Getting the carve right: adjusting your SuperCarve 2.0 trucks for more flow or more control

Most riders leave their trucks exactly as they came out of the box, then wonder why the board feels either too twitchy on the hills or too stiff to enjoy on the flats. The truth is, Evolve's SuperCarve 2.0 trucks are built with more adjustment range than most people realise, and a few small turns of a nut can change the entire feel of a ride without touching a single other component.

This matters more than it sounds. A board that carves beautifully through Auckland's waterfront paths might feel unsettled dropping into the hills around Wellington. Get the trucks dialled in properly and the same board handles both.

Two kingpins, two jobs

SuperCarve 2.0 is a double kingpin truck, which means each truck has two separate pivot points rather than one. One pivot sits nearer the board, the other nearer the road and wheels. Each pivot has its own bushing set, a barrel bushing on the board side and a cone bushing on the road side, and each has its own kingpin nut that can be adjusted independently of the other.

This is the part most riders miss. On a standard single kingpin setup, you have one adjustment and one compromise. On SuperCarve 2.0, you can set the two pivots to do different jobs, which is what gives the truck its deeper, more responsive turning range.

Start from a known point, not a guess

Before changing anything, it helps to reset both trucks to the same baseline so you know what you are adjusting from. Set the board-side and road-side kingpin nuts on the front truck so two full threads are visible beyond each nut, then do the same on the rear truck. This gives you a balanced, even starting point across all four pivots.

From there, stand on the board without riding it and rock your weight from heel to toe. You will feel almost immediately whether the setup feels loose and floaty or firm and locked in. That single test tells you which direction to adjust before you have even left the driveway.

What tightening and loosening actually change

Turning a kingpin nut clockwise compresses the bushing underneath it, which reduces how far the truck can turn and adds support through the turn. Turning it anticlockwise does the opposite, giving the truck more room to move and making the board feel looser underfoot.

Too much compression and the board stops wanting to carve at all. It feels planted but flat, and you end up steering with your whole body rather than just leaning. Too little compression and the board can feel unpredictable at speed, with the trucks moving more than you expect and the deck washing out under load. Somewhere between those two extremes is where most riders want to sit, and where that point sits depends entirely on how you ride.

Tuning the two pivots separately

Once you understand the basic tightening and loosening effect, the real advantage of a double kingpin truck starts to show. You do not have to treat both pivots the same way.

A common approach is to keep the road-side pivot slightly looser, which makes the board easier to tip into a turn, and the board-side pivot slightly tighter, which gives you more support once you are leaning deep into that turn. As an example, some riders run around two visible threads on the road-side nut and around four on the board-side nut. This is not a fixed rule, just one way of separating initiation from support, and your own setup should come from testing rather than copying a number.

Test slowly before you trust it

After any adjustment, do the static heel-to-toe test again, then take the board for a short, low-speed ride rather than heading straight into a fast run. Figure-eight turns are a good way to feel how the board transitions from a heel-side to a toe-side lean, since that is where an overly loose or overly tight setup shows itself first.

It is common to make a change, ride it, and then back the setting off slightly, sometimes by as little as half a thread, once you have felt it in motion. Keep the tool with you while you test so you are not walking back and forth for every small tweak. Never jump straight into a fast descent on a setting you have not tested at low speed first.

Why this matters even more on a shorter deck

Truck feel is amplified on a shorter, lighter board, because there is less deck length to smooth out sudden movement. That makes truck tuning genuinely worthwhile on the Stoke X, which is built around SuperCarve 2.0 trucks in a compact, commuter-friendly package.

If you are riding the Stoke X mostly on campus paths or last-mile commutes through flatter cities like Hamilton or Christchurch, a slightly looser setup can make the board feel livelier and more fun to carve on the straights. If you are covering more varied terrain, tackling hills or riding somewhere with sharper gradients like the streets around Queenstown, a firmer setup through the board-side pivot gives you more confidence holding a line at speed. The board does not change. The way it responds to your weight does.

Small adjustments, real difference

None of this requires guesswork about torque settings or forcing a nut down as far as it will go. Adjust in small increments, test properly between each change, and trust what you feel underfoot over any fixed number. The two-thread starting point is just that, a starting point, not a rule to chase back to if your own setup ends up somewhere else.

Spend twenty minutes on this the first weekend you get the board and you will understand it far better than any spec sheet could tell you. A board tuned to how you actually ride beats a board left on factory settings every time, and with SuperCarve 2.0, that tuning is entirely in your hands.