How to Clean and Change Inline Wheels

Welcome to ZS Robotics

Today I will be showing you how to clean and change your inline wheels. This is crucial to when a person skate because it gives the skater a smoother foot that allows them to turn and speed up quicker.

Inline Skate: I use a Bauer Hi-Lo chassis size Medium

8 Wheels: I personally use an 80mm 82A wheel for the back and a 72 mm 82A wheel for the back. The wheel sizes depend on the bearings being used and the size of the skate. I also use the Tron Mega Hz outdoor wheels because they are cheaper and tend to last a little longer than other outdoor wheels.

16 Bearings: You will need 16 bearings whether you got new ones or are reusing your old ones. If you are reusing other bearings I would suggest the next material. Each wheel has 2 bearings.

Bearing Separators: These allow the bearings to stay together in the wheels.

Screws for Bearings: These are only needed if you do not have some already. There should be two screws for each wheel for a total of 16 screws. These screws should be universal to bearings and skates, but may differ.

Sonic Turbo Wash Bearing Cleaner: This allows you to get the dirt out of all the bearings so they can turn with less friction and get a smoother ride and the wheels can turn faster to gain a quicker speed.

5/32 Hex/Allen Key: This allows you to loosen the screws. Most screws will use a 5/32 inch hex key, but may differ.

Pliers: The screws for the wheels tend to get stuck if they are really tight so this can be used to get a better grab on the Allen Key.

Towel/Rag: To dry the bearings after being cleaned and to wipe the dirt out of the chassis and in the wheels if reusing wheels.

This is the first step that you would want to do. You want to put the hex key in the screw and turn counter-clockwise (Lefty Loosey, Righty Tighty)

Make sure to loosen and take out all 4 screws on the wheel before starting to clean the bearings and changing the wheels.

To clean the chassis, you want to wipe down the outside of the chassis to get the dirt off.

Then you want to get the insides. Focus on the areas where the screws go in, this is where dirt is most commonly caught.
It is possible that there may be dirt on the bottom of the boot, so you can wipe it down in order to get off all of the dirt that may fall onto the wheels.

First, you want to pop the bearings and the separators off of the wheels. This can be done with the hex key or another tool by pushing inwards with the tool.

Next, what you want to do is put the bearings in the Sonic Turbo Wash and let it sit for about 5 minutes to get the dirt out of the bearings.

The separators can then be wiped down with a rag to clean all of the dirt off of them since it is visible.

Once the bearings are cleaned, they have to dry or can be dried off. This does not matter.

To dry them, grab the rag and push down on them. Do this for both sides of the bearings.

Now that everything has been cleaned, it is time to put the bearings and wheels back on the chassis.

Push one bearing into one side of the wheel, then put the separator onto the second bearing and push it into the wheel. Do this for all of the wheels.

If doing one skate at a time, do two of the larger wheels and two of the smaller wheels.

The bearings and separators should be placed into each of the wheels and now it is time to reattach the wheels to the chassis.

The smaller two wheels should be put in the front two places while the larger two wheels should be put in the back two places.

These should be put on one by one with the screws being attached to each side. The screws need to be tight enough to keep the wheels on properly.

- If the screws were to be too tight, this would cause friction on the bearings and not allow them to spin to maximum revolutions per minute (RPM)

Your wheels are back onto the chassis and ready to be used. Some tips to keeping them clean are staying out of dirty areas such as dirt patches, grass, and asphalt. Asphalt will break and chip your wheels.

Go out and test your "new" skates and get a feel for them.