38" Custom Illuminati G-Bomb Build

Brad · January 19, 2021, 2:26am

Ok, it been a long time coming, project was on stand still for a couple of years. Finally got the first major thing done which is to have a custom enclosure machined to house all the electronics.

I’m very happy with the results due to mesurements being absolutely spot on the first go.

Step file of enclosure and marking tool plate. Rest of my work here.

Enclosure Top

Enclosure Bottom

The battery fit in perfectly with out any looseness at all, need a bit of pressure to “pop” it in place. (Eboosted 12s5p)

Heat inserts fit in perfectly, will be using my soldering iron to heat it up and insert these! Ten of these in total

Rubber grommets, almost could not get these little things in, had to have a little break after three gets put in to give my fingers some rest (had to use that little screwdriver to fully insert it), tight fit = less water or debris getting in!

I know the grommet tube is sticking out instead of inside, but I prefer to do it that way, will use heat shrink with some water proof sealant gel in it to keep phase wires in place. There is a small notch of exact width and depth for the hall sensors so the plastic wall does not bite into the wires.

VESC 6 MKII fastened onto the board with screws

Screws holding the VESC 6 MKII in place, Just holding it for now, will buy rubber washers and black version screws and loctite for it.

This is the marker guide plate for accurate marking on the board for drilling holes

Shape of marker guide plate fites the bottom of the board absolutely perfefctly, the top may look like it is a bit off the board, but that is just the shadow.

The marker guide plate was the top 3 mm of the enclosure copied, so that means the enclosure shape will fit perfectly as well.

For battery charging, I have purchased a GRIN satiator. My version is for 8s to 12s with a max voltage (which can be adjusted) of 63V. Amps can be incresed in 0.1amps increments from 0.1 up to a max of 7amps.

I will come back with updates for heat inserts being inserted and board having been drilled.

Waiting for inline fuses from Mouser which is in Brisbane right now so expecting it tomorrow or Wednesday.

Inline is rated for 58 volts and 60 amps and each VESC 6 MKII will have it’s own inline fuse.
Fuses will be 40 amps, smallest one from Mouser is 20 amps and goes up in 10 amp increments till the biggest one at 60 amps.

ZachTetra · January 19, 2021, 2:31am

What if’s the enclosure made of?

Brad · January 19, 2021, 2:35am

ABS, same as Evolve bamboo enclosures.

I need it to melt for heat inserts so I decided that was the best material.

BenjaminF · January 19, 2021, 2:55am

Thats some seriously impressive fabrication! Can you tell us a bit about why you made the choices you made for this build?

Brad · January 19, 2021, 4:21am

My first electric skateboard was an Evolve Bamboo of which it’s short coming gave me the idea of making the perfect board for myself and what I need to do to bring that board to reality.

First and fore most, very shit battery, need big pack and settled on 12s5p with the p side by side to keep the thickness thin. Reduce battery sag and increase range.

Second, board is a bit too small. It was comfortable but once my riding skill increased, some times for long rides, I would like to adjust my stance for whatever reason and the Evolve Bamboo board did not really allow that and the wheels would bite into the toe of my shoes.

Third, motors at the back is a no no, cannot stand the board up, motors under the deck is too close to the ground. Need the motors away in a way that I could still stand the board up, away from the road and safe from ledges, kerbs etc, also provide ease of adjusting belts if I need to.

Fourth, Pneumatics is nice but no thanks, do not want to deal with flats…Big thane wheels is where it is at for me, but too many have square edges, which would rail along uneven pavings if travelling almost parallel to it. Enter curved thanes from SR/Iwonder (Discovery version). Big enough and not square.

Fifth, drop down, I want bigger wheels but keep the board down. Evolve Bamboo is just drop through and the board did not go down that much really.

Sixth, Single hangers, not sidewinders and also need to find the perfect base plate angles for such a wide wheelbase. 38” is just the board itself, not the wheelbase

Seventh, Evolve Bamboo has thin as shit motor mounts and that was the first fail of the board, it broke and the belt got caught up in the wheel locking it and throwing me off, no problem as I have scaphoid protection plastic on my gloves and all I did was just simply slide till I came to a stand still. Seen many posts showing pics of broken mounts. It was only 3mm thick and of very low quality aluminium.

Eighth, fixed motor mounts, less things to check.

Ninth, fit in pulleys with it’s own bearing, I really liked that.

Tenth, hangers were too wide. I prefer to try and keep it more like normal long board so I had the hangers made as narrow as possible that could fit two enclosed MayTech 6355 motors with non adjustable motor mounts and it ended up being 211mm wide inside bearing to inside bearing.

First thing I had to look for is a board that will fit what I need in the list above and be able to house a 12s5p flat battery. I had a lot of trouble, it cannot be drop through and cannot be just a flat board with no concave. Another problem is how to have a board narrow enough at the ends to keep the hanger narrow and also allow the motors to sit above the board and still stay out of the way?? and a way to find what my perfect base plate angle is without having to buy all the base plates.

Solution was eventually found in SubSonic’s custom build page ( It is no longer on the website so I think they have stop offering custom made boards ) where they offer custom made boards of their normal board catalogues. I found that there is a board called the Illuminati which is designed to be used with G-Bomb brackets.

I had to look up G-Bomb brackets and viola, found the solution to the finding the perfect base plate angle problem and keeping the motors above and out of the way while still keeping the hangers as narrow as allowed by the dual motors!

Now, the standard Illuminati board was too short and narrow, no matter, had a custom one made at 38” long and 10” wide of which you now see in the photos!

Back then, I do not think anyone had any G-Bomb esk8. ( I do know that there is a girl here on the board that has one now ) which means I now need to make my own custom hangers, mounts and axles. So I had the Caliber Precision hangers and bolt on axle reverse engineered and then made changes to the design and gave the step files to the public for free to use as templates to design from or as is. Now that I had the custom designed hangers in step file, I could then made custom motor mounts. I had to made it more than paper thin and make some ramps for the phase wires to be eased down toward the hangers. Some mounts just simply force the phase wires almost 90 degrees down.

Once that is all done and a few errors later, all was done, then I made a single hanger/mount piece which is not quite done yet but will do for those who use screw on pulleys though.

I wanted a good quality job done for the enclosure so it looked like a boutique made board rather than a DIY and decided to go the CNC route and to keep it clean looking, opted for heat inserts like evolve and have the screw heads covered with grip tape which means I need to go ABS as the material. I would have designed the enclosure with one of the poster’s shop which had heat sinks for two VESC 6 MKII’s for a nicely more professional look rather than just eight ugly screws at the bottom of the board but the enclosure has already been made when I discovered the custom heat sink. Maybe another time…

Yeah it is built from the ground up with exactly what I wanted in mind, once I find the perfect base plate angle combo, I will have these made and set the G-Bomb bracket angles to 0 and slap these two on!

Brad · January 19, 2021, 4:37am

I bought three ceramic ID 25 OD 42 9 W bearings for my upcoming pulley design for Cloud Wheel discovery.

Chose ID 25 so there will be very minimal material added to the hanger for it as I only need enough to meet the ID ring, nothing more. Pretty close as you can see in pic below!

The smallest pulley it can fit in would be 34T HDT5. The pic below is 36T HDT5

I know these are original CloudWheels, won’t be using these, I have bought black CloudWheel Discovery set which I will use.

Brad · January 23, 2021, 3:49pm

Did not recieve my inline fuse or Metr dual thingy. Oh well, went ahead anyway with drilling holes in the deck and putting on adhesive foam.

Marked with white out for drilling and after drilling.

Adhesive foam outline and put on the board, happy with the results. Put white towel on floor so I can more easily line up the holes in the foam with the board hole.

Was going to silicone seal the charging port, but noticed that there is no outside nut to hold it in place, it is done via inside side, but it has already been wired…

Will update tomorrow with heat inserts and temp putting enclosure on the board to check if it all fits right.

rusins · January 23, 2021, 4:32pm

Man, what a unique build!

I don’t see why you still couldn’t cut out a hole for the ESC heat-sink if you really wanted one. And I’ve definitely forgotten the nut on a charge port once myself

Brad · January 24, 2021, 2:04am

I do not have the equipment to do a pro job cos I live in an apartment. Maybe later on, I will take the enclosure off and cut a section out

The charge port was intentional, Eboosted explained to me that it had to be done for shipping and I will have to desolder and resolder it once I put it through the hole. Not a problem at all, all good! Just never did that with live wires.

Brad · January 24, 2021, 10:54am

I have put in the heat inserts without any issue, just found out my soldering iron has a max temp of 480, won’t go any higher .

Will do charger port tomorrow cos it 6:30 pm now and I’m a bit apprenshive.

Putting the enclosure on the board to see if it fits, was intially worried when I had difficulty putting the screws into the top two holes, but managed to fit it in.

Measurement had to be absolutely perfect because the inserts is actually at a slight angle instead of just straight up so the screw head will be flush with the board while being on the concave edges.

I’m two screws short so two holes still open…

Highest clearance point from ground is 5.3 cm ( battery ) and lowest point is 4.7 cm ( VESC ).

Not too worried as I had an Evolve Bamboo and did some riding with those little black 83mm wheels, did not have any clearance issues.

rusins · January 24, 2021, 11:14am

Cut it off and add XT-30 connectors on it or something; operating with live wires isn’t the best, especially on something as small as a charge port! You can add a fuse if there isn’t one already during the process.

But dang, it’s coming together nicely! I now see what you meant by the motors being mounted away from the road, looks crazy! Will you be adding a foot-stop or cover or something so that your pants don’t get caught up in the motors?

Brad · January 25, 2021, 4:29am

The motors may look close but it is well clear of the rear footing, there won’t be any issues unless I let a girl with ankle length flowing dress ride it.

Got my inline fuses today.

Two of it should fit, although it is going to be very tight which is why I sold the DieBie BMS.

Power outage today, hope it comes back on before evening…

b264 · January 25, 2021, 9:54am

Are you sure this will be perfectly concentric to the axle?

Movation · January 25, 2021, 10:24am

Super nice build…

Brad · January 25, 2021, 10:59am

Yes I’m sure it will. It is all CNC machined. I will edit the step file of the single hanger-mount and make a round section.

Not seeing why you might think being perfectly concentric would be an issue.

Just wondering, what were you trying to say in the second post?

Power outage at apartment building will continue till tomorrow morning

Upon closer examination, the inline fuses will not fit in, so will have to make do without it. Enclosure outer edge dimensions still won’t need to be changed, just the depth at the rear for moving the VESC MKII’s further back to free up a bit more space.

Nevertheless all good!

Brad · January 25, 2021, 11:45am

I keep changing my mind about whatever I can fit the inline fuses in there

This config might fit in, maybe??

rusins · January 25, 2021, 2:18pm

Wait, fuses between the battery and ESCs? Please don’t, a fuse blowing up will mean no power for acceleration, or braking. And braking in such a situation will fry your ESC.

Only the charge port and non vital accessories such as lights should be fused IMO.

jack.luis · January 25, 2021, 2:33pm

Exactly this. Also this

sleepless · January 25, 2021, 3:59pm

People sometimes solder wires directly to a blade fuse, when space is an issue. There are inline versions that do not have the chunky replacement holder, but if your fuse blows I doubt it’ll be a roadside repair. I would want to do a root cause teardown anyway

Brad · January 25, 2021, 11:20pm

Ah, good to know, thanks for telling me.

Yes I do have a smaller inine fuse holder for 7 amps.

I just vaguely remember another thread here or back in builders saying should put in fuse between the battery and escs so if there is a short, it will blow out At least what you said is making sense to me and less work for me!