Direct Drives???

Just forget about carbon fibre. It looks pretty, but it conducts electricity and is opaque to radio. Use fiberglass instead.

Again, fiberglass. Completely forget carbon fiber exists.

I’d recommend you make the enclosure so that instead of bolting to the deck along its perimeter, just hang it from two bolts on the front and two bolts on the back. Put butyl tape (bubble gum consistency) all around the top edge, inside the bolt holes and lay a sheet of flat rubber on top. Put a cutting board on top of the rubber with some weight on top for an hour to squeeze the butyl tape, then bolt to the deck. This way, you have completely sealed from water ingress. It doesn’t even matter if the top of the enclosure is flat and the deck is concave, the tiny gap makes no difference this way.

So you have like a “tub” hanging off the bottom of the shortboard whose only hole is a charge port, and you’ve sealed the backside of that. No other holes, you should be able to toss that in a lake if you want to.

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I would skip direct drive entirely and go for belt or gear or chain drive, collectively called “satellite motors”.

Direct drive aren’t very servicable and the motors are too close to the ground, and you can’t get those nice high-torque gear ratios that maximise range and fun.

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I would definitely not buy anything from Boundmotor or eskating dot eu. The second one I have personal experience with, and is terrible. The first one is run by Jedboards. Look them up.

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The sooner you forget about carbon fiber, the happier you will be.

It conducts electricity, it blocks radio, and fiberglass is better for esk8 building in almost every way except “cool factor” and “looks”.

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sure, it might work that way, but fibreglass is still the way to go. if u really like the looks of carbon fibre, u can slap on those fake carbon fibre car vinyl, they don’t cost that much if u need to wrap a shortboard

we used to have elofty, but it has also disappeared. do u have to use DD tho? belt / gear drive are also pretty good.

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Check out these daily commuters for some ideas

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Don’t buy @esk8supply ESCs, they are sold illegally and as such are illegal to resell, and your support is worse.

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The problem with belt drives is that they take up lots of room that I’m hoping can instead be filled with batteries. Plus I thought DD motors held up better to water? On the clearance and performance side, it’s only going to be a city board so shouldn’t go through any tough terrain plus it’s not a performance board so I don’t need screaming motors. A little more powerful than my current exway Wave motors (max power 1000 watts) is just fine for me :relaxed:

Yes, I know. I thought the same thing.

After many tries though, I’m just gonna have to recommend you skip over direct drive. But do what you want :smiley: They just aren’t as good as they seem on paper.

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All BLDC motors will be mostly waterproof out of the box, as long as you don’t use sensors. Water will shorten the bearing life but you can change the bearings. Motor hall sensors seem really prone to failure for some reason, and if you haven’t personally went in there and waterproofed them yourself, then there’s little chance they’ll last very long. Even so, way more reliable to simply not use them at all. Only connect the 3 big phase wires.

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This is my exact usage also.

Use a really wide deck. Look at the Blue One or the Green one I made, those decks. I don’t know how wide the Boosted Mini deck is, but it looks narrow.

Also, going single drive on the rear heelside can save room too. Look at Damon’s Rona Roller for some more ideas.

Although I’d strongly recommend a 6380 or bigger motor on a single drive.

In rainy conditions single drive might actually be safer than dual drive. When both rear wheels slide you will likely crash. When only one slides the other still keeps you straight. Downside is you often struggle to get any power on the road before it spins.
When I ride my dual drive in the rain I set one motor to only 50% power so one slides before the other. You might also consider rubber wheels with tread to help with traction.

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I second all of this
:+1:

It’s counter-intuitive but I much prefer single drive when it’s wet and slick.

Dual-diagonal would be better still, but on a shortboard, there’s typically no space for all that jazz.

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I’m 3d printing my enclosure too. Welcome to the club!

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3D printing and then fiberglass on top seems like it could be really awesome. I don’t know if I’d personally use just a 3D printed enclosure.

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Hello guy on reddit, I’m glad you took my advice and moved over here for help! :smiley:

What wheels do you plan on using? In the wet I highly suggest rubber wheels, can be those new airless ones, can be pneumatic, althought I doubt those will work well with the Boosted mini deck :stuck_out_tongue:

(Btw, since you’re new to the forum, I highly recommend searching around and getting inspiration from other people’s builds. Or just browsing the pictures and nothing else thread is a great way to see what the world of DIY esk8 has to offer :partying_face: )

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Hey @Satoshi, good to see you here.
If you were open to the idea of a different deck. Take a look at the Loaded Omakase. By the end of this week there should be a nice little enclosure available for it.
The direct drives that are available, as others have said do have questionable quality control. If you could pick up a set of Hummie hubs that would be the best stealth simplicity drives you could get hold of. If you really must dip your toe in the direct drive market, I have a couple of sets of Carvon V2.5 drives that can go for cheap.

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Hey!!

Thanks for the advice!!! I love my 105 cloud wheels so will most likely be sticking with them for the new build. I’m looking to build a board that will be fine in the rain, not a board designed only for the rain, so the clouds heel hold up well enough on wet ground.

And definitely going to do some more looking around for inspiration, looking to start building in around a month so I have plenty of time to prep :smiley:

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Welcome. Good luck!

I would go for 21700 molicel P42A cells for your battery. They are the best cells on the market IMO

Unity is good, xeinth has better quality checks. Another option is the sprinted Ubox which has ports for lights and a horn.

I would recommend gear drives instead of direct drives IMO the gear drives will be easier to undertake maintenance on and work out slightly more water proof.