Tried the V8's today for the first time. 5.6 on a 8.25 x 14.38 DLX.
First sesh was solely on the normal baseplate setup (ie. normal cast Venture wb effect).
Holy shit the bushings (transparent light blue) felt squirrely in the beginning. A large part of the sesh was spent on just breaking them in. Gradually got to tighten 'em a bit, but they're not "there" yet, as I like my trucks fairly tight. Gotta give 'em more time.
The trucks are heavy (5.6 almost 400g). Got used to that pretty quickly, though. Pop felt off at first because of the new bushings, but once they started to firm up, ollies started to feel nice. Somehow the pop felt a bit "soft" somehow, for the lack of a better word -- maybe the new bushings still. Plus I was on Bones X97s, so there's that.
Anyway, grinds were good, the turn was nice (I do like the Venture turn, I ride them in bowls no problem), noseslides were happening, all good. Overall impression pretty promising.
Suffice it to say I have to skate them again to get proper feel of them with broken in bushings.
After that, Imma pull in the back truck and see what happens after that.
Thank you Venture, thank you skateboarding. I have good things in my life to fill up my short time on this planet.
V8 review pt.2: the pulled-in truck episodeFor the second session on my new 5.6 V8s I pulled in the rear truck, leaving the front truck in the normal position. Same deck of course (DLX 8.25 x 14.38 with a 6.5 tail).
NOTE OF IMPORTANCE: Venture advertises the V8 wb effect as being 0.25 inches per truck. This is simply not true. I repeatedly measured (and was sober at the time) the offset between the normal and the pulled-in holes, and the difference is EXACTLY 5/16 or 0,3125 inches per truck. End of discussion. What's interesting is that the difference between Venture's official info vs. reality is that big. I mean, this can be consequential for some. Or an important matter of principle.
Anyway.
During the second sesh the new translucent light blue bushings finally started to feel nice and Venture-y. I gotta admit I was a bit worried for a while that the new bushings would remain too soft and I'd have to go down the bushing madness swap-o-rama rabbit hole. Luckily: no. Give 'em a bit of time, they will firm up.
On to the most important point, ie. the pulled-in back truck: unsurprisingly my pop felt a bit off at first. Had to readjust my back foot position for a bit. But pretty soon it started to actually feel pretty great as I got used to the longer tail. The timing was of course a bit different and at first I felt that I'm not gonna be able to pop as high, but as the session went on, I started to like it more and more as I got used to the lighter and quicker pop, which took less effort than with the normal setup.
So all kinda good and yeah, but a TRUE eureka moment happened when I moved from just cruising and ollieing and riding flatground to a section of my local park that has big transitions, banks and corners. I REALLY, REALLY enjoying popping ollies from banks with the "new" longer tail, and actually pretty easily managed to ollie over this pyramid top that has been giving me difficulties before. Normally with a long wb and a short-ish tail I feel like I'm sometimes too slow (my bad mostly of course, I'm not GT) in popping from banks at high speed. The pulled-in back truck made a nice difference in that I felt that I could hit my tail better and do a more controlled ollie. This kind of thing is of course mostly not a problem for peeps that can skate good, but I'm older and slower and need all the help I can get. Also, 180 ollies off the pyramid corner felt really good.
The overall shorter wb didn't feel much different in general. Riding a bowl was totally ok and I still enjoyed the Venture turn a whole lot. No comply 180's and pop shuvs felt good, better than with the shorter tail. Oh, and to add -- manual point felt a bit weird at first, but that was expected as well. Nothing I couldn't get used to.
As said before, the V8s are pretty heavy so that can put some peeps off, but I seemed to get used to it fairly quickly. Coming from 5.6 V-Lights the difference is noticeable, but it's not critical. On the other hand, the heftiness felt really good when going fast on trannies.
That's basically it.
In a nutshell, I for myself (totally subjectively) feel that the V8 is a great truck that gives interesting possibilities for one's ride/pop/board control feel -- and of course more potential rabbit holes for truck madness, too.
Anyway, Imma keep riding them with e.g. 14.38 wb and 6.5 tail decks which I thought felt too clumsy for me before. Others might enjoy the trucks in many other ways.