Getting all wound up or down

Why have you got skateboard wheels?

A reasonable question, I am 35 years old, in desperate need of growing up. I do continue to fight it so I can understand family concerns that I might be regressing back to teenage past times.

But no, I had other ideas for these wheels.
The drivers window winding handle on my Iveco Daily was missing its knob. This makes the archaic process of manually opening a window painful (I mean seriously, my 1992 VW Corrado has electric windows, this is from a different decade and still sucks!) but where there's a turd sandwich, make lemonade?
I had seen skateboard wheels used as winder knobs before so decided to do the same thing here.
As a (completely useless) skateboarding fan of old I had to do some justice to this however. You can do this very cheaply if you wish, wheels are a couple of quid as are bearings on eBay but I wanted to do a little better than that.
Brands have changed but it's fairly easy to pic a wheel that has the look and feel that I want. Not simply a plastic wheel but Nylon for that waxy feel. Colour/ decals are a plenty so I looked for something that would tie in at first but decided instead to go for a bit of a feature with some white Venom wheels with eye catching font in black and the logo and size in red. 
As for the size; I wanted them to be fairly small  so not a cruiser (wide) of inline (tall) wheel and settled on 50mm Diameter. I could only buy a full set of these but the price wasn't silly so I was happy to have a couple of spares in case a mate fancied doing a project too.
Bearings are bearings right?
Wrong! High on my mind was being asked if I had ABEC 9 bearings on my skateboard as a kid. They weren't, my skateboard sucked as much as I did.
I bought a pair of ABEC 11's with the fact prominently displayed on their grease seals. This was an error, I had forgotten that it was 2 bearings per wheel so had to buy two more. I went for cheaper ABEC 11's for the back bearings (nobody will know!) and they were noticeably lower quality compared to the premium outers. Not all bearing's are created equal apparently.

Assembly

Right, to the point.
The window winder crank handles simply pull away from the door card off of a splined shaft. There is a little plastic spring inside the winder handle which can be pulled out to aid cleaning (mine was full for horse hair and dust shockingly).
In the shed I butchered off the knob on the passenger handle then set them aside.
The bearings are a press fit to the wheels, one either side. You can either press down on a die to fit them of pass a bolt through once both bearings are in the wheel and tighten it till both bearings are seated properly.
I then offered up a wheel to the winder handle where it was sat a bit proud for me so I took a saw to the knob stub so it stuck out about 2.5mm or just a bit more than the depth from the side wall of the wheel to the bearing grease seal. 
I then selected a suitable length M6 SS bolt, nut, washer x2 and one split washer. 
I tried both orientations with the bolt head or nut outermost and although "nuts out" is more true to the look, I preferred the tidy Allen bolt head on display. 
The build up is: Bolt, split washer, wheel, washer, handle, washer, nut. 
These do not need to be super tight or you will make the bearings bind.
Finally I put a dab of RTV on the bolts threaded end and nut to prevent them scratching the door cards when operated.

Finally I podged the new window winding handles, resplendent in their new skater cool knobbery onto the splined shaft at their up resting point. I like 90 degrees clockwise although 180, or down, will prevent the window dropping open if the mechanism is loose.

 At least now if I grind down a railing in the van I can pretend it was intentionally ironic.


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