The StreetCarver
Ok, so early this year I set out to build an all terrain-pneumy board.
When I started esk8, I thought these types of boards looked massive, clumsy and like they would ride like shit. I was more interested in urethane wheeled, street boards.
Well, over time that changed and I guess I slowly became intrigued. Off road trails looked like they’d be fun to ride, and also having larger, soft wheels would be heaps easier to deal with stones, bumps and generally shitty road conditions when riding streets around town.
There were plenty of great looking off road / pneumy builds last year. Heeeaps of BROs.
Taras’ Apex / Bro build was a bit of a standout for me because it had a different style of soft top mounted bag / battery enclosure. Hmm, maybe off road boards don’t have to have suitcases or lunchboxes on top…
The Catalyst
$1000NZD trademe auction
CATALYST SUPER DEAL
Who can’t resist a good deal!
In March I nabbed a TradeMe.co.nz auction deal - $1000NZD for this partly complete off road build.
For a grand, this got me going with some parts to use, and I couldn’t say no.
Scrub deck with bindings, tenka, Metal Matrix 2, BNAT drivetrain with 6384 140kV motors and some MBS wheels
Left the seller with the Scrub deck and Tenka 
.
Geardrive mounting was messed up and needed a bit of fixing.
Gear puller and 5 mins filing on the Matrix 2 hangers sorted that.
So the journey began.
Deck
#diycompositedeck
guess I'll make a deck
First up, to Lee at Apex to try and get a discounted [blem.?] Bro, but covid shipping madness was gonna have shipping costing more than the deck itself and although it’s not actually that much money, part of me can’t cope with that so I set out on another new DIY journey.
…so the streetcarver deck construction began…
Having made one composite deck before I was feeling super qualified to get straight into it 
Grabbed a pencil and some mdf, planned the deck shape and set out making a mould.
Laminated 5 layers of MDF together, stood on them and drew some shapes.
then set to work at the ‘backyard CNC’
A couple of hours? with the router and belt sander gave me a rough cut mould shape like this:
At the end of March, I succumbed to covid and left home to isolate, leaving my wife look after the kids and stay healthy!
Took the mould and some sandpaper away with me, so I could pass some time and work more on the detailed shaping of the mould (in peace).
Some freestyling of measurements for ergonomics but all seemed to work ok.
Deck standing platform size is kinda based on my snowboard stance and the idea was to have camber between the feet but with flat footbeds and a bit of width for my feet not to overhang deck edges.
The foot platform is 800mm (31.5”) long.
Split angle with 33degrees front and 28degress rear tip angles (when loaded).
Deck width at footbeds is approx. 270mm and a little narrower in the middle.
Very mild concave and some small w concave at foot positions.
At this stage I still wasn’t really sure on my final plans (proper off road vs streetcarver) but figured this was a good enough start.
Kept it all pretty mellow.
Deciding it was close enough (and having recovered from covid) I painted and sanded the mould and did an epoxy topcoat to make it nice and smooth.
Then infusion!
Laminated a bunch of biaxial fibreglass and UD carbon (in a few different directions) using resin infusion to make a deck. Used some soric xf3 core to build thickness.
Cut the fucker out with a hacksaw and finished the shape with a belt sander and super mega ultra PPE. Some itchy, nasty stuff.
Mockup
Mock-up felt a bit flexy, so stuck a layer of maple veneer to the top for some added stiffness and the skinned the top with 400gsm CF so it looked pretty. 
Carbon shiny 
Deck was finished at about the end of July.
Feels pretty good, maybe a bit too mellow. Have reshaped the mould and made a v2 with a bit more concave, maybe I’ll build that next year?
Flexible enclosure
#segmentedenclosuresarelotsofworktomake
this is how much (abridged version)
I’m not really a fan of the boxy enclosures on top of these types of boards, so my plan was to make something different - a segmented enclosure just like one might use underneath a board 
I wanted low profile, sealed to the board, hidden cables and strong 
Did some shitty sketches and made a rough plan
Made some wooden blocks for a buck. Painted em up. Sanded edges and made em smooth.
Made some moulds in two depths. The classic dilemma, Light build vs a bit more range…? I couldn’t decide…
And in the moulds, I made some parts.
They didn’t de-mould very well and had some cracking from my de-moulding ‘techniques’ but meh. Epoxied and CF skinned the cracks on the small one, big one isn’t too bad. It’s just a skateboard and by this stage, I was pretty sick of making these and didn’t care that it wasn’t perfectly finished. It was done!
Little one is for this build, big one for next build I guess…
Black matte rattle can finish on the little one. Big one is unfinished still.
Segments are ~75mm wide (min.) at narrow end x ~220mm (min.) across the deck. Little one is double stack and the biguns’ segments are about 90mm deep.
Loopkey and xt30 charge and Lemo egg1b balance port with dust covers to match my other boards. You can see the UD CF texture of the demoulding damage fix at the base.
M5 through bolts and butyl tape to stick it to the deck.
Battery
battery build info here
Built a 12s4p p42 a battery. Siliconed cells into p groups, wrapped each P group in fishpaper and then glued those together and taped them into packs for enclosure segments. Each segment was wrapped in heat shrink, nickel welded and then I potted them into enclosure with neutral cure silicone. Fits into enclosure as 2no. 5s4p segments and one 2s4p segment. Snug. Balance harness wired in because I’ll use an external 12s balance charger.
My battery building is functional (and safe I hope), but I’m no battery builder. Less pics here because of that. Used 0.2 nickel (won’t use again) and 10G wires blah blah blah. Nickel welds ok on the modified Sunnko I have, but really needed to be slotted for it - which i did with a little ticket clipper cutter thing and dremel (some bits).
Electronic Speed Control
DV6
it is tight
Had planned to use 2/FSESC 6.6s (ex. @KaramQ ) and stack them cos space was super tight.
I bolted them together (stacked) above each other to fit in the small space available. Not too sure how that was gonna go with thermal performance but I kinda didn’t care. Thankfully it didn’t work because I couldn’t get them to detect properly, so I gave up on them.
Changed tack and got a MakerX DV6. That seemed to work. Still a pretty tight fit but detected fine and seems ok so far 
Don’t have any pics of this, maybe a product pic to pad out my build thread instead???
Wire Management
wires are hidden like this
Drilled some holes in the deck and mounted 2/mr60 phase plugs and 2/jst sensor plugs below the enclosure and routed wires below deck to the back, concealed by a composite skidplate thing which I made. Some random making progress pics below.
Basic picture - because although it’s functional, it doesn’t bring too much joy.
I kept it anyway. Marie Kondo wouldn’t be proud.
I’m happy 'cos the wires are concealed and protected (and pretty waterproof-ish*)
Next time, this is to be developed.
Telemetry - METR
Because I had one and it works pretty well.
Good to see logs and faults - no dramas so far.
Grip
Vicious grip, and some shiny carbon
Remote
Poastmote Puck, mjf shell c/o. @DerelictRobot
Bindings
Testing
Ran without bindings at first, then with a front foot ratcheting toe hook from @tomiboi for a while, changed up to @mbs F5 recently to give them a try.
Not sure if I’m brave enough to test the MBS F5 heelstraps yet. They’re waiting on the workbench.
Maybe after i get some proper off roading, which I still haven’t really had a chance to do on this yet.
Misc. Setup Stuff
Trucks
Grabbed some adapters and a bunch of @RipTideSports Hypertruck bushings from @Tony_Stark, which changed the ride from standard bushings massively. Reccomend. Messing round to find the best setup for me at the moment.
Wheels
Have picked up a few sets now, mostly because I’m not sure what this board should be - off road or all rounder / streetcarver. Probably doesn’t matter what the label it is really, and until the next one is built this board will probably ride a range of terrains.
Anyway, have and will be switching between:
200mm kendas on rockstar 2s (good commuter)
200mm Aliexpress off road on rockstar 2s (allrounder)
165mm ExcelRS on hubba hubs (keen to ride at the track, rides so far seem a bit harsh on streets)
Gear Drives
Well the $1000 combo was great but the drives ratio and motor kv isn’t ideal for me (4.6/140kV-12s), so have some 3.8? Straight cuts from @Boardnamics waiting to be installed (when I can be bothered opening it all up).
29.01.2023 Edit - 3.8 straight cuts installed and tested
Think that’s all!
Cheers dudes,
@rosco
Pictures
Mould has been adapted and v2 was made as I said, but I’m thinking of a few more changes before the next full build.
) and right now i have reds back and very soft yellow on the front, which was an experiment to compensate the stiffer back truck. Works very well, no wobbles and still be able to take a sharp curve without having to get off(=annoying)
putting the Ripper on the deck again ? Bottom maybe ?
