Here I’m repainting the deck to match the enclosure. I ran into an issue where the pigment would separate during cure, likely because of the wax surfacing agent, but I decided to lean into this property after taking some inspiration from acrylic liquid art videos on YT. While the resin was gelling up I hit it with the heat gun, expanding and pushing around these “cells” to get an interesting effect. The heat gun definitely helped set the cure off, but I also sprayed on 3 coats of PVA and let it sit overnight.
Drilled holes for the charge port and phase wires. I couldn’t land on a neat way to wire the loop key out the side by the charge port so I decided to resolder some longer lines so I could attach the xt90 to the top of the deck by the trucks.
any thoughts on how to mount the male xt90 plug? I was thinking of jb welding it to the inside of the cutout, but an extra mechanical connection would be nice.
The TB 6380’s look awesome installed. The 410mm belts I ordered were way too long, I calculated (using this) that I needed 390 or 395 mm instead. The idler pulley actually left only a couple mm of adjustment swing before it would rub against the wheel pulley, so I’m swapping the idler plates for the BN regular plates.
I have a loop key right in front of the rear baseplate. @bwahl602 3d printed a solid holder for this, however I think it’d only fit on a hummie with rodz baseplates. I think it looks sweet there. Makes it look like a little RC antenna.
@b264
I’ve got some jb weld 8280 but I was a bit worried about it not having a good mechanical bond to the side of the deck, so I was wondering if anyone’s had luck with a bracket or similar.
If you are worried at all, just lightly sand the surface with griptape or preferably a finer grit sandpaper.
If the surface is clean, it will almost certainly stick to it unless it’s waxed or has oil on it. Scratching it up helps immensely. Also never fail to wait 40 hours before putting loads on it, and make sure you mix it very, very well in an even 1:1 ratio. Err on the side of “more black stuff” if you can’t get exactly 1:1 by volume.
The inside of the 3D part mechanically locks into the XT90. The high temp glue was only to provide some water protection from the bottom and it’s very very sticky. The part itself wedges in there and is again, surrounded by a small amount of glue.
It’s not moving unless you want it to. And even sun exposure on a hot day here isn’t likely to free it. There would not be any compromise to the wiring if it did move.
Epoxy if you want a permanent solution, but it’s not needed
Hey dudes, thanks to those that have followed along and offered advice along the way. This board is now rideable so I wanted to wrap up this build for the time being:
fucking hell was the enclosure a pain to screw on, I used 12mm long screws but could have used 15 instead, helps to use a clamp to squeeze the enclosure just a little so the screws can get that initial bite.
I ended up JB welding the xt90 on and rather than soldering on the anti-spark leads straight on as usual, I soldered them in at about 45 degrees so they would follow the contour of the deck closer and be less likely to snag, the problem with that is that left the wires dangerously exposed. To fix this I had liquid electrical tape, hot glue, jb weld, fast epoxy, and silicone on hand - I decided the silicone was the safest (rated to 400 deg F, waterproof) and least destructive option.
in all, this was an immensely satisfying experience and the variety of disciplines that go into building one of these murder machines is both applicable to other interests but also complex and nuanced enough to warrant further experimentation.
couple lessons I learned:
the battery is def the scariest part, but also one of the most rewarding to complete
I fucking hate polyester resin, but I like working with fiberglass, it’s epoxy and a vacuum next time
do not attempt to “paint” using resin, so much easier if you want to paint your deck to do it with acrylic then top coat it with clear coat (if you’re doing grip tape) or epoxy (for frit)
have a variety extra wires, fasteners, adhesives, connectors (jst ph, etc) on hand
25-30mm x 0.15mm nickel is def the way to go next time
The poly resin in a layup worked just fine for the most part but would sometimes get inconsistent tack-free finishes. I used a combination of laminating and finishing resin which had wax premixed in, I might have had better results if I mixed in the wax myself. The problems came with trying to apply the resin by itself to the deck and the results were mostly like you described. I didn’t show how the first time I tried to do the bottom completely failed and I had to strip and re-sand the deck.
I think the drugs must be wearing off because right as I’m dozing off I realize @Bavioze means there’s a bunch of ground clearance between the motor cans and the ground, not between the deck and cans like I had been measuring.
Holy crap man you were right. I rotated the mounts down one notch and wow, that change takes this to the next level for me. Take off the lights and you can ride it upside down now.