Bont Wheels by Alex Bont

[IW Staff]

Dear Bont Customers,

With Bont's increasing wheel line up for different surfaces, you are bound to hear the question 'which wheel should I choose?' Here is some information to make the choice simple.

I think it is important to realize that there are 2 very different and distinct groups of wheels forming at the moment. One for elite skaters, and one for your average skaters.

The typical skater wants as much roll as they can get as they are just trying to keep up with the pack, trying to set their best time, get a good place. These skaters need the maximum roll that you get from a wheel with a mechanical lock (ML). Then there are the pros, who have different priorities. They need to be able to jump around in the pack and have more maneuverability, they need to have more grip because they push harder. These skaters may opt for a Cabriolet wheel (a wheel without the ML also known as a Cab wheel) which are slower but offer better grip and control. Make sure they don't mix ML wheels with Cab wheels as they have different amounts of flex.

With the new HRR light blues, we are trying to give the roll of a ML wheel, with the maneuverability and grip of a Cab. They are 87A, so they are super hard for roll. But they are a Cabriolet so they will grip and flex more. They also use a formula we internally are calling G4R or G4+Roll. This could be the wheel of the future, but I want to go slowly with it and keep tweeking it to perfection. One thing is for sure, it may out roll the highroller but it will certainly not last ask long.

So if you are telling skaters which wheel to choose, please keep this information in mind. If in doubt, the Mint Green Highroller is a wheel that we can always rely on. it has been race proven to be up there with the best in the world.

Kind Regards,

Alexander Bont

[IW Staff]

Dear Bont Customers,

Wheel Update

We have been churning out a lot of new wheels recently and here is some info to help sort through the large volume of new products in our line up.
Firstly, we are changing our white hubs to black and have changed the composition of the material to make sure we do not have any cracked hubs. We will still be selling white hubs until the stock sells out. The white hubs have had a very low percentage of hubs cracking but we do want to try to avoid any cracking at all. The difficulty lies with the flex we are trying to achieve. We can make a hub that will never break but it will not be as fast as the ones we are making now. One thing to be careful of is popping the bearings out using the back of an allen key. We have very tight bearing holes and this is one way to crack the hub. Please try to use a bearing press or just push the bearing out from the other side. I am pretty happy with the tightness of the bearings, they are not so tight that you cannot get the bearing in and not lose either.

The next new wheel is the HRR. It is a Highroller + Roll which means we have sacrificed wear for more roll. If you are after the fastest wheel on the road, and you are not a hard pusher, these wheels could be perfect for you. There is no mechanical lock inside so they will flex a little more which will give you more control and a slightly softer ride.

We have a new South American wheel called ‘The South American Wheel’ funnily enough… It is a super high speed urethane that is a little softer than most of our wheels and designed specifically for South American tracks. At this moment, this wheel will only be available through our South American distributor.

105mm Wheels. We are slowly increasing our range of 105mm wheels. We now have them available in Highroller 85A Mint, and HRR 87A Light Blue.
The Crossover wheel is exclusively designed for Vesmaco banked tracks. I have had some people emailing me saying they used them on the road and they are too slow. That’s because they are a very grippy wheel and not designed for the road. Even on the track, you would mainly use them for sprint events. They are not an indoor wheel and I wouldn’t really try them indoor.

Our Cabriolet wheels are wheels that have no mechanical lock. The mechanical lock holds the urethane onto the hub. With these wheels we use a special bonding agent rather than the Mechanical lock. You will lose a tiny bit of speed, but you will gain more flex, grip, and manoeuvrability. We have been doing limited runs of these wheels for some distributors.
Lastly, our track wheels. We have been working on our Magic Molta project for the past 3 years now and it finally seems to be paying off. By using a hard golf ball material inside the urethane in combination with our mechanical lock, we have had some remarkable prototype wheels produced. We are still tinkering with the hardness’s but this wheel will rock in 2010. This wheel was designed for slippery bank tracks like the ones you find in Asia but we will be looking to expand this technology in 2010 to our road wheels and also eventually a dedicated rain wheel.

I have had a lot of emails about choosing a wheel for the A2A. I’d say you can’t go past the G4 Highroller 85A wheels. It was first in the men’s and women’s category of the St Gallen 111km in Switzerland last month and is the longest lasting wheel on the market which will be important at the end of the race.

*http://www.inlinewarehouse.com/descpage.html?PCODE=BG4

Kind Regards,

Alexander Bont



*Included for your convenience. - IW