Waterborne Surf Adapter Review (Worth It?)

Ahhh, the Waterborne surf adapter.

I’ve been testing a bunch of different setup and want to share my experience.

Is it right for your riding style?

Let’s find out.

Waterborne Surf Adapter

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How It Works

This is different than other adapters because they don’t use a spring.

Instead, Waterborne uses a cube bushing.

The downside of this design is…

• It doesn’t have as much rebound like spring adapters do.

But a big advantage is…

• It uses a urethane bushing, so it’s less likely to rust or break.

It’s pretty straightforward to install.

1. Mount your front truck to the adapter

2. Screw it onto your deck of choice

3. Use the riser block or rail adapter to level it out.

It weighs over a pound, which is right in the middle compared to YOW or Smoothstar.

It’s durable. I’ve hit it up against curbs and dropped it a bunch and I’ve had no issues with it.

Does it get speed wobbles?

This is a tricky one to answer because it has to do with many different factors like, wheelbase, weight distribution and even how tight your trucks are. I didn’t realize this for a while but to prevent the majority of speed wobbles, you wanna distribute your weight over the front truck.

There are some exceptions to that but that’s just what I do and what works for me.

On this, I haven’t gotten speed wobbles, but at the same time I really only use it for lowkey hills and flat parking lots for carving. 

I reached out to Waterborne to ask and they said there was someone out there that went 50mph on this thing and didn’t get speed wobbles. Honestly, speed wobbles has a lot to do with rider error.

I’d say you’re more likely to get speed wobbles on this than if you don’t have it on your board since it pivots so aggressively but again it has a lot to do with how you ride it.

Does it get wheelbite?

The next thing is wheelbite because you’d think since you can carve so aggressively, you’d get it. But they have a built-in wheelbite limitor type thingy, so at 35 degrees, it stops. This will prevent most wheelbite scenarios, but if you have larger wheels, you might have to add a riser pad and mess with it.

Can you add it to any sized board?

You can add it to any sized board, I mean I’ve seen waterborne put it on a 10ft board, which is pretty crazy. It’s really all about what your riding preference is though.

I’ve put it on my Tan Tien, Lander, Dinghy basically a bunch of different boards, and have found I prefer something in the 30-32” range with a wheelbase of 16-18” but it’s all personal preference.

There are a bunch of people in the eskate community that are using them. So yeah you can use them on a longboard, mini cruiser – it just all depends on what type of riding you want to do.

Which brings me to the next question…

Current cruiser or buy a complete?

I can’t make a blanket statement here because everyone’s situation is different, but I think if you already have a cruiser, then picking up one of these is a good way to get into surfskating.

It really depends on what type of riding you want to do. If you have a few hundred dollars to drop, then yeah I’d say go for a complete since it’ll take all the guesswork out.

I wish that I bought one of their adapter kits before I went and bought a Carver because I would’ve been able to mess around with different setups and see what I liked and didn’t.

Obviously, the downside of just getting the adapter is you’re gonna have to do some modifications until you get it how you want.

Pros & Cons

Here are the top things I like and dislike about the Waterborne surf adapter.

Universal

I love how Waterborne started by solely focusing on making a universal surf adapter. You can tell they spent a lot of time and effort thinking through their design and tweaking it to make it fit the most amount of setups.

Durability

The quality of their adapters is high and I’ve never ran into a problem. I know I’ve heard other people say their bushing worn out, but it’s not a pain to replace.

Customer Service

I’ve bought a surf adapter kit, one of their carbon completes, and never had any issues with their customer service. I always got a quick response and they provided more than enough information. It’s a nice feeling to interact with a company where you don’t feel like you’re bothering them.

No Spring

There’s no spring-loaded feedback in the Waterborne surf adapter since they use a bushing. Depending on what you prefer this could be good or bad. Personally, I like the springiness over the bushing design, but it still is a solid design.

Is It Worth It?

For the price, I honestly don’t think you can go wrong with Waterborne. Just keep in mind that with surfskates, they’re much higher off the ground than a normal cruiser. I wanted to mention that since I’ve seen several comments saying how they don’t like the height of surfskates – totally understandable.

But I’m definitely a fan of waterborne and I also think it’s worth mentioning, that I’ve never come across someone that’s had a bad experience with the company. 

That’s something that’s always important for me at least when I buy something, I wanna rest assured that a company is gonna stand behind their product and make things right if anything goes wrong.

Great customer service, it’s a high-quality product like I don’t know what else to say for this waterborne surf adapter review.

Waterborne I approve.

Billy James

I started street skating when I was 5 years old. Picked up surfing and snowboarding soon after. These days, if I'm not surfing, I'm trying to replicate it on land or snow. My goal is to shred, then share my thoughts in a honest and transparent way.

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