- Hey, friends, Steve here to show you what to do
if you buy a YOW surfskate with the Meraki truck
and you take it out of the box and right out of the box,
before you even ride it,
it's maybe making a noise or maybe just something
doesn't seem quite right.
Maybe there's some looseness or something
that you're concerned about.
And I wanna do this because this is actually
a relatively common thing that I keep seeing online
and people keep contacting me about it.
And that is they're getting the YOW Meraki
and either there's something loose
or there's like some noises in there.
Somebody contacted me where right out of the box,
their YOW Meraki was rattling,
and it's because there was a little piece in there
that was loose.
Sometimes you'll hear a little click.
So the first thing you'll do on a YOW Meraki
is you'll just move it.
And you can see that. I don't hear any noises out of this
because I've done a good job on maintaining this.
But sometimes, you will move that YOW Meraki out of the box,
and you'll hear a click or a rattle or a squeak.
And I'm going to show you exactly the source of those
on the Meraki.
And you really, really want to familiarize yourself
with your surfskate truck.
You wanna know those inner workings.
You want to know what's happening in there.
There's a reason why I can tell you exactly.
If you show up with the Meraki and there's a squeak,
a rattle, or a click.
Those are three different things.
I can tell you exactly what they are and how to fix them
because I've opened a Meraki many times
and I know exactly what's in there
and I know what's causing those noises.
So don't be afraid of it.
First thing we want to do is take this truck
off of the deck.
And that's just a matter of unscrewing these.
And the YOW Meraki is interesting, because typically,
most trucks will have a bolt that goes through
the top of the deck and then you'll have it
come stick through here.
Like, I dunno if you can see that hole there.
And they'll have that bolt come through
and you'll have a nut on top, like,
like this, like the, just like the CX, right?
You've got the bolt coming through with the nut on top,
on the top of that base plate.
The YOW Meraki is unique in that these screws
just go directly into the truck itself with no nuts on top.
And that truck is gonna fall off and you can see
that's where those bolts go right into there.
We're going to go ahead and we'll take the hanger off.
We got the kingpin nut, washer and bushing on top.
And then you got your hanger and your bottom bushing.
That leaves us with the remaining piece.
On the Meraki, this nut is actually very hard to take off
initially and to screw back all the way on,
and so that's gonna be something that you're gonna
wannna be aware of so that you're not thinking
that you're doing something wrong or whatever.
But when you take this bolt off or this nut off of the bolt,
it's very hard to get off, right?
It's gonna take some cranking.
Here we go.
We got our nut loosened.
And you're gonna wanna be careful with this,
only so that you can see how it comes apart
and see how the, all the parts
are gonna wanna go back in there.
But this is just going to come off like so,
and you're going to see in here, well, first of all,
we got our spring down here.
We got some parts here that we want to make sure those
go back right as they were.
So on the bottom here, you're going to have a set
of larger bearings and washers
and the bearings sit between these channels.
You see those channels on the washer?
So you're gonna just make sure that you've got the bearings
in the channel.
And then this little copper piece right here,
this is the piece on the one that I just got on Instagram.
A girl contacted me and was telling me,
"Hey, my thing's rattling."
This piece wasn't in the right place.
So if you hear a rattle, it's your copper piece
is not secure in the right place under the spring
and I'll show you how to put that back in.
But then you've got another set of washers on top here.
So I haven't taken those out yet.
And again, you can see where those are gonna sit
just like so.
And again, it's the same thing.
You've got an inside bearing
sandwiched by two channel washers.
And those are smaller.
You'll see that these bottom ones.
And that's how you differentiate them.
You don't need to worry about it, 'cause you know
bigger one on bottom, small one on top there.
Your bearing and washer set.
And the copper piece just goes after you get the spring
and I'll show you how to do this.
It's gonna sit on top of that lower set
of washers and bearings.
Now let's get to the squeak or the click.
When you look at a YOW Meraki,
you've got this coiled spring,
and at the end of either side,
you can see how it's got straight edge.
Or a, you know, an angled whatever.
And those sit into channels on either side.
So that piece right there is gonna sit into that channel
and then this one on the bottom is going to sit
in that channel.
Now you, can you see some, some grease in there?
I've seen this happen a lot online.
People will get a squeak out of their Meraki
out of the gate.
They'll open this up and they'll find that that like
in the process, somehow they didn't get any lube
or grease in there and it's bone dry.
So if you're getting a squeak out of the Meraki,
it's because you don't have any or enough grease
in those channels for the spring.
It's that simple.
So all you have to do is take it apart
and you're going to use, here, let me get some to show you.
You can use either marine grease or lithium grease,
but they recommend marine grease for this kind of stuff.
On your springs, you want marine grease,
but then for your bearings,
don't use marine grease on your bearings.
For your bearings you just want something like,
like a Bones speed cream.
And, this is very important, don't ever use WD40
when you're maintaining in the interior
of any of these parts, especially bearings,
because WD40 will actually attract more dirt
and it dries out over time.
So you just put, get some marine grease and put some,
some grease in those channels.
Just in the channels.
You don't need it over this whole spring.
You just need it where these sit into the channel.
Now, if you are getting a click out of your Meraki,
and that's happened to me,
it's because this spring is not properly popped
into that channel.
If it's just sitting like that,
you can see how it's not quite,
and you're gonna get some movement out of that,
which is gonna create a rattle.
So you have to make sure when you put this back together,
that those are clicking.
You have to really push it
and make sure that it's really solid in that channel.
And now we don't have a,
I mean, that's still moving a little bit,
but you can see how that's a lot more secure.
If you've got a click, then take this apart
and make sure that your springs are set in clicking,
you know, deep into those channels.
And if you've got a rattle, it's going to be this piece
right there not set properly.
So let me show you how to make sure
this is all put back together properly.
All right, so on the YOW Meraki,
what you have to do is, you can't put the spring down first
and then put these over,
because you're going to see how this top spring
prevents those from sliding down.
So it's very simple.
All you have to do is get your bottom one,
and you're going to lift up this spring just a little bit,
and then you're going to angle that in like so.
Same thing on the washer, or sorry, the bearing,
followed by the final washer.
Remember channel down on the top over that bearing.
Oh, and see, you gotta get it right.
If it goes down, then it's preventing it
from going right there.
So you have to angle it in there
while keeping it in the interior of the spring
at the same time.
So let's just try this again.
Angle.
All right, so now that we got our spring
and our bottom bearing set in,
now we're gonna take this copper piece
and that slides right there.
And if this copper piece is out of place,
it's probably because this bottom spring
isn't properly secure in there down there.
So again, once we get all this back together,
now when you tighten this, it'll push it
into those channels as well,
but you want to just make sure that's the whole key.
Making sure that these pieces are sitting really solidly
in those channels to get rid of any kind of clicking
or any kind of a movement on it.
So I'm going to just really crank on that.
Make sure we're getting in our channel.
And then, to put this back together,
this is going to just slip over the top, right?
So that piece is going to slip into that channel like so.
And again, we wanna just make sure
that we're really getting in that channel.
So I'm going to just really crank it, push it in,
and I think we're good here.
And now we're gonna tighten it down.
So now we take this bearing and washer set.
Remember your channels.
Those going on to the bearing itself just like so.
And then we take our nut and just put it back on.
On this nut, this is kind of a critical piece of the Meraki.
It's hard to get on when you get towards
the end of tightening there,
and it's hard to get on, which means that you could like
really crank it and it actually is not tight enough
and you not know it, 'cause it's so hard to crank.
And then you can also over-tighten it.
And if you over-tighten, it means that those bearings
are gonna be getting squished too much and you're not,
you're gonna get too much friction out of that.
And you also wanna make sure that you don't have
any movement like this
out of the Meraki, so I'm gonna show you how to do that.
So we're gonna just tighten this down.
See, right now, it's starting to get hard,
but I still have quite a bit to go,
'cause you can see.
You see that movement?
We can't have any of that play at all.
So I wanna just kind of take it down
to where I really can't anymore.
And now we have none of that movement,
and we have full range of motion, and we have no squeaking,
no clicking or rattling.
So that's your Meraki.
Don't be afraid of the Meraki
If you get a squeak, a click, or a rattle out of the box,
that's okay.
It's relatively common.
It's fixable.
Don't freak out, your truck's not broken.
You're just gonna have to open it up
and maybe put some grease in there.
Maybe make sure that that spring is locked down
into those channels better,
and make sure that that copper piece is in place,
and that's it.
So I hope you found this helpful.
And if you get a Meraki truck that squeaks, clicks,
or rattles, now you know exactly how to fix it.