I’m sick and tired of being a buyer of parts and desperate to join the completed build club. However, I’m physically unable to overlook the most meaningless of details, and so I’m surprised I’ve made it this far. While the title says it all, I’ll summarize the components for those interested:
Haya deck (#8, for anyone who gives a shit)
2x Flipsky ESC 6.6, with heatsinks
DieBieMS, batch 3, goddamn this thing has alot of connectors.
Metr Pro, although I don’t know that a basic model exists.
Photon Remote, although I have a Hoyt St. puck waiting to take its place when (if) it gives me problems.
48 Samsung 30Qs, arranged in the “I’m bored of this position but its better than not getting laid” classic 12S4P arrangement.
2x 6354 sensored motors from BKB (thanks again @JLabs !)
Janux Motor mounts for Caliber, silver (@marcmt88, you’re the shit!)
Caliber trucks, 10" 50degree trucks, raw finish
Caguama Blue 85mm, 77a durometer wheels
Plastic 3D printed parts, provided by the Angel of ESK8, none other than @mmaner himself
Time, lots of it, and tools, alot of which I’ll probably never need again unless god forbid one of my retarded nephews decides to crash my shit and force me to fix it (even if I crash it, they’ll catch the blame I tell you)
I said to @mmaner once, “there’s no way you can build an esk8 in one night.” He responded with “its possible, you just need to have gotten all the necessary parts from China already.”
With all of the duct-tape builds I’ve seen in the little time I’ve been trolling the forums, I have no doubt you can finish a build in one night, but you really have to learn to let the details slide. Unfortunately, I can’t. The 90 degree turns with the wires alone were probably 30-60 minutes each, and holy shit are they annoying to make.
I’m staring down the second half of the battery pack that still needs its balance leads attached and heatshrink wrapping to make it purty, but a glass of rye whiskey really made me think, or better said stop thinking.
So the project goes on. Maybe another weekend, maybe 2. I love how it looks , even though I posted the pictures all out of order
Waiting on my second Flipsky 6.6 to get back from Canada (thanks again, @JohnnyMeduse) so I can put everything back together and get this puppy rollin’!
Unfortunately I found out too late that I got a defective one in my Black Friday purchase from October 18 (check your equips before the warranty expires fellas!), although dealing with Johnny beats dealing with Flipsky any day of the week.
I also sent the Photon back for repairs to @Wajdi, hopefully I can still use it on this build, although I have a Hoyt St. puck just itchin’ to take its place.
The DieBieMS, Metr Pro, and first Flipsky 6.6 are all updated and working together beautifully!
Flipsky 6.6 came back from @JohnnyMeduse and is working perfectly now. Thankfully I didn’t have to redo the 90degree power plug for it. Whee! Thanks JF!
The Photon was a bust. Even though I got it to work, it was doing crazy stuff when you would touch the antenna on the remote. I gave up and went with the Hoyt St. puck.
After riding around on it for a few test rides and such, I opened it back up to double check everything is sitting tight and such. The battery rattled around with vibrations from striking the wood bottom so I decided to cover the inside compartment with 1mm thick neoprene foam. I also added another sheet of fishpaper to sit between the top cover and the battery, since I found spots where the foam had been rubbed away, and the last thing I want is a short. I packed all the components in with foam to keep them from being able to move around, fishpaper and krylon taped the hell out of everything, and sealed the board back up. My plan is to do some more riding on it and then, if everything holds up and looks a-ok, I’ll seal up all the cavities in/out of the board with flex seal. Takes a few applications/days, but it will definitely keep water out of the board.
Finally, I had to realign the mounts/belts etc because I never did that, and the result was all kinds of misalignment issues. I took apart the entire Janux mount today, cleaned everything up, and made sure it was all square, evenly spaced, and loctited at the end. One last modification I decided to go with was to replace @marcmt88 idlers with some hardware I ordered. I didn’t like the noise the tensioners make, and they are always grinding away with the shoulder screw and the mount itself. I went with some other shoulder screws in stainless (my mounts and trucks are raw finish), 8mm x 16mm shoulder diameter/length, used 2 608 bearings on each in combination with a couple of speedrings between them, and an M6 washer at the base to put the bearings in proper alignment with my belts. Its absolutely perfect and silent.
With the 2 VESCs and DieBieMS connected via CANBUS (custom cable complete), and the Metr Pro connected to the UART of VESC2, and the Puck receiver connected to VESC1 on PPM, everything works perfectly. Metr Pro shows all the battery info correctly when I click on the battery %, and I can adjust settings on the fly. Push to start is also enabled and working.
To do: My last remaining micro-complaint is that the charge jacks I bought don’t seem to interface well with my charger, While both were supposed to be 5.5mm x 2.1mm, I suspect the input jack is actually 5.5mm x 2.5mm. I bought some adapters off eBay, and it it turns out to be the case, I may just order the correct jacks (again) and replace the culprit.
In case anyone’s wondering, I was just bringing over this thread from “over there” since last night I was trying to look for some info and got scared by “this website is not available” message. Checking this morning I found it back up, so went ahead and copy/pasted the crap out of my posts. This build is finished and I’ve been riding it pretty regularly since July, and not much has changed from my descriptions other than the mileage. Last night I went for a 21 mile ride and came home to find the battery at 44%, or 3.61V per cell, so very happy with the range, speed, pretty much everything about this build!
I took a fall more than a month ago trying to go over railroad tracks at night (new route for me, didn’t pick up on everyone’s warnings to stop for the tracks in time) but landed on my backpack and was spared anything other than a sore hip. The board wouldn’t move after I fell, and long story short it turned out to be the remote that failed. The little plastic bit which turns the potentiometer had broken off from the fall. I fixed it the next morning with a strategically placed micro-drop of super glue. Last week we were out riding in the frigid arctic air that was South Florida last week (roflmao, I can’t even write this and keep a straight face. Anyone who knows anything about South Florida knows it only takes a dip into the 60’s to have brownouts from heater usage, few venture outside, and those that do are wearing turtlenecks, furs, and gloves) and the remote failed again. This time I contacted Hoyt St. and Jeff freakin’ stole the show by sending me out the replacement part like ASAP. Last night, everything worked like clockwork!
Pictures to follow of Blu-Ya with a few miles on 'er.
Mental note:
Don’t ride in the green painted bike lanes; it dyes your blue wheels green.
No worse for wear after a couple hundred miles. I’m going to add some fish paper over the VESCs for shits and giggles.
I might do the waterproofing someday, but it’ll have to be after a hurricane hits or something, ‘cause otherwise I’ll be ridin’ this sumbitch every Tuesday like I stole it.
