Bushings explained: how to tune the way your board turns

Most riders adjust their trucks when the board feels wrong. They tighten the kingpin nut until the wobble goes away, or loosen it until the carve comes back, and leave it there. That works up to a point. But the real variable sitting inside every Evolve truck is the bushing, and most people never touch it.

Bushings are the small urethane cylinders that sit around the kingpin and control how the truck pivots. Change the bushing durometer and you change everything: how quickly the board responds to your weight shift, how much lean you get from a given input, how stable it feels at 40 km/h. The kingpin nut adjusts preload on whatever bushing is already there. The bushing itself determines what that adjustment is actually working with.

What durometer actually means for how the board rides

Durometer is the hardness rating of the urethane, expressed on the A scale. Lower numbers are softer. Higher numbers are harder. The practical difference between an 87A and a 95A bushing is significant enough to feel on the first corner.

Soft bushings (around 87A) give you a deeper, more responsive carve. The truck pivots freely, which makes the board feel surfy and fluid underfoot. That is excellent for relaxed riding at moderate speeds, for riders who want to feel the board working beneath them on smooth coastal paths or flat suburban streets. The drawback is that soft bushings have less resistance to unwanted movement, which means that at higher speeds, small weight shifts can introduce instability.

Hard bushings (95A and above) do the opposite. They dampen the truck's range of motion, increase straight-line stability, and give you a more planted, confident feel at speed. If you are pushing toward 50 km/h on a long straight in Brisbane's outer suburbs or Perth's coastal highway stretches, hard bushings keep the board tracking predictably under your feet. The trade-off is that tight, responsive carving becomes harder to initiate.

Medium bushings, typically 90A to 92A, sit between those two states. They suit riders who want a usable combination of both, which is most people most of the time.

The geometry matters too, not just the hardness

Bushings come in different shapes: barrel, cone and barrel-cone combinations. Each shape changes how force is distributed across the bushing under lean.

A barrel bushing resists lean progressively. As you lean harder into a turn, the resistance builds. This creates a predictable, controlled arc. It is the default shape on most Evolve boards and works well for the majority of riding scenarios.

A cone bushing has less material on one side, which means it offers less resistance at the start of the lean but can feel looser overall. Some riders mix shapes, running a barrel on the board side and a cone on the road side of the truck, to get an initial looseness that firms up as the lean deepens. That combination suits riders who want the board to initiate turns easily but still have something to push against in a committed carve.

For most electric skateboard riding, barrel-barrel is the sensible starting point. From there, you tune based on feedback.

Why rider weight is the most underrated variable

Bushing recommendations almost always come with a caveat about rider weight, and it matters more than most people expect. A lighter rider on 95A bushings may find the board barely responds to their input. A heavier rider on 87A bushings will compress them fully just by standing on the board, with almost no progressive resistance left.

The general rule is straightforward: lighter riders lean softer, heavier riders lean harder. But the actual sweet spot depends on your riding style and what you are using the board for. A 90 kg rider who only commutes on flat sealed paths might prefer 90A for a comfortable ride. The same rider doing fast runs on Gold Coast's long open paths might want 95A for the extra stability at higher speeds.

This is worth knowing before you buy bushings. Changing a set of bushings is inexpensive and takes about ten minutes with a skate tool. It is one of the most cost-effective ways to meaningfully change how the board feels.

Where this matters most on the Diablo Carbon

The Diablo Carbon Street has a forged carbon deck with zero flex. That is by design. The rigid platform gives you precise feedback and eliminates the energy loss you get from deck flex at speed. But it also means the board transmits exactly what the trucks and bushings are doing, without any natural dampening from deck movement.

That rigidity is one of the reasons the Carbon feels more stable and more planted than the Bamboo at the top end of the speed range. The 50 km/h top speed in production configuration is the same across the Diablo lineup, but the Carbon's rigid platform makes riding at that speed feel significantly more composed. It is not a subtle difference.

On a board like this, bushing tuning has a direct and noticeable effect. There is no deck movement softening the truck response. What the bushing does, the rider feels clearly. Riders who push the Diablo Carbon hard in Sydney's northern suburbs or through Melbourne's flatter outer stretches will notice the difference between a 90A and a 95A setup on long fast runs. The stock setup is well balanced, but knowing you can tune it is useful.

The Diablo Carbon also supports a 120 kg max load. For heavier riders, this is one of the few boards in the lineup built to handle that weight without compromise, and matching the bushing hardness to body weight on a rigid platform like this is worth the small effort.

How to know when your bushings need changing

Worn bushings do not always look damaged. They can appear intact while having lost a significant portion of their resistance. The signs show up in how the board rides: a vague, unpredictable turn response, speed wobble that did not used to appear at a given pace, or a feeling that the kingpin nut adjustment is no longer doing much regardless of where you set it.

If you have been riding the same board for 12 months or more without touching the bushings, it is worth pulling them out and checking. Compressed, deformed or cracked urethane should be replaced. Even bushings that look fine may have softened enough to be worth swapping, particularly if your riding style or the speeds you ride at have changed since you bought the board.

Evolve uses universal bushing sizing across the entire range. Soft (87A), medium (90A to 92A) and hard (95A and above) options are available, and the change takes a kingpin nut, a skate tool and a few minutes on any flat surface.

Start conservative, then adjust

The temptation when tuning is to go straight to the extreme, either the softest bushing for maximum carve or the hardest for maximum stability. The better approach is to start closer to the middle and make one change at a time. Ride the same route you know well, at the speeds you normally ride, before adjusting again.

If the board feels too stiff and unresponsive in turns, go softer. If it feels vague or unstable above 30 km/h, go harder. Give each setup at least two or three proper rides before drawing conclusions. Bushing feel changes slightly as the urethane seats and settles, so the first ride is not always representative.

The goal is a board that responds predictably to your input at every speed you actually ride. For most people, that is a medium to hard setup on a rigid platform like the Diablo Carbon, with the kingpin nut adjusted to leave a small amount of play before resistance kicks in. From there, you tune to taste.

It is a small thing that makes a real difference. And once you understand it, you never think about trucks the same way again.