Well, well, well…
Changing decks is often a good motivator, not that I needed any motivation to go out and skate these days, but it certainly doesn't hurt.
I got curious about those Polar decks that have wheel wells and ended up getting one. It's the Polar Hjalte Halberg Insomnia 8.5 inch deck, with an 14.5 inch wheelbase, dimensions that speak to me.
Larger background for this new deck is also that I'm trying to consolidate my bowl setup (> 9 board and trucks) with my smaller feature/street setup. It looks like long-term I'm settling in on 8.5-8.6 decks, with 8.5 axle width trucks.
On the wheel size I'm still on the fence. The wheels on my current setup are down from original 54mm to about 50mm. Especially in the bowl I started noticing that I need more pump than I used to for fly-outs or getting up to the coping. Not sure if it's the shrinking wheel size or if the bearings are on their way out. I just recently cleaned the bearings, but didn't notice a big change in performance.
After a short warm up phase, and seeing how the new deck behaves - much snappier and the new griptape just sticks to your feet, as expected I guess - I put on the large wheels from my bowl setup. Those are V-shaped (or tablet shape) 56mm wheels, down to about 55mm by now.
I'm not using any risers or shockpads on the new setup either, trying to make use of the wheel wells to help against wheel bite. It works OK so far. Wheel bit is still a real thing, especially landing a Nollie with the full weight on the heel front wheel, which is a speciality of mine.
Otherwise, I kind of like the larger wheels on it. The added weight feels like it helps with spinning the deck in a more controlled way, on pop shuvits for example. The grind lock-in on those boxy wheels also feels better, at least I didn't slip fully onto the curb on the few slappies I've tried. To summarize, it's a couple of very small but noticeable differences so far.
We'll see if I get tired of the larger wheels. I have a slightly smaller set of unused 54mm Square-shaped wheels in my drawer, just in case.