With the spring season fully under way, the time has come to treat yo’self to all new skate set-up for the summer months. In order to help the decision process, we are doing a series of product reviews, both here on our blog as well as the forum Silverfish Longboarding. Once again, our resident longboard expert and #SaltysTeam rider Alex Fishburn will be giving us a in-depth breakdown of the latest and greatest products, and this time it’s the Bear Grizzly Gen 5 Trucks. And if you haven’t yet, be sure to check out his previous reviews of the Gullwing Reverse Longboard Trucks and Rayne Darkside Series Longboard Decks. Enjoy!
Bear Grizzlies have been around for awhile, back in the day they competed with only two other notable and popular cast trucks. Unlike those two companies though, Bear has continually updated and renewed their design and process to ensure a high quality, top performance truck year in and year out. And here we are, 2015 has brought us the fifth iteration of the Bear Grizzly truck!
Things may have changed, but the overall concept of the Bear Grizzly has remained the same; they’re trucks that handle downhill freeride just as well as they do carving or dancing, and everything else in between. This is due to a relatively high degree baseplate, at 52 degrees they’re higher than most other cast trucks on the market today. A 52 degree pivot axis yields a highly maneuverable and agile truck that can turn on a dime to make the tightest corners possible!
Highly reactive trucks generally aren’t stable, but Landyachtz is all over it; the bushing seat is deeper than the average cast truck out there, and it holds the bushing pretty tight. Containing and limiting the bushing compression, and in turn eliminating excessive hangar sway is the key to stability. There are a handful of ways of eliminating hangar sway, but having a deep, restrictive bushing seat feels the most natural and organic way to do it; the truck is free to articulate throughout its range of motion without feeling mechanically restricted or impaired. This combination of a high angle baseplate and a restrictive bushing seat yields a truck that turns tight and feels agile, and yet never really allows instability to creep into your ride!
Enough about what Bears have always been about though, that’s old news. The new stuff on the trucks for 2015 is what you all care about! That bushing seat I was talking about before has gotten a bit of an adjustment, it’s slightly more open on the sides of the bushing to allow a bit more lean depth for low speed fun, but the seat still holds the bushing tight so your hangar won’t flop side to side. Tolerances get tighter as trucks are continually revised, and the generation 5 trucks are no different, the seat fits the bushing perfectly. The walls of the seat have been modified just a touch so that they fit “barrical” and “eliminator” style bushings much better. The cupped washer has tighter tolerances too, instead of the bushing moving around inside the cup like past generations, the cup’s lip now gives a big, loving hug tothe bushing, it ain’t going anywhere! Tight tolerances and slop elimination is what precision trucks are all about, and now you can get that sort of quality out of the cast Bear Grizzlies!
Bear didn’t stop there though, the pivot got attention too. It’s a bit cleaner than past generations, and it fits significantly tighter into the pivot cup than it ever has before. In the shot here you can see that this heavily lubricated pivot can still hold the hangar off of the baseplate by nothing but the pivot. If that doesn’t show off how tight that pivot cup is, I don’t know what will! More on that lubrication, it comes like that straight from Landyachtz so you don’t have to worry about taking apart your new trucks when you first get them. Lubrication is important, it denies wear and keeps everything moving smooth and uninhibited.
The knurled kingpins are still pressed in like they have been in the past, but if you do decide to pound them out and replace them, you’ll be glad to know that the back end up the baseplate holds on to the back of the kingpin extremely tight, there’s a miniscule amount of space between the kingpin tip and the sides of the baseplate… more tight tolerances, whoo!
Check out these hangar faces, they’re ultra flat and smooth! Yet another way Bear is ensuring precision performance in their cast trucks. Having a perfectly faced hangar lets your speed rings sit perfectly flat against the hangar, and in turn, allows your bearings to bump up against those flat speed rings and rest precisely flat on the axle, which means smoother slides and better acceleration and top speed from your wheels since they aren’t losing small amounts of energy to slop in the bearing-to-axle interface. The devil is in the details as they say, and every little bit counts!
Back in 2010, every question that every person asked every truck company was, “can you flip the hangars?” and while this question isn’t quite as common in the modern day, it’s still definitely something to consider. If you can flip the hangar, you gain an option on your trucks to provide a totally different and new feel! Because Bear Grizzly hangars are raked, they’ll have a different geometry when flipped, so Bear carefully designed the truck so that the Grizzlies could have their hangars flipped with no issues whatsoever. In this picture you can see that there is an ever so slight ride height difference of 3mm, which is equivalent to 0.10″. That’s pretty minimal, so feel free to flip only your back hangar, or flip both hangars, and enjoy a new feel on the same truck! (We don’t advise flipping the front hangar and not the back, this will yield an unstable ride due to more turn in the rear. Not good!)
Bear Grizzly trucks have a high level of performance that speaks for itself. After this year’s revisions, we think the Bear Grizzly might be at the top of the cast game again; and with so many other options out there, it can be tough to decipher all of the information when searching for the best cast truck possible. Well, here you have it; Bear Grizzlies are definitely top contenders in this price range, you’ll be surprised at smooth and solid they feel under foot! And while we know color options and cool finishes don’t make you faster, we definitely know that they make you look exponentially more fly, so we made sure to stock up on every single color option so you can have mirror trucks to check your weave, space trucks because your skating is out of this world, or glow in the dark trucks for those midnight shred sessions! Bear Grizzly trucks have always been quality cast trucks, and this year’s version is better than ever. If ever there was a time to own Bear Grizzlies, it’s now!
Words and photos by Alex Fishburn
