Alright good participants of the forum, it’s time for my second build thread of the year. Feels crazy because this has never happened before. Two builds, one year. This build’s goal is to be a powerful daily commuter that provides comfort and reliability to every ride. I intend to ride it to work frequently, averaging either 20 or 40 miles per week.
Little bit of backstory, a long time ago Onsra asked me if I wanted to do a review on their TKP trucks, which were new at the time to the BC3. I said yes, of course, and proceeded to sit on my hands for a very long time, gathering parts for the build, and trying to figure out what I was going to do.
WELL - I finally finished it. I will be making a 100 mile review on the Onsra trucks very soon, but I really would like to try out some different bushing configs on them soon since I still have the stock chinesium bushings in them, and I think Riptide will offer a much better experience.
Guess what boys - It’s a one post build thread. Your favorite. Here’s finished pics of the build before I go into more story time:
Alright here’s some storytime - this build is being actively documented in a build series on my channel, starting with the parts overview/mech assembly video here:
The build has been officially finished for weeks now, and I’ve already put like 130 miles on it, but I haven’t finished editing the series for YouTube yet, so consider this spoilers for those upcoming videos (also forum benefits).
DECK
I love the @hummieee deck. I always shill it when we’re talking about street decks because it’s just so dang good. @Sobrik3t would agree. I have had a hummie deck for a long time, in fact, I build the SR-71 Bluebird with one:
I picked up a new hummie from @hummieee earlier this year? I think? for a great price, and I was happy to find out that it was one of the ones that supports 21700 batteries. When I built the SR-71 Bluebird, it used a deck that only had the width capability to support 2x 18650, and with the @BigBen DS enclosure, up to about 12s8p (I did 12s7p) if you get jiggy with it.
Anyways, the new hummie fits 21700 cells, and I originally intended to do a P42a pack in it, likely 12s6p, but then I got some inspiration from seeing @Sobrik3t put a 14s6p in a hummie. After I saw that a certain builder had been able to fit it, I was convinced it would be no problem for me.
BATTERY
After getting inspiration to build a 14s6p battery instead of a lowly 12s battery, I bought the cells, and eventually cranked it out. Here’s some fun pictures from the build and the build video to go along with it:
Battery build went well, and I was able to get it installed in the enclosure / deck with room to spare (width wise anyway) - you might be wondering what enclosure I used? Well
ENCLOSURE
@BigBen to the rescue with the very last of his beautiful Forged Carbon works. Here’s a few pics of the beauty
This enclosure fits really well on the hummie, and I actually bought it as a blem, so it’s not really 100% perfect, but I think it still looks super awesome, and is very unique as the number of these in the wild is incredibly low. Inside here I was able to pretty easily fit all of my wiring, the 14s6p, the lights module, receiver, metr, and robogotchi pro.
ELECTRONICS
This part is kind of long since I’ve got a lot of interesting stuff going on. Starting with the ESC.
ESC:
Inside this build I’ve got a first batch D75, the one that can do 140a at 16s, at least according to the spec originally published with it. I’ve got a video on how I programmed it coming out soon-ish, and it’s been working super well. Right now, I’m only running it at 120 motor amps per side, but I’ve had 0 over current faults despite being quite launch happy on this board. I’m running 5.3 firmware since that’s the latest that the robogotchi pro supports, but once that’s updated I may consider changing to 6.2. Not really a huge point though since if the board is working, there isn’t a big need to change it.
REMOTE:
I decided that I really wanted a dual trigger remote for this build, because my old Daily Hummie had one, and it’s one of the most comfortable things to use for extended commutes. I got Kamen @Zyb to make me a pink and black one, which looks awesome, WITH the ability to switch a high low output using a button press. This is awesome, because we’ve got more electronics coming!
ACCESSORY CONTROL:
So this one is a bit weird. I have this alpha testing power switch from @DuckBatterySystems that Ben was doing a test for a while back. He ended up blowing up a bunch of them after doing some intense testing, but my load on it is so miniscule that I figured I might as well use it, and guess what, it’s been just fine! This little module takes in two things: ESC 5v power, and up to 100v? battery in. I wired an extra discharge on my battery / bms specifically for this module, and I’m glad I did. For the 5v, I’m running it off of the remote receiver directly. Basically, double button press on the remote, the receiver outputs 5v, double press again, it outputs 0. The module sees this voltage and switches on or off its output based on the input trigger. This is great because it allows me to control my lights with my remote!
I did install a backup turn off switch just in case. On the enclosure, I mounted a simple latching switch that runs on the 5v line from the receiver, just in case it somehow got stuck on, I wanted to make sure I could turn off the lights. Granted - the receiver doesn’t output anything anyway when the esc is turned off, but can’t hurt to be safe.
LIGHTING:
My lighting consists of 2x Big BEEM headlights from my online store pevcomponents.com thread:
BIG BEEMS: Micro Suns Powered by Board Voltage! (SRO)
And two (separate battery) C8 tail lights on Onsra TKP mounts:
https://www.pevcomponents.com/product-page/c8-tail-light
The headlights are using my Onsra TKP mounts and work beautifully, and look amazing on the front of this board. The 7 inch tires give pretty good throw on the lights with my default angle and make this board awesome for daily-riding. I still really love being able to control these with the remote, and having them powered right off the board means I never have to worry about remembering to charge them.
MECHANICAL BITS
WHEELS:
This is another unique one-off type of kit. I got this set of bronze Newbee Impalers from the 4 sets of wheels that Rammboards had produced some time ago. They look incredible, and sport a super wide track width for some nice stretch on the 7 inch tires. You can’t buy them anymore but here’s the link:
TIRES:
Wrapped around these wheels is a set of @Skyart 175mm tires. These tires have been really great so far, but do seem to wear a bit faster than other tires I’ve used. This is probably due to the combination of stretch and the fact that the rubber is so nice and soft. These stretch quite well out to the 65mm width of the Newbee rims and provide a great amount of grip. My set is very well balanced and barely has any vibration even up to speeds of 38mph.
TRUCKS:
Trucks and motor mounts go together with this setup, as I mentioned, Onsra wanted me to review their trucks and I hadn’t tried TKP before so I thought this was a great time to try them out on an awesome DIY build. The Onsra TKP trucks are fully CNC’d and their build quality is pretty great.
The axles fasten into them using a grub screw each, which presses on a flat area to keep them retained. HoWEVER - the stock axles are SHORT and are definitely not meant to be compatible with wide wheels used on MTB and most of our boards nowadays, so I had to get that changed. I wasn’t exactly sure what I was going to do, but @Boardnamics had me covered. I went over to his house to get some of his 12mm axles (the holes in the trucks are 12mm, and the stock Onsra axles are stepped.
While at the Boardnamics residence, I was able to cut in some flat spots on the axles to accept and interface with the grub screws that the stock axles used, and that, in combination with green loctite 638, they have stayed perfectly in place.
With the new axles installed, I was able to get the whole mechanical system assembled, which I did in the first video, referenced earlier.
DRIVE SYSTEM:
The motor mounts for these trucks are built in and use a pattern, making it very easy to install them. They’ve got decent thickness and mount solid-ly to the hanger, and have some nice protective / reinforcing crossbars. In phase 1, the rear of this board is powered by belt drive, using custom designed 68t pulleys on the wheels, that I printed using PLA+. They’ve been holding up great so far and have nearly no wear after 150 miles of riding. Reasons for this: it’s winter time and the temps are quite cool, PLA+ is an excellent material, the pulleys are quite large at 68t, and the design+print settings were set up for longevity. That being said, I highly doubt I will be able to wear these out before I change to the Linnpower gear drives. Right now, I 'm using 390mm belts and this is about the max size belt for this ratio. If I was planning to stay with belts I’d consider picking up some @Tony_Stark Radium thane belts, but alas, I am not.
The gear drives are like “phase two” kind of, and after I make my “100+ miles on Black Mamba” video, I’ll be making a gear drive upgrade video. I have had a bit of belt skip on this current setup, especially if the belts aren’t tight enough. I have no issues on acceleration, but on hard braking, I’m sometimes able to get a bit of skip, which is annoying.
MOTORS:
Along with the phase 1 belt drives, I have FS6374 motors, 190kv (I still think this is the best general use kv for vesc boards). These have served me super well so far and I got them for a good price from someone on the forum a while ago.
For Phase 2, the gear drives use D-shaft motors, and I’ve got a set of 190kv FS6384’s for that purpose, and I’m looking forward to installing those and pumping my motor amps a little bit higher. 120 is good, but 130 or 135 is even better. I don’t want to push my luck too far with the first batch D75, but performance at 120a so far has been great. I have metr logs from my full power launches showing the full amp draw!
TELEMETRY:
I’m a nerd and yall know we like our data. Since I don’t have a screen remote, it was also really important to have a data logger so I can see battery percentage in a more convenient way. Anyways, I have a standard metr pro, one of the good old ones, still kicking around. In addition, I also signed up for the @DerelictRobot Robogotchi Pro beta testing, and I’ve had that sitting in my board as well. It’s only partially functional, waiting on some firmware updates to both make it track dual esc, and be compatible with FW6.2. I don’t really care about the FW part because I’m not going to change a working board, but the dual esc tracking would be great to have.
In any case, these telemetry devices are both able to program the esc without opening it, which I find very useful to have. I like to use the Metr app to change settings usually, incl motor current and whatnot.
SUMMARY
I think that pretty much covers all of the different parts of this build, but please ask questions, critique, interact in the thread! TLDR:
Battery: 14s6p Molicel P42a with JBD smart bms (small 14s version)
ESC: MakerX D75 Batch 1
Motors: FS6374 190kv for phase one, FS6384 190kv d shaft for phase 2
Trucks: Onsra TKP with built in motor mount locations
Drive System: Belt drive on Onsra motor mounts for phase 1 (15:68 - 4.53 ratio), Linnpower gear drive for phase 2 (13:56 - 4.3 ratio)
Remote: @Zyb Z Remote
Deck: @hummieee 21700 version
Tires: @Skyart 175mm Pneummies
Wheels: @Ean.esk8 @Adstars Bronze Impalers set 2/4
Enclosure: @BigBen Limited edition Forged Carbon DS
Telemetry: @rpasichnyk Metr Pro and @DerelictRobot Robogotchi Pro beta
Lighting: Big BEEMS and C8 Tail Lights @ pevcomponents.com
Thanks for reading! I will post the upcoming videos here as I publish them.
