Fixing Revenge and Rival Pivot Cup Issues
The Revenge is a terrible plate. I covered why I think this way in an earlier blog post. The Rival is a much stronger plate but it suffers from the same pivot issue that the Revenge does. This means the pivot cups wear out super fast, and your plates don't do what you want them to. This is what the destroyed pivot cups look like:
You see the harder plastic insert has been pushed out the bottom of the rubber portion. To reiterate what I have stated earlier, this is due to a too tall upper cushion which doesn't allow the pivot to bottom out in the cup. This means the pivot bashes the bottom of the cup every time you put your skate down after taking a stride. The reason the cup fails is because the pivot cup boss, which is the machined pocket the cup fits into, is not machined to the same shape as the bottom of the pivot cup. There is a void under it.
It's not really clear is this picture, but the boss appears to be cut with a fairly standard twist bit. These bits are sharpened to be about 118deg. The bottom of the new pivot cup is pretty darn flat.
Anyway, here's how I fix this issue:
Old cups out, new cups ready. 5 minute epoxy standing by.
The next bit went by quick. I smeared a bit of grease onto the new cups so the epoxy wouldn't stick to them. I then mixed up the epoxy and put a dollop into each pivot cup boss on one set of plates. I didn't get pictures as I didn't want to waste any epoxy set up time. I then assembled the plates. I put the trucks on and tightened them down to where they were (approximately) when I disassembled them. This puts the pivot cup where it needs to be to function properly.
The manufacturer put this convenient hole at the bottom of the pivot cup boss. The excess epoxy can be seen coming out of it. I wiped this off.
All clean
Ready to go back on the boots
Back together.
