- Hey surfskating friends from all over the world.
I'm Steve with Surfskate Love
and in this video, I'm gonna show you
how to adjust your Carver C7 surfskate truck.
Now, I actually think it's pretty common
from a lot of comments that I've seen online,
that a lot of people don't even know
that you can adjust your C7
and it actually has a very wide range of adjustment
that makes a very big difference in the ride.
And I actually just the other day had somebody asked me
if I keep my C7 on factory settings or if I adjust
and my answer was I always adjust.
In fact, as a rule of thumb,
I think that you should be always adjusting and fine-tuning
just to experiment with things and
see how they work for you.
Because it all comes down to personal preference
and the application that you're using it for.
So the C7 is actually very easy to adjust.
It is a dual axis system
and what that means is it has two axes
or dimensions of motion.
The first of course, being your lateral arm
that creates that lateral swing
that you get on a surfskate truck
and the second being your kingpin bolt,
which just like on any skateboard or longboard
is gonna give you the lean on those bushings.
So let's just start with that one while we're here.
This is very simple.
It's just like any kingpin
and obviously the looser you go on this,
the more range of motion
which means the more lean you're gonna get on your board.
Now, personally, I like a lot of lean
so I like to go as loose as possible.
So you can tighten this down if you want.
If you wanna get rid of some lean,
you can go pretty tight on this and have hardly anything.
Personally, I like it as loose as possible,
but you will find on this that if you loosen it too much,
I'll just do this here for you here,
if we go to about here,
you're gonna see that you get play in that.
So personally, I like this as loose as it'll go
without that play.
So you have to kinda snug that down just a little bit
and well, even that is just.....
about right there.
So now I've got that as loose as possible
which creates more lean, but without that play.
So that's very simple to adjust there.
Now, as far as adjusting your lateral arm,
it's this bolt right here
and this actually makes a very big difference
and it adds a lot of versatility to the C7 trucks.
So we can go as tight as possible.
So there's about as tight as we can get
and you can see how I still have some swing in there
just a little bit, but it's very tight
and that's gonna give me a very decreased range of motion.
And then if I go all the way loose,
we'll see what that looks like.
Now with that the way Loose,
you can see how I have a much wider range of motion,
but also you can tell that I actually went too loose
and so that spring in there
is actually not really even engaging.
So I wanted to show you this up close underneath.
This is what that C7 looks like underneath,
is you've got this spring right there.
You can see how that's our range of motion
in the C7 right there,
and the tension is created by this spring in here.
So this is gonna connect to that little arm right there
and as we tighten this,
you can see how that's just going to tighten up that spring.
Now, one of the reasons why I wanted to show you this,
is because I've got the C7 here
and then I've got a YOW Meraki.
I wanted to just compare these springs
because with the YOW Meraki, it's a much tighter spring.
And with both this Carver C7 and the Smoothstar,
the Smoothstar, by the way, is adjustable in the same way,
but it's just an Allen key right here.
The Smoothstar is actually
even a smaller spring than the C7.
So the difference in springs, this is a softer spring
and this is a tighter spring
and I'm gonna actually take you outside
and we're gonna do some riding,
and I'm gonna show you why this matters.
But first I just wanted to show you what happens
if you go too loose on your C7
and now you can see it from this angle.
We'll go as loose as we can get
and what you're gonna see is essentially,
it's just basically not gonna work
because you are not engaging that spring at all.
So you're not gonna get any spring action whatsoever
and it's gonna kind of just what I'm gonna call flop on you
and I'll show you outside how that works.
So you gotta be careful to not go too loose on that.
Okay, so I'm gonna take this Greenroom outside
with the C7 trucks,
we're going to do some adjusting on it and some riding.
So I can kind of demonstrate the difference that it makes.
And I want to point out to you something about
why that soft spring matters and why I'm showing you that.
But first, I just want to point out the advantages
of this adjustable spring.
Basically, you can use the C7 for a wide range of
applications. So I've been learning how to ride
in a bowl over the last couple of months.
And I've tried several trucks in the bowl
including the Smoothstar Thruster. the YOW Meraki,
the Carver C7, the Carver CX, and Slide.
You might have a completely different preference,
but for me what I've found is in the bowl
I want a tighter, more stable truck.
So I've personally landed
on the Carver CX as my favorite surfskate truck,
but I can use the Carver C7 in the bowl very, very easily.
Why? Because it's adjustable.
So if I'm riding the C7 in a bowl
I just tighten that spring up
and it makes it a lot more stable in a bowl.
And then if I'm gonna go cruise out on the streets
I'm gonna loosen that because I want
as wide of a range of motion as possible.
Okay. So let's take this thing outside, do some adjustments
and see the difference that it makes in the ride.
- All right.
Let's do some adjusting and some riding on this.
The first thing I'm gonna do is tighten this all the way,
as much as possible so we can see what that looks like.
So I've got my trusty Carver tool here, and we're gonna
just tighten this sucker up all the way.
So, that's as tight as we're gonna get it.
You can see what that looks like right there.
And let's go ahead and give us a ride, see how she feels.
Okay. So you'll see that even at the tightest setting
I still have a very wide range of motion with
this. It's very easy to pump and carve.
And it's also what I'm gonna call,
springier when it's tighter.
And I'm gonna show you what this means when
we loosen it up.
So let's go ahead and loosen it up now.
Okay. See how this thing rides now
with it as loose as it goes.
So I don't know if you can see this visually
but the effect that it has is essentially when
it loosens up that arm, that arm can go more side to side.
So what I feel is when I loosen it up
you're going to get the front foot is easier to
go side to side. And it creates a feeling similar
to what I feel in the Smoothstar,
where it's less kind of up and down bouncy.
I don't know how to describe that
like compression extension versus more side to side sway.
But the biggest difference that this makes
for me when I loosen
up the C7 is because of that soft spring.
It makes it just a little bit harder to start out.
It's what I'm going to call the, the...
the word that comes to my mind,
is that soft spring is kind of mushy.
Its just is not as tight.
So it's great. It rides,
it's very smooth and flowy, wide range of motion.
But let me just show you the difference
between this and the YOW Meraki.
Okay. So I've got the C7 and I've got the Meraki.
The Meraki is not adjustable.
So when I go on a Carver C7, when I lean into a turn
and it comes this way, and then when I come back to center
it's just not as much of a, what I'm gonna call
a snapback to center, or we could call it a rebound.
So on this, YOW, I'm gonna lean into a curve.
And then when I come back to center,
it's a very, quite tight pop.
Where the C7 is just a little bit mushier coming up.
And so the big difference that that makes
for me on the C7 versus the Meraki is
that it's just a little bit harder to start out.
And it makes for when I'm cruising.
I think it for a little bit less efficient cruising for me
because I feel like that tighter spring is actually
kind of helping me when I'm coming back,
versus it being more of my body strength
bringing it back to center on that pump.
So that's just something to be aware
of on the C7, is that the looser you adjust it, the more
what I'm gonna to call mushier it gets
and you just get less
of a spring going back and forth on that lean.
And it also means that if you loosen it too much
you're actually going to completely disengage that spring.
And as I showed you
you're just gonna be hitting those stops
and that's too much.
So there you have it.
That's how to adjust the Carver C7, go and play with yours,
go and play with the bolt, adjust the spring
go and play with this.
See what that does to your lean.
And you can customize this ride according
to your preferences.