Evolve Stoke with 97mm Wheels

After 10 months of trying out Evolve Stoke electric skateboard, I decided to make some tweaks and changes on it.

Particularly, I wanted to try and put bigger wheels and new and better bushings. I wasn’t sure about the bushings, the originals are also good, but after 10 months I needed to change so I wanted to try something new and different than original.

Other than that, I wanted to add more grip to the board because on foot positions the original grip wear itself out during the last 10 months and about 2000km that I did with the board.

Links below are mostly to evolveskateboards.de as I am in Europe and they are the dealer around gere. Same stuff can be purchased everywhere in the world by going to local dealer site.

Bigger Wheels

For the bigger wheels, I decided to go from default Orangatang Caguama 85mm 77a blue wheels to Evolve GT 97 mm wheels with stone-ground finish for better drifting.

I wanted to try bigger wheels and those 97mm were half price than new coloured GTR 97mm wheels and additionally they are praised for the drifting that can be done with them.

I tried it out and they are great. I didn’t try the new 97mm ones but this ones are really fun and a bit drifty. On the other side, bigger wheels give you a safer feeling while riding the streets that are not clean at those here are.

Bearings

Evolve Ceramic Bearings are great, I didn’t even need to change them with new ones when changing the wheels. Even after 10 months and 2000km of street skating they are still as good as new.

Regardless of that, I bought another pair of those so I don’t need to take them out of the wheels when I decide to try orange caguamas.

So the plan is to use new ones for 97mm and old ones cleaned with Bones bearing cleaning unit and lubed with Bones speed cream for bearings will go to new caguamas.

Drive gear options

When changing from Caguama wheels, the drive gear needs to be replaced from Evolve drive gear 32T for Oranagatang Kegel and Caguama wheels to Evolve drive gear 32T for GT/GTX/GTR/ ABEC 11 so this was the way to go and I did change the gear. By making this change you are getting the possibility to use bigger 97mm wheels and keep the current belts.

Having the wheels with bigger radius will then make your board reach higher top speed. On the Stoke it will increase from 32km/h to 37km/h but you will loose about 20% torque (acceleration power) and about 20% or range which will be consumed by the motors trying to get you going with bigger wheels.

Option 2

Option two is to get Evolve drive gear 38T for Evolve/ ABEC 11 wheels which has more teeth which means bigger drive gear radius. This bigger radius means you will also need to change your belt from original GT-003 Evolve Belt GTR/GTX/GT/Stoke Street belt to GT-004 Evolve Belt GTR/GTX/GT street 38T belt.

You need to order two drive gears and two belts, of course, if you want to be able to make the change, or if available, buy all those parts as a 38T drive gear kit if available Drive Gear GT/ GTR 38T- Kit.

It’s about performance. With bigger drive gear radius (38T vs 32T) you will get more torque (better acceleration) but slower top speed.

You can take a look here for the top speed vs drive gear vs wheel size info.

Bushings

I changed the bushings. I went from Evolve default original ones to the best ones, California based Riptidesports specifically selected and crafted Dual Kingpin Board Bushings in a Box set.

I didn’t know what to expect but those are great. It is really interesting how those make a difference in even better and smother carving.

Lucid Grip

I contacted Evolve to ask if Original Lucid Grip – Clear Spray on Grip Tape is the thing that comes as grip spray originally on the Evolve Stoke. It is not but it’s similar stuff.

The only issue is that they told me medium Lucid Grip is the closest thing to original stuff on the Evolve Stoke board. As from what I see, it is not and you should probably go with Heavy option to get those bigger stones grip that is on when Stoke is new.

I used the stuff I bought Original Lucid Grip – Clear Spray on Grip Tape – Medium and it worked out just fine too.