Clamp

I get a lot of emails, Facebook messages, YouTube comments, as well as kids and parents in person asking me about parts compatibility. Nearly every question revolves around the compatibility of forks, bars, headsets, and clamps/compression systems. This is by far the most difficult part of building a scooter for people who aren't already deep into the sport. Because freestyle scootering is still a very new sport, a lack of industry standards and definitive best practices has led to a wide range of parts and technology implementations. While innovation and variety are great for the progression of scooter parts, it has made the situation difficult for parents and kids who are trying to learn about building scooters.

It seems that Hidden Internal Compression (HIC) systems are becoming more and more popular among freestyle scooter riders. This is because they are simple, cheap, and light compared to SCS systems, which we covered in another tutorial found here: Proto SCS Installation.

The HIC system uses a shim to extend the reach of the fork into the bars and prevent the fork from pulling out of the headtube. The tutorial video in this article uses a Lucky HIC composite shim, Lucky HIC bars, and Lucky HIC oversized clamp, but other HIC systems should work similarly. In terms of true HIC, we've been extremely happy with the Lucky setup.

Installing a Standard Compression System (SCS) clamp can be tricky if no one has shown you how to do it right. Even after you get your SCS installed, it can be challenging to get it locked down just right. When dealing with an SCS, the first and most important precaution you should keep in mind is to not let anyone that you don't trust mess with it. Often times, someone might be trying to help when they think they know what they are doing and they might accidentally wreck your $80 clamp. I don't let anyone else work on my kid's scooters not because I don't trust them, but because if I screw it up, then I have to pay for it. If someone else breaks a part, I don't want to deal with that awkward interaction of who has to pay for it.

It can often be difficult to get a clamp and bars to fit together if the clamp is a tight fit for the bars. You don't want to use grease to make them fit together as it will be difficult to get a secure fit later on after you tighten everything. The best method for expanding your clamp for easily fitting it on to your bars is to use the penny trick.

The method outlined below will work for standard clamps, HIC clamps, SCS clamps, and it might even work with the Phoenix iHIC bars/clamp system, but I haven't had a chance to try it out with those yet.

As always, use T-handle allen key wrenches rather than L-shaped allen keys. You can buy a full set of T-handle metric allen keys for less than $10 at Harbor Freight and I highly recommend that you do so.

Many of you reading this blog will undoubtedly know quite a bit about scooter parts already, but since the focus of my blog is educating beginners and parents, I thought it wouldn't hurt to write an article outlining the basic parts of a freestyle scooter. If you already know what all the parts on a scooter are, then move along, these aren't the droids you're looking for. However, if you're brand new to scootering, then hopefully this article will be a helpful starting point in getting you familiar with freestyle scooter parts.

When someone at the skate park tells you that you need a new headset, you might not even know what a headset is, so how can you determine if you truly need a new one? Many of the parts on a scooter will have names that are easily identifiable and recognizable to you have any experience with bikes, motorcycles, or other similar riding equipment. For the sake of being thorough, I'll cover all the major parts.