Whilst I was reading you guy's opinions I wrote an email and condensed it to the many many issues with Ace trucks and contacted them, this is the email I got back.
Dear Robert,
Hello, this is Steve one of the owners of Ace. Thanks for taking the time to give us some firsthand insights. Being skaters ourselves we take all of this very seriously. All of the issues you have described would fall under our warranty btw. I have copied our customer service specialist Jon here if you wish to pursue getting any of your defective Ace trucks replaced under our warranty program.
Please allow me to address your quality concerns individually here;
The best way to explain "axle bolts (I assume you meant nuts) tightening while skating", your axle is slipping causing it to appear that the axle nut is mysteriously tightening itself as you skate.
Uneven axles, a recent quality control mishap. No cases reported ever prior to the past 120 days. To date 3 or less incidents reported.
Pivot cups obliterating. We Slappy A LOT and never had this problem, then we sold trucks for 10 years without this problem. Then EVERYBODY started doing Slappies and BAM! baseplate blow-out. We cover this under warranty and are also in the process of strengthening our baseplate in the pivot bushing area. We anticipate replacing our baseplate mold in the next 12 months. There's quite a bit of work on top of research and development to get any unique metal component to the production stage.
Bushing top cap cutting into bushings. If you are using Ace bushings and the pivot cup bushing is in place as it should be, this is an undocumented first. If however you are having an issue with the bottom washer cutting the bottom bushing, the bottom bushing needs to be flipped over so that the sharp edge is touching the hanger and the rounded edge is sat in the bottom cup washer.
I hope I have helped to regain your confidence in Ace. As skaters we are determined to continue improving our products until everyone is satisfied.
Thanks for your support,
Steve Ruge
I hope the trucks I get soon don't have any issues, but we will see. Good on these guys to get back to me within a few hours.