Thread: Creating an air trek.. need your opinions

Ok i've been playing competitive roller hockey for 10 years now and have started coaching a college team so I know quite a bit about skates.

The first thing I have to ask you is what you plan on doing with the skates and what your skating ability is? If you just want a skate to look like an AT then i guess thats fine, but honestly a two wheel set up isn't the optimal set up for anything.

With only two wheels your contact area to the ground is very minimal so anything that you need grip for your going to suffer in, due to the 50% less grip that you posses. And you need grip to turn, hockey stop, hard cuts, skating backwards, skating forwards, pretty much anything except coasting. If your just going to cruise around the street then you'll probably be ok, but the second you do anything competitive your going to get left behind. If your a good skater then you can compensate for the lack of grip, however your also going to be very very annoyed by it. I know I get really frustrated when I'm playing on a worn out set of wheels.

Now to make the actual skate look like an AT, depending on your foot size, your probably going to need big wheels. I know for hockey the biggest wheel they make is 80mm which still needs 4 wheels (usually mixed with 2 80mm and 2 72mm per skate) for normal sized feet; so if you have normal size foot theres going to be a huge gap in the middle of the skate, or your going to have to move the wheels more to the center. If you move the wheels to the center then you decrease the length of your base so you'll be more likely to fall if you lean forward or backwards. If you leave em, the gap just looks funny. Also the AT don't really have a normal flat chassis like most skates do. I know Bauer use to make skates four years ago with arch like chassis similar to ATs but they held four wheels and never caught on.

So pretty much unless you have abnormally small asian girl feet, I don't think theres a way to do it. I guess you can get someone to fabricate a chassis for you but to fit two wheels and look right it'd have to be alot taller then normal chassis, like 2x and then you'd have to find very large wheels for it.

^^ Thanks for the input. The skates would be more for just display purpose,costume, or possibly selling if they turned out really nice. It won't be used for any competitive purpose or even long periods of recreational use. All it needs to be able to do is roll around.

As such, I am now leaning towards making a chassis and attaching "shopping cart wheels" to it, so the only part of the original skate will be the boot. The wheels will be pretty big, probably in the 90-100 mm range, so the gap between won't be very big.

i wanted to ride AT's also after watchin that show, but i knew i couldnt get motors or two wheeled blades..so i just bought a regular pair and called them AT's. Even though i cant fly as high...i can still jump into the air and have the same feeling. So you can just ride a normal pair.

you can remove 2 wheels for a better look..but you must chose the right ones so that when to ride with 2 wheels your weight wont break the blades... (for example, the best wheels to remove would be the 1st and the 3rd)

EDIT (98abaile): Oi, no double posting.

you can remove 2 wheels for a better look..but you must chose the right ones so that when to ride with 2 wheels your weight wont break the blades... (for example, the best wheels to remove would be the 1st and the 3rd)

If you remove the front wheel you decrease your base making it very easy to lose ure balance, especially when your leaning forward. Unless you have very cheap skates you don't have to worry about breaking the chassis. Chassis are made from airplane grade aluminum, titanium or carbon fiber kevlar compositions. Your weight won't break them.

wats the point of riding on them its just fantasy. i guess its okay for costumes but for actually riding them it would be sorta stupid

^^ It looks like you need to read the thread...

Mmm I would also like to see the end product so do keep us informed on your progress lol

for the top pic if you could out the two rear whels next to each other
you could remove the middle and front wheels and it would be all good.

as long as you DON't paint it blue cuz then it would look too much like one of my regailia