.

    FEEL: This is where I feel like I sound like I'm overselling these. These wheels feel great. They stick and stay smooth like a softer wheel on rougher terrain, but they don't deform when landing tricks (or maybe I just don't land that hard...I weigh 150 lbs and am not that aggressive). I've had 97a wheels that felt A LOT harder than these and rode like rocks, but big cruiser 85a Bombers and the 90a Mini Logos sacrifice some trick performance for their ride. This is the most ideal "real street" wheel I've ever encountered. These are staying on my street board and I'll never put hard wheels back on it except for the park.

    WEAR: Honestly, no wear to speak of. I could see a little streaking in them when I did slides, but these were never flat spots. I expect this from Bones wheels, though.

    2. The park (a pretty smooth park)

    SPEED: This is where this wheel surprised me the most. They were REALLY NOT SLOW AT ALL. Was it slower than my 84b SPF's? Yeah, but the difference was not enough to put me off. I pretty much only skate 84b SPF's at the park, especially in the bowls, but...

    GRIP: ...the trade-off in grip in the bowl was WAY positive. I could tell pumping down transitions that I was on a slower wheel, but after a little initial adjustment I skated them without issue. They didn't feel "sticky" like 90a or 85a wheels do. In a big smooth bowl those things can feel like rolling on glue traps. These were still fast and I didn't spend any time at all at the park wishing I had my harder wheels. The funny part is that I actually WENT HIGHER with more confidence in the bowl because of the additional grip. I slashed the highest parts of the bowls in these that I've yet to even touch with my SPF's despite feeling like I wasn't going quite as fast. I'm still kind of coming to terms with this and comparing; would I rather have a pair of these in the bowl than my SPF's?

    SLIDE: Never really got these to break into a powerslide at the park, but that's really not my bag. They slid just fine on the coping. Feebles and little "scoots" in the concrete mini ramp were just as easy as with hard wheels.

    FEEL: They are not quite as fast, but they don't feel like a squishy or sticky wheel at the park. If I were one who skates to the park to skate the park, it'd be these wheels all the way.

    WEAR: Again, nothing noticeable. I only skated maybe four sessions with them, but I would expect these to last as long as other Bones wheels.

    Overall...I'd say 9.5 out of 10. it's hard not to give these a 10 because they're not optimal for everything, but they are the most optimal across all categories. Before these wheels there was really no street wheel that I'd take to most of the spots in my town, or that I would commute with. These wheels are IT for that. For parks I'll still use my SPF's, but since I was climbing higher on these I'm gonna continue to skate these there too.

    I never skated the old Ditchtech Formula wheels, but given how versatile these wheels are I'd say that's a bit of a misnomer. This is really a great general street wheel that can still be used at the park. But again, I'm a little guy. A bigger person and/or someone doing big stuff and sticking it hard might not be as enamored as I am with them for street use.

    I am gonna clean out the growth and trash and try to skate that ditch eventually.
  • Good shit!
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