Arius issues
A few couple things have popped up since I mounted these plates and let people skate them. Nothing major, but interesting.
In or around the middle of 2014 I mounted them up on boots for a skater I coach by the name of AnNa Molly. She was jamming mostly. They were still sporting the modified cushions I installed a while ago:
She liked the action, but when she got tired she had trouble controlling them. So I put the light blue ones in. For 2 laps. She hated them. Too stiff. Modified ones went back in. She was on them for about 5 months and played several games in them.
Then I decided Molly Hatchet (an awesome junior derby skater) would get them next. So the junior Molly came over and we swapped the Falcon F-16′s for the Arius plates. Molly Hatchet is 15 and weighs about 125lbs. Molly could not control these plates. I procured a set of the Lavender (77A) cushions and swapped them in during a practice.
This is why the skates were so uncontrollable. Now, my guess is that with the extra movement available with the modification, the urethane just couldn’t handle the flexing. I haven’t heard of unmodified cushions doing this.
Correction: After this blog was posted I was contacted by a skater from the UK I played with in November he told me of two skaters he knew who had unmodified cushions fail in the same manner.
The new cushions were a PITA to get into the plates. They seemed slightly oversize and the casting flash on them was really ugly. A few laps later and they were working great for young Molly.
Then I noticed a loose toe stop. No problem, I’ll snug it up.
Oh no. This is bad design. The broached hex drive came super close to the shoulder on the head. you can see where it failed.
Problem solved. Proper allen head bolt in m6 from the industrial supply place where I get my mounting hardware. It protrudes a bit more than the original, but it’ll never break while it’s on there. They were out of stock on stainless.













