Midsole & Sole Swapping (Preview Air Jordan 4 Retro)

Hey guys, so welcome back to another restore my sneakers dot com video. In this episode, I’ll be talking about midsole swapping and sole swapping. What is midsole swapping? Midsole swapping is a restoration technique that involves replacing a damaged midsole that’s crumbled or cracked with a new one or one that’s in better condition in order to make the shoe wearable again. What is sole swap? Sole swap is another restoration technique that involves replacing a worn out sole, with a new one ore one in better condition. Some of you out there maybe wondering Why would someone go through all this trouble just to do this when they can just go out and buy a brand new pair of shoes? For instance the 1999 Air Jordan 4 Retro in the White Cement Grey color way. This particular color way has yet to come back out. If it does, it will come back out with modification. Such as, the Nike Air will be replaced with a Jumpman, the leather won’t be the same, the netting won’t be the same, and possibly even the cushioning. Some of you may be wondering, don’t I need the same exact shoes to do a midsole swap? Not necessarily. There are a lot of sneakers out there that use the same Air Jordan 4 midsole type. And such as an actual retro air Jordan 4, the Nike flight 89, the Nike flight condor, and the air Jordan dub zero. The only reason why we need to use a newer midsole from the current retros, is to make the shoe wearable again. Which is the ultimate goal of this restoration. Now some of you might be saying, well now the shoes not original. But that wasn’t the point. The point is to make the shoe wearable again. And of course if they do bring these backs, you won’t have the Nike air, and some people out there want to be able to rock this shoes with the Nike Air on the back. And this is the only way. So why did the Air Jordan 4 midsole crack in the first place? There are two reasons. First one being age, these shoes weren’t meant to last forever. You buy them, you wear them, you replace them. That is literally the life span of a sneaker. Second, storage. A lot of these shoes were stored with silica packs to prevent the shoe from yellowing. However, what happened was, that silica pack ended up drying out the midsole. So when it came time to wear these shoes, they crumbled. The next thing I want to talk about is sole swapping And an example I’m going to use is the Air Jordan 11. There have been a couple of people who have asked what I can do about the heel drag problem on the soles? Well, there really isn’t anything that you can do to patch that problem, but what you can do is replace the sole. The next thing is the yellowing. There are some instances where sea glow is not able to remove the yellowing from the soles. And usually that’s because sea glow was used in the past or the yellowing is just really bad. Now, that just leaves you with the option of replacing the soles. Now you might be wondering, do I need the same exact shoe from the same exact year? Not necessarily. And a suitable donor would be the 2007 retro of the Air Jordan 11 low. Which uses a very similar color scheme for the traction pods but with the differences in the Jumpman. The purpose of this video was to introduce our next restoration project and that involves the Air Jordan 4 Retro. Which we’ll have completed some time later this year. So there you have it, that’s midsole and sole swapping in a nut shell. Hope you guys enjoyed this video and be sure to stay tuned for our next episode.