Pabloskates Slotted Quad Roller Skate Heels: The Perfect Fit for Your Roller Skate Plates

Oct 2

5 min read

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Anyone who's converted enough boots into roller skates will eventually run into the same problem: the heel doesn't quite fit where the plate needs to go. Traditional replacement heels normally come with fixed mounting holes, which is fine if those holes happen to line up with your chosen plate and mounting position. When they don't, you're left drilling additional holes, enlarging existing ones or generally butchering a perfectly good heel just to get the plate mounted where you actually want it. That's exactly the problem we designed Pabloskates Slotted Skate Heels to solve.

Why Does Heel Position Matter?

When we're mounting a quad plate, we don't position it according to where the holes in a heel happen to be. The plate needs to sit in the correct position beneath the boot, taking into account the boot centre line, axle position, wheelbase and the intended characteristics of the finished skate. Moving a plate simply because that's where a pre-drilled heel allows it to sit is completely backwards. The heel should adapt to the plate position, not the plate position to the heel.

The Problem With Traditional Pre-Drilled Heels

A conventional replacement heel usually gives you a handful of fixed mounting holes, but roller skate plates aren't standardised around one mounting pattern. Different manufacturers, different plate sizes and even different mounting positions can put the hardware somewhere completely different. You might get lucky and everything lines up perfectly, but if it doesn't, the usual solution is to start modifying the heel. We've seen holes drilled immediately alongside existing holes, holes enlarged sideways and sections removed just to get mounting bolts through. It works, but there had to be a better way.

So We Got Rid of the Fixed Holes

Instead of trying to create another heel with a supposedly "universal" set of mounting holes, we took a different approach. Pabloskates Slotted Heels use elongated mounting slots, giving the mounting hardware room to move along the heel rather than forcing it into predetermined positions. Place the heel where it needs to sit, position the plate correctly, slide the mounting hardware into the required position and tighten everything down. Simple.

A Heel That Adapts to the Plate

The big advantage of the slotted design is flexibility. Rather than designing the heel around one particular plate or bolt spacing, the slots provide a much wider range of usable mounting positions. That's particularly useful for custom conversions where you're dealing with different boot shapes, plate lengths and mounting patterns. Playmaker, Sure-Grip Rock, Avenger, Avanti, Reactor and other plates can all have very different mounting requirements, so having a heel that isn't tied to one fixed hole pattern gives the person mounting the skate considerably more freedom.

Put the Plate Where It Actually Needs to Be

This is really the whole reason we developed them. We don't want to compromise plate placement because a £4 piece of plastic has its holes in the wrong place. On a custom skate build, we'll establish where we want the plate first. Once we're happy with the centre line, axle position and overall geometry, the slotted heel can be positioned underneath and the mounting hardware adjusted within the slots to suit. The plate determines the mounting position, not the heel.

No More Butchering Your Heel Holes

If you've ever taken a drill or rotary tool to a replacement heel because a bolt is just a few millimetres away from the hole, these were basically designed for you. Rather than drilling another hole partially through an existing one or turning a neat round hole into an improvised slot, the adjustment is already built into the heel. Apart from looking considerably neater, it also makes installation and future adjustment much easier.

Designed and Manufactured by Pabloskates

These aren't generic heels we've bought in and rebranded. Pabloskates Slotted Heels are designed and manufactured in-house specifically for custom quad roller skate conversions. The design has been developed and tweaked through actual skate builds, with the slots extended to provide as much useful adjustment as possible while retaining the structure required around the mounting area. That's one of the advantages of manufacturing parts ourselves: if something could work better, we can change it.

Multiple Sizes and Heights

Not every boot has the same footprint, so we've developed the heels in different sizes rather than trying to make one enormous heel fit everything. They're currently available in Small, Regular and Large, covering everything from smaller boots through to the much larger hockey boots we regularly convert. We also produce 17mm and 22mm versions, allowing the heel height to be selected according to the boot and finished setup rather than being stuck with a single option.

Plenty of Colours

They don't have to be boring either. Our heels can be produced in a huge range of colours including black, white, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, aqua, purple, pink, grey, clear, silver, gold and rainbow, along with other colours as materials become available. You can keep them discreet underneath the boot or deliberately make them part of the colour scheme of the finished skates.

Made From PETG

Our current heels are 3D printed in PETG, which we've moved to after extensive printing and real-world development of our skate components. Producing them ourselves also means we're not restricted to whatever sizes, colours and hole patterns a conventional skate-parts manufacturer happens to offer. It's a small component, but it's one that can make a surprisingly big difference when you're trying to put together a clean custom conversion.

They're Only £4 Per Pair

One of the objectives with our 3D printed parts is to solve problems without turning a simple piece of skate hardware into an expensive specialist component. Pabloskates Slotted Heels are £4 per pair, making them a straightforward option whether they're being used on one of our own conversions or bought for your own custom build.

A Simple Solution to an Annoying Problem

There's nothing particularly complicated about the idea, and that's probably why we like it. Fixed holes weren't giving us the freedom we wanted when mounting different roller skate plates, so we replaced them with slots. Position your plate correctly, put the heel where it needs to be, line up the mounting hardware within the slots and tighten it down. No moving the plate to suit the heel. No drilling a collection of overlapping holes. No butchering your brand-new heels.

If you're building your own custom roller skates or converting a pair of hockey or ice skate boots and you've discovered your heel holes aren't where you need them, Pabloskates Slotted Skate Heels are designed to give you the adjustment needed to get everything exactly where you want it.

Ready to try them on your own build?

BUY PABLOSKATES SLOTTED QUAD ROLLER SKATE HEELS HERE and select “Pre-Cut Slots” when choosing your options.