New Bear Grizzly 852 longboard trucks

Yes you can slide with these trucks.
Sliding is as much about technique as it is about hardware. There is no real slide set up, just some gear is easier to do it with.
Trucks don’t really come into it. It is easier to slide with loose trucks or soft bushings.
Freeride wheels with a rounded edge and scrubbed surface, orangatang stimulus, are easier to slide.
The longer the board = the bigger the wheel base = harder it is to slide. But the slide will be more predictable.

Bears 852 will work on a Tan Tien, either top mounted or dropped through. The only restriction with the Tan Tien is the size of the wheels: 70mm wheels should be maximum size without wheel bite.

That is a hard call. Both Paris 180 and Bear 852 are a great trucks. I dont think you can say one is better than the other. However, each truck has its strengths. It appears Loaded design their decks and do their prototyping on Paris Trucks, so a Loaded deck is almost made for a Paris Truck. The same can be said for Landyachtz, they design and make their boards around Bear trucks.
Paris 180 feels like it has extra life on a dervish. Carving and cruising on a Dervish, I would recommend a Paris or a Randal.
If you get into more serious hill bombing, freeride and downhill then Bear 852 would be a good long term option. It will carve and cruise well, and maybe mere mortals like you and I, there is no difference to a Paris. However down the track it would sit well on a serious downhill deck from the Landyachtz range.

At the end of the day, there is no right or wrong answer. You buy on your gut feeling of what you think is right. That usually is what makes you happiest.

They will all skate very similar. The differences are hard to pick. Here is some general direction:
Paris: feel like they skate with a bit more carve and turn, therefore they feel lighter (they are same weight) and more responsive. Paris come in some really nice metallic colours.
Randal: Are the original longboard truck and have lots of options. So if you want to change a baseplate or need a spare part they are always available. Safe choice.
Bears: Designed as the ultimate longboard truck. They come from Landyachtz, and everything they do is built around speed.

Apex 37 at the Hopshop comes with S8 trucks.
Truck type depends on the type of longboarding YOU will do.
S8 are a real surf style truck. Makes doing slash backs easy, and mimicking surfing. They are also easy to chicken out on hills. If you start going too fast you can carve yourself slower. However they would be unstable bombing a hill fast.
Paris and Bears have a similar feel. A lot of skaters choose Paris because of the bling colour factor. Also the venom bushings work well in Paris trucks.
Paris if you want to so some easy freeriding and just looking to carve and slash around.
Bears if you are planning to bomb hills fast (not recommended on a flexy Apex)

Sliding is more about technique. With the right technique and experience, any skateboard or longboard can be slid on.

It is always best to learn on standard equipment. If you have a longboard, standard 180mm truck and 50 degree baseplate is an excellent long term truck.
If you are sliding on a standard skateboard then an Indy truck at the right size for your board. Other top brands like Tracker, Thunder, Theeve are all appropriate.

Out of all the equipment, wheels are the most important. A freeride / slide wheel will be easiest to slide. Fat Free, Stimulus, Durian, Zombie, ABEC11 freeride. All these wheels have a rounded edge that make throwing it slide ways easier and will not hook up unexpectedly on the riding surface.
If you have a sharp edge wheel like a 4president, zig zag, big zig, inHeat then the sharp edge makes it stick hard to the road. They will slide eventually and some skaters like Gabe love softer sharp edge wheel like the Sector 9 66mm race wheel in yellow. Gabe thinks this is one of the best slide wheels he has used. Once the edge is scrubbed a bit, the edge worn down, the wheels will slide well. The sticker the formula the hard it is to slide. So a 82a formula will slide better than a 78a formula. However it depends on the brand. Early Stickers are exactly what they say they are, very sticky to the road and dont slide well and might chunk before they slide. Sector 9 race and freeride wheels in 78a slide well becasue although the formula is soft it is not sticky..

Speeds?
I think new people coming into longboarding always focus on speed. Most think they skate faster than they actually do. You hear the trash talk like: I can do 40kmph, dude I do 50kmph on the way to school, my mumma skates faster than that, I never break tuck slower than 60kmph, oh man I have a 80kmph hill in front yard … its my driveway, no no your all talking crap, I push faster than 90 my dad reads it off the speedo when he is cruising along side me in the commodore.
So much more goes into speed than hardware like trucks, wheels and board. A big mouth is not one of them. There are a lot of top racers in the world that win on production trucks like Grizzly, Paris, Randal, Caliber, Sabre, etc. How fast you are going only matters for one thing, if you are trying to beat the world speed record. Knowing your speed in any other situation is BS.
How fast you go has more to do with the size of the hill, surface condition, your tuck, what you are wearing for aerodynamics. It is also very difficult to pass certain speeds, I am not going to mention what they are but there are a few resistance barriers that require experience and skill to pass through safely.
In regard to speed wobbles, I’ll do a more detailed article another time, it has more to do with your posture than your hardware. Reverse kingpin trucks (grizzly vs indys) are designed for speed. More so if you have double barrels and tight kingpin, but that can suck for carving and turning. However how you skate has more of an effect on your stability. The top skaters in the world use their legs as shock absorbers. Being relaxed, not tensing or tightening up will increase your odds of riding it out or stabilising the situation. If you regularly are getting speed wobbles and crashing, it means you are riding beyond your ability. You need to slow up, get more experience and time on your set up.
Watch the Hopkin Racing team bomb hills you see how they control themselves but allow their legs to flow with the instability of the deck or situation. Jackson recovers instinctively at 57 secs and 1:48. You would call all these guys pros, they skate more hills than they work. The skill they have reached has taken years of training. These videos are also filmed under controlled conditions, do not bomb hills without knowing where you are and what you are doing. You should never skate hills like this without an older and experienced skater to judge and assess the hill.
MORE IMPORTANTLY – no one bombs hills without safety equipment. Helmets are a must. If you value your life and your way of life wear a helmet, gloves, knee pads etc.
It should not be about how fast you can go. It should be about the experience, and that freedom is just as exhilarating at 20kmph as it is at 80kmph. In many ways, the faster you go, the higher your anxiety about your safety which means the experience is less enjoyable.
Next time I talk to Mischo I’ll ask him if he could have reached that speed on Grizzlys. He would say no because he rides and promotes his own brand of trucks but I bet he would have come close…put him on a Penny and he’d still be fast!!

The randals are not the problem. The way they have been set up probably are or the way you are skating.
If you have standard bushings, you’ll want to go to double barrels in Venom or Reflex to get some stability in your trucks.
Sounds like you have your trucks very loose or you have double cones in them. Loose trucks are good but you need some practice and experience to survive the wobbles that come with that set up. Most longboarders will use their body to ride out the instability. Their legs are shock absorbers, their body does not tense up but remain relaxed. They will also carve a bit to stop any vibrations that are causing wobbles.
Bears have changed their standard bushings over the years and it can still vary. The standard double barrel set up is a nice bushing combo. Middle of the road, not too hard not too soft. We always recommend skaters break them in, get use to the truck then decide if they want to upgrade bushings.
Sabres are nice but are a bit longer and the baseplate angle lower. This will create a stablier truck but you sacrifice a bit of responsiveness when carving.

As a top mount board, there will always be some wheelbite depending on how loose the trucks are. However, the great thing about a top mount is it is easy to reduce the risk by adding a riser under the truck. On a drop thru you do not have that option, to reduce wheelbite you have to modify/cut the deck to create new shape. This is also an option with a top mount, sanding bigger wheel wells into the deck.
Zombie Hawgs are nice, but at 76mm you will get some bite with gangsta lean in your truck.
A 70mm freeride wheel (coming soon in the Hawg range) is a good option for a top mount like wolf shark. Part of the progression with freeriding is gradually un tightening the trucks and letting them, loose. Creates more options, you find it allows a bit of style of loose play into your skating, get you out of a few tight situations having more movability. 70mm to 72mm freeride wheels look at Stimulus or new centreset wheels like Abec Freeride, sector 9 freeride, tunnel krakatoa, or venom tweakers