Modern Vintage

Uprading vintage Vanathane wheels, still first choice for many skaters, from the 1980s into the 21st century.

Vintage Vanathane is for many skaters the favorite material for roller skate wheels. It provides a perfect balance between slip and grip on hardwood skating floors, with resistance against flat spots/flattening.

Dan Miller from Adonis invented a perfect way, to combine vintage wheels with modern skate wheels technology. In short: Take a vintage Vanathane wheel and upgrade it with a modern aluminum core and micro bearings. The result looks very cool.

After the CNC lathe machine processing, the wheels have 52 mm diameter, compared to 55-57 mm of the original wheels. The width is kept, but the inserted hub has a 5 mm offset, to fix tire and hub with a c-clip, so the contact patch is 27 mm. It becomes clear, that it isn’t a mass product. Gaining old Vanathane wheels, manufacturing of the hub, processing the wheels, and assembling both justify the name “Adonis Custom vintage vanathane wheels”.

How do they roll? Firstly it is Vanathane. Great. Perfect balance between grip and slide. The particular characteristics depend also on the origin wheel, which is used. In this case it was a set of All American Dream wheels. But the later version manufactured by Crest, the company which took over the Vanathane skate wheels business for few years in the early 1990s after Vanguard’s discontinuation.

The wheels are rather slick, compared to my other Vanathane wheels. Reasons could be the origin wheels, or the narrow contact patch. I would rather think that the only 27 mm width makes the wheels somewhat more slick on hardwood floors. Nevertheless I like this kind of slide. The small diameter facilitates getting a handle on this. The wheels provide a low balance point. Even few millimeters less diameter are noticeably and improve the stability.

In a nutshell: If you like Vanathane wheels, you will be perfectly satisfied with the Adonis Custom vintage Vanathane wheels. Main features are the lesser weight, very cool appearance and a plus of skating stability. Clear recommendation for my part.

This review is based on the author’s own experience and was not sponsored or supported by any companies cited in the article. In short: I bought the wheels!