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Is it time for Venture 2024???
Anyway, I had a rainy day and decided to see if I could drill out a set of baseplates at 1/4" difference and it is not pretty but it worked. Had a bit of a skate just on flat doing a few ollies and minimal other stuff, but the angle of pop is more mellow than my other 8.38 on Indy standards, so this might be too much unless they redo the baseplates to resemble Thunder truck baseplate hole patterns, more so than having it in this far.
Posted on Instagram (below) but if anyone wants better / more / other pics, I can take some as well.
Venture truck baseplate redrill
* Drill bit should be 5 mm, to fit nicely but you can use a smaller one and widen out the holes too.
People had been talking about this for a while now, Eric Koston and others doing it for years, but recently Ishod Wair had some redrilled Venture trucks on his board in some clips and people were keen to see if it was worth the hype, so I drilled out a set of old Venture 5.6 trucks I had and I can say it definitely makes street stuff a lot easier on one of my old second hand 8.38 boards that has a 14.5 wheelbase.
These ones I drilled at 1/4" difference, so although the new holes are almost into the old holes they should hold up better than in something else like redrilling a deck.
Note, I have some old six hole baseplates which have 3/8" difference which I had set up and skated before but I think the 1/4" difference is better, so total 1/2" all up on these ones, not 3/4" shorter wheelbase as per those other older six hole trucks.
My method was not at all pretty and I only used what I had, but the metal drill bit worked very easily to get through the baseplate material, with some wood, bricks and boards set up as a temporary jig to hold the baseplates.
I would definitely make a bit more effort and get a smaller drill bit if I was doing this again in new or other trucks, but it works and I got the baseplates on straight enough this time.
These sit in a lot more than my usual Indy standards on the same deck, so I would say this would work well on longer wheelbase boards with shorter kicks, like these DLX 8.38 decks.
Also used an angle grinder on the lettering to take it down where the nut sits too.