How To Keep The Longboard Clean To Let It Serve You For More Years
Longboards have prolonged existence and long shelf life as the name depicts. Due to the fact that longboards were manufactured with a purpose of cruising and not for tricking, you can maintain them and keep them from getting botched. With few cleaning efforts and maintenance, your longboards will serve you for years. The longer you keep riding, the more it will serve you and the less you will have to keep it enact.
how to clean a longboard
To keep the longboard or skateboard working perfect, little maintenance every few days is good. And bearings play a major role in keeping the longboard fine. If you are a lover of riding in rainy season or have gone through some puddles, then you must regrease the bearings to stop them from gathering rust. I have seen many people keeping an old bearing set for riding and sliding in rain as it will save your new bearings from rusting that you just got. Let’s get to know how to keep the longboard bearings clean:
Take the Bearings Out
To take the bearing out, simply take the nut off and slide the wheel. It will bring the innermost bearing to the edge of the axle from where you can take it out. Just use the motion that you use to open a bottle and force the bearing out of the wheel. This way you can remove the bearings from the wheel. Use the same process for every bearing.
Take out the Bearing Shield
Now you have to get inside the cartridges and this is done once when you have taken the bearings out. Mostly the bearings have only one shield and I hope you are lucky enough in that case. Then you have to get the shield out to get your hands in the cage and balls. Getting inside the cartridge with a rubber shielded bearing is easy as you just need to get one shield off with a screwdriver and you are done. Metal shielded bearings are equipped with a “C” clip that needs to be taken off.
While getting the rubber shield off, you may get it damaged but that’s fine. Some bearings give the possibility to remove the cage and balls for individual cleaning also. So it depends upon the bearings your longboard have.
Cleaning
Now grease the bearing races by using methylated spirit. Or you can simply soak them in alcohol or some sort of solvent. Or if there is some spray available to use as a de-greaser, use it to bring all the crap out of the bearings. And if you have nothing, go for lemon juice. It is a great cleaning tool though. Whatever method you choose for cleaning, soak the bearings for 2 minutes at least or put them in a jar and then shake it for 2 minutes. Lastly, rinse them with a clean solvent.
Re-grease
Now you need to dry the bearings. Hair dryers are a good choice here. After drying, use some oil or grease to lubricate the bearings but don’t go crazy with the lubrication. Bearings don’t need much of it. Try lubing the bearings thinly so get faster spin. Oil is supposed to keep the bearings fast but if any crap gets inside then it will be a mess. Plus, while spinning the board, oil gets out speedily that leaves the bearings without any lubrication and they overheat and get melted. So it is not so cool idea to use oil. All you can do is clean the bearings from time to time to keep them intact and working all fine.
Other than oil, we have medium grease i.e. white lithium stuff which can be bought from any bike shop easily. Using white lithium makes the bearings resistant to crap and serve you for longer time than ever. And if you are a rain lover, then this is a perfect option of course. The downside of this grease is that the wheels spin slower.
So I would suggest using light grease for better and proper results. Re-grease with a good lubricant indeed.
Done
Now hit the streets because you are done with the cleaning. But before that, screw the bearings back properly so that they don’t come out while spinning.
Okay guys, this was all about cleaning the bearings that are quite an essential part to keep the boards maintained. Now if you are thinking of how to clean the longboard deck, you must read further because this is a valuable part to know. You might be using your longboard since long but never felt the need to clean the deck. Let me tell you that the board deck is an important thing to offer prolonged life and keep it looking good and clean always. And to your surprise, it doesn’t take much time to clean the deck as well as not much of the cleaning gears are required. Let’s dig deep in the topic of cleaning the board deck perfectly:
- Get some soapy water and dip a nylon brush in it. Now remove the trucks using a screwdriver. Get hold of brush and rub it over the deck in tight circles. Do this for the entire deck.
- Take a bucket of water and dip the sponge in it to rinse the soap off the deck. Rub the sponge to clean the soap and check if it gets washed off completely. If you find any soap, repeat the process.
- Now put water on it to clean the deck properly. Wipe the underside of the board using the sponge and make sure that soap doesn’t get in the trucks area. Clean the underside area gently due to the trucks.
- Now, turn the deck over and let it rest for few hours. It will be all clean once dried off. Use a towel to clean the underside and install the trucks back.
To conclude, I would like to say that these methods are quite useful to clean the board. So try them once and get a new looking longboard for sliding or cruising.
