Bushings play an integral roll in the way your ride feels and performs, so it is important to know what bushings will work best for your ride. Number one thing to keep in mind is that your bushing setup depends greatly on the rider.
The best thing you can do is familiarize yourself with the bushings out there on the market and learn what they have to offer. What this guide will do is help those who need some guidance when looking for that ideal setup for their riding needs.
When searching for the right bushing you want to look at three things; Riding style, Shape, and durometer. Here is the breakdown.
Bushing Shape:
Bushings come in several shapes and sizes.Barrels, Cones, and stepped.Barrels are the most common setup on almost all stock set ups. The barrel bushing is a good balance between stability and turn. Barrels often offer enough turn for some fast freeride, and will hold a straight line for downhill.
Cones are designed to give you a full range of motion. Cones provide you with a lot of room to lean but end up being less stable compared to other bushings. Cones excel when carving. You will often find a lot riders using a combination of barrel and cones for there freeride setups because it provides stability and turn.
Stepped Bushings help fill the bushing seat of your truck which eliminates any play that you may have in your trucks. A stepped bushing provides the most stability when riding and is most commonly found in downhill applications. Stepped bushings come in many different shapes including stepped cones, and barrels.
Durometer:
The durometer of a bushing dictates how hard or soft a bushing is. The duro will determine how much lean you will get in your setup. When deciding on the duro of a bushing you want to keep two things in mind. Your riding style and weight. If you are looking to do solely downhill then you would want a harder duro to provide you more stability where as a softer bushing would fit freeride applications better. Your weight will also help in deciding on a duro, the lighter you are, the softer the bushing and vice versa.
Riding Styles:
Your riding style as mentioned before will influence the bushings you will be using. To make it easier we have provided a few examples of setups that we know work pretty well for these applications.
- Carving/Freeride
For carving we recommend a soft cone/barrel set up. The cone will give the free range of motion for when you want to really lean into those carves while the barrel will help return you to the center position and provide that stability when going downhill.
Fast freeride, we recommend a cone/barrel set up with a harder barrel bushing. This will provide you with that extra bit of stability when gaining speed downhill and the cone will allow you to easily push into a slide at higher speeds.
You could also do a softer barrel road side/harder barrel board side for a bit more stability.
- Downhill
Downhill demands that extra bit of stability in comparison to freeride. If all you want to be doing is downhill, then we recommend a stepped bushing on the board side. This will fill in the space in the hanger and provide you with the best stability rather than just having two barrel bushings.
In the end, bushings are all about the rider. These are guidelines to help you decide on a setup that will best suite your needs as a rider. The best thing to do is to try and experiment with new combinations.