Caliber II Trucks; everything you need to know, what’s new, and what to expect from the Forty Fours, and the Fifty Cals!
Caliber Trucks is a company that just about every longboarder out there has heard of; that’s simply because when they came out, they had a cast truck that was eons ahead of anything else to date as far as slop reduction, tolerance tightening, and over-all ride quality was concerned. They really were the first to heavily popularize the lower degree truck; at the time, 42 Randal trucks were pretty much it, and most people just skated the 50 degree trucks anyways since 42 just felt too low and dead for most riders, short of the speed freaks. Caliber’s popularization of the 44 degree truck, their clean and sharp lines, and their higher level of stability immortalized Caliber as a high quality cast truck manufacturer right from the get go. So the question is, how could you possibly improve on that? Well, with the Caliber II Trucks of course.
New for the Caliber II trucks, and most notably so, is the cleaner shaped bushing seat. The past model was alright, it fit the bushing pretty well, it was restrictive, and it didn’t fit anything besides a barrel or a cone. The Caliber II trucks utilize a slightly more open seat to give barrel bushing users a touch more maneuverability, but a secondary step was added to feed the hunger of the eliminator/stepped bushing crowd. That second step is much tighter fitting, it supports the idea that if you’re using a stepped bushing, you’re after stability, predictability, and a confidence inspiring feel. So before, you really only had one option, it was barrels and a restricted setup and that’s that, but with the Caliber II trucks, you can go all barrels for a nice, open feel, or you can run a stepped bushing for ultimate stability… or run a mix of the two for the optimal in between feel!
Bushing choice is fine and all, but if you’ve got a kingpin that wobbles and flexes back and forth, then there’s no point really, you’ll be unstable no matter what. Caliber wanted to step their game up with this new generation of truck, so they jammed a kingpin in there that’s much tighter fitting and won’t wobble back and forth while riding, and kingpin flex is reduced by adding material to hold onto the kingpin in the baseplate. It’s the little things that count, and Caliber definitely improved on the small amount of kingpin slop that the previous generation truck had.
Caliber II Trucks come stock with Blood Orange 89a bushings that fit snugly into the seats of the hangar. They’ve got more mush and lean than the first round of bushings, so that continues to help Caliber trucks be a bit more agile. The pivot cups are basic and work sufficiently for all types of skating, and luckily enough for you, the hangar pivot fits tightly in them for a solid, precise feel.
Now to the nitty gritty. Caliber II come in two different models, the Forty Four and the Fifty Cal. This, of course, refers to the pivot axis angle, which is an imaginary line that starts in the pivot cup, goes up through the center of the hangar pivot, up through the hangar, through the bushing seat, and out the top of the hangar. That imaginary line is what the hangar ideally rotates about as you lean on your board. On a 45 degree truck, the ratio of lean to turn is exactly 1:1, which means for every millimeter of vertical travel the tip of the axle (or the wheels) make, there’s an equal amount of horizontal travel. On a 50 degree truck, that ratio is skewed in favor of turn, or horizontal travel. For every little bit of lean you make, the truck will have slightly more horizontal travel than vertical travel. So the Fifty Cal trucks are, in layman’s terms, designed around turning more than they are leaning. Because of the Caliber’s rakeless hangar nature, they still do lean quite a bit, but as a general rule, use those Fifty Cal trucks for situations where you want more turn. This can include carving and cruising, low to medium speed freeriding, and maybe even some light downhill. 44 degree trucks on the other hand are just below that 1:1 ratio, which means for every millimeter of lean, or vertical travel, you get from your trucks, you’ll get slightly less turn, or horizontal travel. And this is where the term “gangster lean” comes into play. When the trucks start to lean more than they turn, all of a sudden doing stand up slides and predrifts become noticeably easier to kick out and hold out because of how steep an angle the board is held at. If that doesn’t make sense, imagine the board like a sprinter’s starting block. If it’s more angled, the sprinter can push much harder against it, and get more force traveling horizontally. Same thing applies to the skateboard, if the board is tipped over deeper from a leany truck, you have a steeper surface to push against for sliding, and this is the major reason Calibers are so popular amongst the freeriders of the modern day.
A lower degree truck also means the trucks are more inherently stable, and this is because of the reduced amount of turn. If you’re turning less for every bit of lean you put in, then the trucks won’t feel as reactive and lively. Imagine a truck with no turning angle, a zero degree truck. What if you got speed wobbles on those? Well, they’d only lean, the board would wobble back and forth, but it was travel in a perfectly straight line. The same idea applies to lower angle trucks, even if something crazy happens that causes your board to go into some sort of uncontrolled oscillation (happens to the best of us, even pros get wobbles from bad pavement, rocks, twigs, etc.) then the trucks will turn less and it’ll be easier to ride out and bring under control again. This same inherent stability results in less turn at low speeds though, so if you like riding around with friends to the shop, sidewalk surfing to school, or slashing city hills, then the Fifty Cal trucks are probably better. But for all of you speed demons, the Forty Four trucks are the way to go.
While this seems pretty insignificant, the new finish to the Caliber II Trucks makes a solid impact on performance. Trucks are normally designed, poured, then painted, so after painting occurs, the trucks have a thin layer of material coating them, so all of the careful designing to make everything fit tight is kind of thrown a way. The new finish is much, much thinner though, it doesn’t impact the performance of the truck in any way, but the finish is more resilient than the previous generation, so it’s tougher to rub or flake off.
Caliber II Trucks are awesome, straight up. Whether you end up on the Fifty Cals or the Forty Fours, you really can’t go wrong. My favorite part about the Caliber II trucks is the ability to do some pretty simple upgrades that push them into the range of precision-quality performance. Upgrade the bushings, grab some aftermarket urethane pivot cups, and some sleeved washers, and the Caliber IIs feel 99% like their precision counterparts. To break it down in dollar signs, you can invest around $75 total in your Caliber IIs and they’ll feel almost exactly like trucks that are well over $300. That can’t be said about all cast trucks, so when we see it, we definitely take notice.
That pretty much covers it all, Caliber knows how to make a great cast truck. The pivots are clean, the bushing seats are crafted nearly perfectly, they’re strong, and they have a couple of options in the baseplate side of things to fine tune your ride. That’s what makes a great cast truck! If you’ve got setup questions, feel free to send us a private message or post here on the thread, and we’re always available to talk on the phone at 801-467-8000, or toll free at 877-WE-SHRED! And as always, our reviews stem from a collaboration with our team riders and myself, we test everything we review to make sure you get as accurate and up to date information as possible!
Words and photos by Alex Fishburn
