User:Scooterhistorian/sandbox

Evolution of the professional freestyle scooter
A modern freestyle scooter is a lot different to the foldable scooter invented in 1999, both when it comes to looks and performance. For over two decades trick scooters have been evolving to what they are today. The biggest issue in the earlier years of freestyle scootering was the weak construction of the scooters that were available, causing them to break under the stress of freestyle riding. After all, the foldable scooters were created for simpler transportation and not intended for freestyle use, which meant they were light weight and not very heavy duty. The need for more reliable scooter parts eventually lead to the scooter community creating own 'hacks' to make the scooters more durable, such as bolting the folding mechanism, hot glueing the plastic core wheels and inserting an extra metal tube into the fork of the scooter to make it stronger. While these hacks extended the lifetime of the scooters, it was clear that the community was in need of aftermarket parts made specifically for trick scootering.

The introduction of the threadless fork
The most critical flaw in the construction of the early scooters, strength-wise, was the fork. To make production and assembly cheap, the forks included on the Micro and Razor scooters had threads, allowing for the use of a threaded headset. However, this also meant that (due to the threads) the thickness of the fork-tube was thinner than necessary compared to a threadless bicycle fork. This lead scooter rider and owner of Scooter Resource, Andrew Broussard to create the first threadless scooter fork, named the Scooter Resource fork or just SR fork for short. The SR fork was made from steel and had a much bulkier design than the stock threaded aluminium forks from Razor, making it a huge upgrade.

One-piece bars
The bars included with the first Razor and Micro scooters were created with the intent of being adjustable and portable. This however, also made them quite shaky and unstable when riding. Eventually this problem was solved by welding so-called T-bars that only consisted of a down-tube and a crossbar welded together. While anyone with access to a welder and steel tubes had the option to make these, the first mass production of one-piece bars were by the companies Wee Scooters, RAD and Scooter Resource.

Metal core wheels
Plastic core wheels was the standard wheels included with the early foldable scooters. Under the stress of freestyle riding the plastic spokes of these wheels would easily break. To combat this, hot glue was often used to fill the gaps between the spokes to increase the strength. This trick would increase the lifetime of the wheels, although being a tedious task. The introduction of the Micro metal core wheels were therefore a huge upgrade (although much pricier). Soon after, companies like Eagle Sport, Yak and Proto followed with their own variants of metal core wheels, both full-cores and spoked cores. This in turn lead to better prices and better access to high quality wheels for the scooter community.

One-piece decks
After seeing improvements to both forks, bars and wheels, the next big step was to eliminate the play in the Razor scooter decks folding mechanism. The first manufacturer to produce a deck with the head tube and neck welded to the deck plate was TSI in 2009. In addition to solving the issue with the folding mechanism, this deck also had an increased strength overall, especially at the dropouts at the very back of the deck where most Razor decks would crack and break after enough use. This deck also introduced a spring-less brake, named the 'Flex Fender', which in itself was a game changer, eliminating the much more complicated system of the stock spring brakes used on the Micro and Razor scooters. Shortly after TSI introduced their deck, Phoenix Pro Scooters came with their own version of the one-piece deck. Since then, the evolution of the scooter deck has changed a lot and gone in different directions depending on the preferred terrain of the rider.

Compression systems
With the introduction of the threadless fork there was a need for a compression system to make it work together with the rest of the scooter. The first iteration that was used is what is known today as the Inverted Compression System (ICS), which featured a long bolt going in through the bottom of the fork reaching up and threading into the star nut at the top of the fork tube. Although being affordable and lightweight, ICS was rather tedious to use as one had to remove the front wheel to make any adjustments to the compression. After realising the short-comings of the ICS, Andrew Broussard sought out to create a new system that was easier to use. He came up with a large clamp that lets you tighten the fork and bars together by a bolt and top cap into the star nut from the top of the fork tube. This allowed for easier adjustments and increased strength. So much so that he named it the Standard Compression System or SCS for short. In later years there has been several additions to the list of compression systems, mostly to reduce weight by not utilising a clamp as large as the SCS. These systems include HIC (Hidden Interal Compression), IHC (Internal Hidden Compression) and the Pytel Compression system.

Later additions/improvements
Other minor (but important) additions and improvements to the design of modern freestyle scooters are:


 * Fenders - A "shield" between the deck plate and back wheel, eliminating the need for a flexible brake.
 * Different wheel sizes - Wider (30 mm) wheels compared to the standard 24 mm wheels, as well wheels of diameter up to 125 mm compared to the standard 110 mm wheels.
 * Larger bearing sizes (12 STD) - Opposed to the standard of using 8 mm axels to hold the scooter wheels, the company Ethic DTC has created wheels with larger bearings that fit bolts of 12 mm diameter. This is done to increase the strength of the bolts and bearings.
 * Scooter specific grip tape - Like on a skateboard, the deck of the scooter is covered with grip tape to ensure grip under the shoes of the rider. While in the early years of scootering most scooter riders bought large sheets of grip tape made for skateboard, it has in recent years popped up several companies manufacturing grip tape made specifically for scooters.
 * Handle grips by scooter brands - As for the grip tape, early scooter riders often bought grips made for BMX bikes. Recently, however, scooter companies begun producing handle grips themselves, with scooter specific details in mind when manufacturing.
 * Pegs/deck ends - Pegs (like found on a BMX bike) has been around for a while in the scooter community, both for the front and back wheel. In later years their popularity seems to have dropped in favour of deck ends. These are like rear pegs, only fit to match the width of the scooter deck. Having deck ends both allows for more trick options as well as increasing the lifetime of the back end of the scooter deck.