Hey folks, long time lurker here. I figured I’d finally share my first ever esk8 build. It’s a total Frankenstein project built around a 14S10P Molicel P28A pack, dual 6890 150kv 6500W motors, and Acedeck 4.0 gear drives with helical hardened steel gears.
The deck is a modified Omni carbon fiber deck with a custom full carbon lid, dual Waterborne surf adapters, and custom machined LDP brackets to double drop the whole thing. It carves like a dream but can still push over 68 km/h with 180mm wheels no problem. ESC is Acedeck 120A with a 140A smart BMS.
I’ve done a ton of custom machining and tweaks to fit everything together — it’s sealed, super rigid, and was built for both speed and deep surfy carving. First build I’ve ever done, and I think I am finally confident enough to post about it.
If anyone is curious as to WHY I build it, I was a national team ski racer when I was younger, and used to love snowboarding fast as well, but I hated skateboarding until I found a Tierney Board, the two wheeled boards with Indy Rubber wheels and use to race that down any hill I could find. I broke that board years ago and the company went under. About two and a half years ago I was scouted to join the Canadian speed skiing team, and figured heck, why not if they are paying, which made me miss downhill boarding again, so I spent almost two years trying surf skate adapters until I found the Waterborne, and said I can make this a LOT faster. If the specs seem a little over kill, I train to be heavy for my sport wo I am 260 lbs, and I live in an EXTREMELY hilly area, so I needed something that would rip my heavy derriere up the hills around here!
Let me know if anyone’s curious — happy to post a full build breakdown and more photos if people are interested!
I have only used my waterborne adapter on short boards.
I do struggle to understand how the waterborne plays in the back of the deck?!?
Edit: nevermind . Looks like you have the regular waterborne rear adapter on there.
I thought for a second you had the surf adapter on both ends.
I would love to see some video of you carving this thing!!!
If someone asked me for an esk8 that was entirely incapable of turning AND dangerously unstable at speed, I have to imagine this is what I would build for them
Jokes aside, I’m very interested to see more pics of the build and maybe some videos of how it rides (at-speed stability and low-speed turns). Also curious to see the guts! How did you stuff 14s10p in there with room for electronics?
The CNC’d aluminum LDP brackets are pretty slim, so I was actually able to undermount the front. and rear surf adaptors, I just had to use taller bushings on the rear adapter. The dive is insane, and it give the rear truck kind of an eerily calm vibe through turns, even at high speed. It really makes it feel like snowboarding.
I’ll get some video of me carving on it soon, probably this week.
It probably rides completely differently than you might guess.
I am using the 97.5A durometer square bushing for the front adapter, and 96A duro KranK barrel bushings for the front TKP. It makes it stable to stand on, but has so much yield to dive into a turn.
The rear TKP has 95A APS barrel bushings, so it does not want to turn much, and the rear adapter has 93A WFB chubby barrels, since they are so fat they want to stay upright, but because they are prelubed WFB you can get super deep into a carve and feel really locked in.
Since the board is so long, you get a super stable divey turn on a time at low speeds, and at high speeds, the front adapter starts to self level since it is so far in front of the board, so you really have to get into the carve at higher speeds, but it feels so stable, like you are planted and buckled in.
I’ll try to get video of the slow and the fast use case scenarios.
Oh, and regarding the electronics, I made a whole new carbon fiber lid, and it is supported the whole way around with 3mm gasketing that I cut to the shape of the board. It bought me about 0.5cm of space, and the 14S10P is with Molicel P28A’s, so the smaller 18650’s are the only way I could get it to fit.
There are multiple generations of Waterborne adapters, and I have heard of gen 1 ones breaking, but this is technically gen 3, and Gen 2 and up have been reinforced pretty dramatically. I test drone the adapter quite aggressively for a year before starting the project, because at 260 lbs, I didn’t want to crush it and die at speed.
Past Gen 2, if anyone broke one, that was definitely user error. The adapter has less flex than the entire deck, which I reinforced with stainless steel.
I’ll add pictures to this reply, including one next to me. As for turning, it feels like it could turn sharper than a penny board with DKP’s, but the ride feel is EXACTLY like a snowboard, grounded, and stable.
The difference is you definitely need ankle strength. Balance is 100% rider dependent at speeds less than 20 kmh. Above 25 kmh it self stabilizes.
It would be interesting to see a deck that was designed around the Waterborne surf adapter and did not need extensions. It would be best to use carbon fiber. A 50 mm deep drop would probably work well. Maybe an even deeper drop for pneumatics. I would not mind trying a shorter version of the board. It might be fun to test a Waterborne surf adapter with 3-link trucks.
I really wanted to buy a block of CF and do up a CAD file to get it CNC’d for this exact purpose, but the issue was my weight, the swing angle of the Waterborne, and the pneumatic tires. I tried a variety of options while making this, and hitting the end of range for the adapter feels awful, it’s not like a bushing situation, it is a hard stop. And the fin limiter limits the range too much at base without being modified. You could get around this by massively lifting the deck up so the wheels clear the deck, but the further the deck gets from the axis of rotation, the less stable it feels. I also tried this. In the end the deck geometry I would had to create to do this was quoted at around $2500 CAD, and the Omni deck was $300, so I made the conservative call here.
Also, I would STRONGLY advise against three link trucks and the waterborne. The front adapter turns so much that from my personal experience, you want rock solid bushings up front to practically nullify the turn of the truck itself, and the rear adapter mostly removes most of the turn of the rear truck and this board can still do like a 1 meter radius turn. The three link trucks also intoduce more wheel bite, so engineering around that would involve the custom work I already mentioned wanting to avoid.
That being said, some trucks move differently like the Pramash Lean Trucks, or the Major Arcs. Neither are wide enough so you would need to extend the axel, which is annoying, but still doable. I was very close to trying this with the Major Arcs because they are so much lower than the Acedeck TKP’s, but I wanted a blend of clean finished product, and extreme performance so I decided against it.
