After a decade of the downhill community begging companies to make a narrow, big split cast truck offering, it is finally here.
It’s true. I did not clock that Landyachtz was standing on business like that.
Specifications:
- 130mm or 155mm or 180mm
- 4mm rake
- 30°, 40°, 50° plates available
- Stock 93a bushings
- Stock cupped washers boardside + roadside
- Open conical bushing seat
The first thing to note is that this a really comprehensive offering that hasn’t been seen in the market in some time. Three baseplate options and three width options is a massive amount of choice at the moment within one truck system.
I think this is likely the last cast truck that Landyachtz will ever develop. The product line is designed to fit Landyachtz’s products in an OEM capacity for a very long time:
- 50°/50° for most of their cruisers
- 40°/40° for their modern Evo-based split offerings (+10°/-10°)
- 30°/30° for their legacy Evo-based split offerings (+15°/-15°)
- 50°/30° for cast-budget skaters looking for a large split
This is a safe investment for Landyachtz. Seldom anyone else is offering this sort of ecosystem at current in the North American market, and if you’re considering value for spec on paper, this 50°/30° split is nearly a sixth of the price of the next cheapest offering (Zealous V1’s 51°/19° at $315.00USD). If you were a beginner and you’ve decided that a big split is the solution to your death wobble troubles, then this would be the clear value proposition winner.
(Sabre has a forged 48°/28° 150mm offering in the UK. Rebirth has the 48°/20° 130mm R1 offering, but they are only sometimes in stock, and not available in NA.)
The news however, is that Landyachtz has designed the most undeniably characterless, boring, bland trucks of the modern era. Sure, they’re a massive improvement over the restrictive, twitchy-and-dead Bear Gen 5 casts of the 2010 era (852), but they’re only better compared to those. These are the opposite of a hoot to skate.
4mm of rake is not nearly enough to service a hanger as narrow as 130mm. As a front truck, 4mm of rake doesn’t provide the aggressive turn that something like a first-generation cast Ronin might offer (8mm), leading to overwhelming feelings of understeer and lack-of-options at corner exit. They’ve maybe decided against a higher rake measurement because the 30° rear is still a leading axle- they wanted to deaden activity in the rear to make things more manageable for a beginner. However, all in all, this makes the Bear Gen 6 a completely uninspiring truck to skate. That’s not to say all trucks need to be inspiring, but many of them are and have been- and this one isn’t.
I guess, if you’re looking for a bland truck that is extremely dead at low speeds and only comes to life once you reach 20 km/h or so, then this is the truck for you.
There are upsides to this, I suppose. They don’t project a whole lot onto you, so there’s little to blame on the truck itself. Did you oversteer? Probably a you issue. Couldn’t slide? Probably a you issue.
Did you exit a corner and couldn’t find a way back to your line? That’s a you issue too, but these probably won’t help with that- not the way a cast Rogue or a cast Paris might.
It’s important to understand what these are not. These are not slalom trucks. Visually, they are as narrow as most modern slalom-geometry downhill trucks and are split as much as many of them at 50°/30°, but the rear hanger does not contain a trailing-axle slalom geometry like that of a Gold Rogue or Exile Hydra. It is the same hanger as in the front, inverted and put in the rear baseplate.
It follows that Landyachtz’s claim of “…rear truck tracking behind [sic] the front truck. This makes for an inherently stable setup…” is categorically false. The rear truck does not track behind the front truck, and this is not an inherently stable setup. It is only as stable as a Paris V2 on 47°/23° PNL plates, or a set of Calibers on a 50°/35° Randal II plate split. That’s to say- more stable than riding 50°/50°, but they are not the “very popular in the downhill and freeride world” trucks that “can only be found [sic] found in high-end DH trucks that cost a lot of money” that Landyachtz claims these to be. That is a gross overgeneralization, and irresponsible of Landyachtz to write on their website in my opinion.
Market-wise, Landyachtz claims to be competing with power players like Rogue, but they’re really competing with the DIY economy of the 2010s when people were rigging their Paris hangers into Randal plates. Only this time, you can buy a really boring version of those trucks straight off the shelf.
Would I recommend these to a beginner?
I’m not really sure. They are just so, so dead. Even at 50°/50° they’re dead. They’re even more dead at 50°/30° without the help of rear steering. I personally skated them wedged to 53°/35° and they were still dead. They were so dead that I could legitimately imagine it makes learning to slide more difficult.
Would I recommend these to an intermediate+ skater?
No. Just skate your symmetrical setup until you stack cash and buy a set of Gold Rogues, because even if you get these, that’s what you’ll inevitably end up doing.