This waterborne adapter will pretty much turn any board into a carving machine.
Here's our waterborne surf adapter review, based on what you guys wanted to know.
Contents (Click to skip)
Where To Buy?
I've only bought my Waterborne surf adapter from their website.
But they also have an Amazon listing if you'd rather buy from there.
I will receive a small commission if you buy through the Amazon link above, but it’s at no additional cost to you. I’d appreciate it since it helps me continue buying everything out of pocket to ensure there are no underlying biases. Honestly, I think it’s a win, win.
How It Works
So, this is different than other adapters because they focused on creating a universal adapter that doesn’t use a spring.
Almost every other surfskate out there uses a spring, but waterborne uses a cube bushing and ball bearings
The downside of this design is it doesn’t have as much of a rebound like a Smoothstar does since there’s no spring, to pull it back. But then the advantage is that since it uses rubber bushings, it’s less likely to rust or break.
It’s pretty straightforward to install, you mount your front truck to the adapter, screw it onto your deck of choice and use riser pads or the rail adapter to level it out.
It weighs just over a pound, which is right in the middle compared to YOW or Smoothstar.
It’s definitely durable, I 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.
Likes & Dislikes
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.
Question or Suggestion?
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