Tuesday, January 20, 2015

A-1 Meats Small Wheels.



Wheels for Cult Followers.

I'm not sure why I scanned this one so I'm just going to get it out of the way. It might have a little to do with my ongoing fascination to find the smallest wheels made. If you took a ruler to the paper magazine page, the wheels are at actual size, as the ad claimed. At the time, 45mm would have been on the smaller side of things. I'm sure there were other wheels clocking in at 52mm. I remember getting some wheels at 55mm and that seeming like a big step away from what I had been riding. Realistically, 52mm is still functional, but I'm saying anything under 50mm starts to get dumb.

Transworld - September 1991 Volume 9 Number 9

6 comments:

natenola said...

A 1 Meats at somepoint made 38 mm, i think that was the smallest production wheel ever, a few other companies may have done something that small after them but that was the first sub 40 wheel. I remember that most companies wouldn't go under 42mm, there was a lot of those on the market.

Anonymous said...

Toxic Skateboards made 33mm wheels for a minute... they were hilarious!! My boy carried them at his shop back in late 92 early 93... I think their was an ad in Transworld back than also

Justin said...

Dang. That's tiny.

In late 92/early 93, everybody had a 38 or 39 mm wheel. We were dumb back then.

I did a bunch of searching through old catalogs. The smallest I found was 37mm. Spitfire and Stereo both made 'em that size. There were rumors of 36mm from World and 101.

The research:
http://vertisdead.blogspot.com/2012/02/bo-ikeda-2.html

nonickname said...

what mm do you ride these days Justin? I've stuck to 54mm for a few years now which seems to suit my older, non flipping lack of style just right. think the smallest i ever bought were 46.5 atm click "don ho's", but I'm sure i rode stuff coned down much smaller in my giant pants days

Justin said...

I ride 56mm.

Now that I think about it, I've been riding that size since the late 90s. I tried 58mm at one point, but that felt too big. There might have been some 55mm wheels once or twice. I've been thinking maybe I should go a little smaller to help my flip tricks, but I figure it isn't worth the effort.

I rode some small wheels down to bearing cover size at least once or twice.

White Ninja said...

we would trade for used wheels, because they were smaller. as long as not coned or flat spots. i remember many days riding that one wheel with the flat spot. we were dummies.

Great site,and the anecdotes make my day.