A friend of mine weighs about 115-120lbs and he rails corners on harder duro wheels. I recently tried an 83a wheel which he'd been riding for a while, coming from mostly 78a-80a wheels myself, and I was slipping through all the same corners. His thoughts on the matter are: He needs a harder wheel, to be able to slide it, saying his body weight makes a softer wheel feel "too grippy" and doesn't slide out easily enough (that's just purely taste though...). While we were discussing why I feel uncomftorable on the same duro wheel, and the standard seems to be higher duros for heavy riders, he suggested the intertia from my extra weight (about 160lbs) causes the wheels to break loose, while with his less weight, he can agilely rip through the turn, not putting as much pressure on the wheel to do so.
So my new view on the matter is that a lighter rider can actually get more grip out of a harder wheel than a heavier rider, due to them not putting as much pressure on the wheels through a turn. It doesn't have so much to do with the compression of the lip, the urethane is what really sticks to the road in my opinion, so all this mumbo jumbo about needing more weight to compress the lips of your harder and "faster" wheel is a croc of **** to me. This is coming from my experiences with super soft wheels that didn't grip for ****, but I could sure compress the hell out of the lip in turns, but when trying a harder wheel (different urethane) I was able to grip the same turns full speed, probably could have been going faster. (wheel brands don't need to be mentioned eh? you should get the point that it wasn't the lip that was gripping the road.)
This, for me, has shed some light on Nersh factors or statistics or whatever you call it. I've seen quite a few statements that their higher duro wheels grip more than the lower duros, and the lower duro slip out "ghostly" (at least with Money Hax I saw this) which never made sense to me, and every other company has been saying the opposite, but after getting a set, I think I can see why. The wheel is so big that I believe it over compresses, in lower duros, to where the contact patch bends or convexes so the wheel is no longer making solid contact with the road and you lose grip. Thinking about how this might work, I thought about how my other, much smaller, wheels were interacting with my weight on them. Since a harder duro has less compression depth, I may be asking too much of the wheel with my weight. Even though I can still compress the lips more than a lighter rider, there is still a point in the wheel where compression is not translating to grip anymore, and I believe that distnce is much shorter on a harder wheel. Which is why my much lighter friend can get grip out of the harder wheels, he's not over compressing but just allowing the wheel to remain gripping the road evenly over the contact patch.
I think its awesome,and surprise! None of these girls has ever done more then be wickedly enjoyable when I've done so.
