I’m still using them and they’ve been great
however with the pnummies on I’m limited to belt sizes that fit pretty snug naturally because I cannot put the idler on - the tire gets in the way.
this is with Metroboard 155’s with 18:62 gearing btw
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Quick update on dialing in the board. I’ve recorded 175 miles on this since installing Strava so I must have 200+ miles on the board by now. On most rides I do ~22mph average speed, top speeds 30-33mph, usually about 16.8 miles of range, between 20-24 wh/km, motor and mos temps in the 60’s. It took a bit of tweaking the gear ratios and different wheels to find something that feels right.
Wheels:
Right away I noticed one of the front Torqueboard AT would wobble at speed, vibration wasn’t really an issue because I balanced the wheels, but it seemed the bearings weren’t set in there correctly? After about a week one of the tires went flat - the tube started to balloon and had what looked like a pinch hole. One of the group riders recommended to switch to Metroboard tires and I decided to swap out for Superstars at the same time - super glad I did, not only do they look bangin but immediately the quality was apparent and they’ve been rock solid since. I love these tires, they grip the road so well.
Bushings:
I started with Riptide krank canon 93 / 96 front / rear with cups and after talking with Brad at @RipTideSports I switched it to 96/93 road/board front, 93/96 road/board rear with large washers, pretty loose and that feels really good on most roads. I’m finding now that I want a tighter turning circle after riding a Nazare, so I’m experimenting with softer bushings. The mounting plate is sweet.
Gears:
I started with 16:62 with the torqueboard glass nylon wheel pulley, after putting on the trampas I wanted to experiment with a lower gear ratio, so I tried the 16:44. Acceleration is much slower obviously, but I find at speed I like the damped throttle response, when I’m going 30+ I want the throttle to be smooth, so I really liked this combo. The problem is the motors didn’t, when going up hills I started to thermal throttle, motors in the low 80’s, wh/km jumped to 28. On flatish ground it was totally fine temp wise, just would struggle up hills as expected. However I think the problems were exacerbated by the fact that I tried tuning the esc current setting via the vesc app, and thus only the master esc was picking up the settings. I cracked open the enclosure and connected via the desktop version and made sure both escs had the same settings and the thermal + efficiency issues went away, but I also switched to the 62 wheel pulley so I haven’t tested how well the 44 does on hills with good esc settings.
I’m currently running 18:62 and the board has more than enough torque for me. It can feel a bit jerky at speed, it’s less of an issue than with the 16, but still surprises me every now and then. It flies up hills but I also can feel the top speed ~33mph and want more. I suspect 14:44 might be the goldilocks zone for this board.
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A lot of this will be old news for those of you I regularly ride with but I wanted to document the updates to this board from the past couple months as the changes have been pretty drastic.
So right away after settling on a gearing ratio it quickly became apparent that the battery wasn’t cut out for our group rides, I could optimistically get 15 miles with a ton of sag while our normal Saturday ride is 17 miles give or take. With a 1.5x overpec factor in mind I decided to upgrade to a 12s7p p42a which would on paper give me about 25 “good” miles with my consumption.
Which meant this battery needed a new double stack enclosure
In addition, Luis made these dope ass motor mounts
this combo worked pretty great, I could get away with only ever partially charging the pack to ~90% and I never felt limited by range. I focused on getting faster at the track and with some coaching from Brandon and Mario it was clear that RKP trucks were the limiting factor now. I got the chance to ride a SRB sled and decided to make a purpose-built track board based around the SRB trucks.
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So after I got some SRB trucks, I stood on a piece of cardboard and traced out a foot stance that felt right. I wanted a 1.5” drop with a steeper angle up front. I liked the concave on the Demonseed and eyeballed it at about 18mm deep.
I had been watching YouTube tutorials on shaping surfboards so making the mold out of XPS foam and fiberglass seemed like a good approach.
I planned on making at least the initial shape using resin infusion so I made sure to add a flange around the deck plug. I think I had 3” of flange, which turned out to be a bit tight, twice that would have been better.
the first glassing came out with pinholes and other imperfections, so I poured on more resin and sanded back until it was acceptable to me.
the infusion stack:
200g 2x2 twill cf for looks
250g unidirectional tape cf for stiffness along length
300g ±45 bidirectional cf for torsional strength
300g 2x2 twill kevlar in the drop areas for deformation toughness. Carbon fiber tends to explode when it fails so the kevlar is there to hold the board together in these high stress areas if the carbon were to snap
2mm santor loric core material
and mirror for the 2nd half
bagged and pulled vacuum
infusion complete
the cured part
Rough shape cut out. I started with a dremel w/ permagrit cutoff wheel which did a decent job on the carbon but really struggled on patches of kevlar. Ended up switching to an angle grinder with a cutoff wheel which did the job.
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the initial infused part was not nearly strong enough, I could easily bounce and hit the ground, so on the underside with the peel ply texture I wet lay and bagged on more bidirectional cf and some new 650g unidirectional cf tape
one cool thing about having a positive mold for the deck is you can reuse it to make the enclosure mold
the enclosure in progress
cut stuff out and checked the fit
more test fitting
bagging on more structural cf
moving the electronics over
Those round metal things on top of the deck are called “adhesive fasteners” and are meant to be secured to composite surfaces using epoxy, they’re analogous to threaded inserts in wood.
size comparison between the old and new decks. the new deck is 51” long with 46” wheelbase
test ride at track day
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Now that I had a functional board I was happy with, I set to finishing the deck and enclosure
wet lay on a cosmetic layer of 200g 2x2 twill
got gaps along the concave edges when I tried to wet lay the top, so here I’m filling the gaps with bondo then vac bagged another layer on
I wanted to try something different with the loop key mount and have it lay flush with the enclosure contours.
just sanded the enclosure to #400 then applied a half dozen coats of enamel clear coat
debagged and trimming the top layer
I twice applied a thin coat of resin and sanded it flat
Finally I sprayed aluminum base coat, blue “anodizing” (candy) auto paint, then 2k clear
I learned that applying paint is a LOT harder than I anticipated, the more I tried to fix mistakes the worse I made the finish so there’s still a lot of room for improvement here.
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Really impressive man, that board is ginormous
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Awesomeeeee! Will epoxy stick to spraypainy well actually? Ive always wondered this.
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I’m not well versed in paint, but for this project I sanded the epoxy topcoat to #320, applied spray paint, then applied 2k clear coat which is a two part urethane based paint. I’ve had good success getting epoxy to stick to composites sanded as high as #320 for finishing coats, or #80-120 for laminating coats. I might be worried about alligatoring with epoxy over not fully cured paint, but I haven’t tested that.
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Amazing work bro. I didn’t realize how long this board is till you compared it to the demonseed.
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Is that a Demonseed 42" or 39"?
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Jeez how big is that monstrosity?
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How long is that deck? That’s massive, and in a good way.
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The deck is 51" long, 11" wide
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Reminds me of this.
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Lol, yeah the deck itself is pretty long I originally intended to cut the ends back when I found the right spot to mount the trucks but as it is there is just barely enough wheel clearance. Surprisingly the wheelbase is only 1-2" longer than the Stooge board, I made this to fit my wider than average stance but goes to show how well optimized Moe’s design is.
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Holy fuck dude. Been a while since i checked in here, this is fuckin phenomenal!
I know where my vote for BOTY will be going 
One question tho… where’s the grip!?
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