Which foot leads when you pull on a pair of pants, start up a stairway or kick a ball? Do you have an injury that changed your original habits? Could you be one of those oddballs who is right handed but left footed?
Knowing the answer to this question is very important to the first-time skater. Since new skates are always sold with the brake mounted on the right, left-footed beginners never find out that swapping the brake would make it ten times easier to learn the essential safety skills of braking and preventing unwanted speed.
A couple years back I wrote Lefties, it Does Matter to share this message. To celebrate the launch of this blog, my first article is a pictorial tutorial showing how to swap the brake from one skate to the other. Click the photos to see a larger image.
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- 1. Find the Allen key (metric size #4) packaged with the skates
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- 2. Remove the right skate’s bolts, washers, wheel and brake mount
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- 2. a. On some Rollerblade skates, a tiny metal pin secures the brake mount to the wheel frame
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- 2. b. Remove the pin using a hammer and a slim nail
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- 3. Remove the left skate’s rear wheel. This bolt is shorter and (on this model) there are no washers.
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- 4. Fit the brake mount and wheel into the left frame. (Hold wheels horizontally to keep the floating bearing spacer centered.)
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- 5. With left skate finished, install the right skate’s wheel.
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- These Rollerblade, Salomon, and K2 left skates can all house the brake mount.
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- Rollerblade ABT Lite brakes cannot be swapped
This blog is a work in progress. My goal is to convert the look and feel to blend in better with the Get Rolling web site.
Tags: brake, brake mount, heelbrake, lefties, switching