Light-Up Wheels and their Plastic Dynamos
Now when it comes to these plastic magnet dynamos in light up wheels, I'm going to flip the script on folks: take those out! They will kill your lights but they drag sooooo much. I see people with those a lot nowadays and when they take those out they are always like "WHOA!" and it's a whole new skate for them again :-)😂
Comments
We have a pair of the light up wheels. What is the magnet dynamo? Is that the little extra thing that goes in between the bearings? I thought that had to be in there to make the lights work. Forgive me for my ignorance. 🤣
QuadSkateLove, you are right! That is what powers the lights. You are also correct that removing it will shut the lights out (huge bummer, right!). However, I have a partial fix and an upside. Those little white dynamos are dragging down your freespin and creating a lot of friction in/on your wheel. If you take them out, you'll get noticably better performance from the wheel in the form of better roll out (distance) and a bit less effort needed to overcome your starting inertia. The partial fix is that if you skate with a skate that has a heel, you probably have room down there to mount some LED strip lights or a "Board Blazer" light using velcro dots. Those look a bit cooler to my eye the the light up wheels, but no drag. Batteries though, are a drag. :-)
This defeats the purpose of getting light up wheels in the first place though - over here, the Luminous wheels are not cheap and there are much better wheels out there at that price point. However, once the LEDs give out (so far I've had one die, and one is on its last legs), I do take the spacer out since the drag is then pointless.
I have had some Luminous but I got rid of them as soon as I saw they came with the plastic bearing spacer "drag" magnets. I noticed the drag instantly and hated it passionately. However, I think if someone was a pure Jam skater they might not be nearly as bothered and might really like the light, especially outdoor skaters who skate a slow speeds or are mostly just standing and dancing. Physics probably get in the way, but I wish the light up wheels could use either batteries or a magnetic core with less drag. They are super cool looking and are a great safety feature for urban skaters. However, folks like me find them unacceptable because of the drag.