How to maintain your skateboard?

In a skateboard most of the parts are bound to wear off or get damaged after going through severe torture and beatings. Following are few parts which can be maintained to increase lifespan of a board to some extent.

Bearings:
- At least once a week wipe of the dirt with a cloth which sets on top of the bearing shield. This will definitely help in durability and avoid dust from settling on the bearing which will eventually lead to rusting of bearings. To do this remove the axle nut from the truck, pop out the wheel from the axle and clean the bearings shield using a cloth.
- If bearings are not moving or if you feel something is obstructing inside, follow this brilliant tutorial uploaded by 'Rat Vision'. In place of citrus cleaner you can use Mr muscle (comes in orange color spray can), and put no more then 2 drops of sewing oil once the bearings are cleaned. Also do read our article on 'Everything you need to know about your skate bearings' for more in depth details.

Decks:
- First thing is do not tighten your hardware super tight, keep slight room for the  deck to adjust itself while sucking in the impacts. If they are tightened too tight it'll start developing pressure cracks. You can also use a rubber riser pad to avoid pressure. Note: Riser pad will increase your ride height and change the whole geometry of skating but will also act kind of a suspension and increase the life of your deck.
- Some skaters use rail guards to protect their boards, I(Vaibhav) personally have never tried this out on my board. But logically it should help your deck from breaking into two halves. Board slides might feel a bit different when you install rail guards on it. I have seen rail guards used by most of the transition skaters as they are constantly doing  Boardslides, Rock to Fakie, Disasters on the coping. This rail definitely will boost the strength of the deck to resist the beatings of the above tricks.
-Try to land on bolts whenever possible, we all know this is easier said than done, but yeah this does increase boards life.
-Do not stop your board by scrapping the tail of your deck by removing wheelie/manual kind off a thing. This will destroy the tail of your board and it'll loose pop eventually.

Griptape:
- First thing is try to keep it away from sticky mud and dirt. It's a real pain to clean the sticky mud. To clean the dirt I have found few tools which can help in cleaning the grip to some extent.
Metal wire brush: This brush is easily available in hardware store and costs around Rs30. This helps in removing the sticky dirt stuck in the griptape. Use the metal brush with the board facing upside down so that all the dirt when you rub the metal brush falls on the ground. Once this step is done, move to the pen eraser.

Pen/ink Eraser: This eraser is a bit harder than normal eraser hence it works better than the normal ones. This will help give a bit better finish once metal brush job is done.

Note : After lot of usage the grit of the griptape starts coming off, unfortunately you cannot fix this. It's time to get a new grip if that's the case.

Author - Vaibhav

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