My DIY Adventure Diary:
Preliminary:
It all started out with me seeing the DIY build of my friend (forum user tilt) for the first time and how he basically smoked my Parsec Aero Pro in every category. Top Speed, Terrain movement and most importantly total reach. While i had to recharge my board after riding it for about 22km, he said that he could still go three to for times as long. Thats when my first doubts about stock boards started to arise. I was immediately hooked by the idea of having a board that i can do long overland tours with and talked the guy an ear off about everything from trucks to ESCs and Batteries. He was and still is very patient with me and as a pro builder who finished his fifth board last year, deeply knowledgable. Naturaly i started looking at stock boards from Acedeck, Onsra and others but i would never be able to afford the 4k+$ that these guys were asking.
In a local eskate group i found a guy that i worked with about a decade ago by chance and asked him how hes been and he told me he wants to sell his custom build, but its old. I went to get it and he luckily told me that i should just give it a spin for a week, before deciding on buying it or no. I liked the board. It was a trampa with a DAVEGA and with 10“ Wheels which allowed me to go over curbs that would’ve just thrown me off in the past without me doing a slappy but it turned like a truck, especially compared to my Parsec where i set the trucks so loose, i could basically turn around on a towel. When i came home, i opened it up, connected the VESC to my Laptop and was both overwhelmed and extremely exstatic about all the options i had for the set up. Especially for me, who is a livelong tinkerer with PCs and to some extent also electronics, i was just simply blown away. I connected to the BMS and it also told me that the battery was basically done for. I drove the deck to tilt’s home, and we looked at it together, finding all manners of problems with the motors, mounts, bearings and the ESC which is a Focbox Tenka, which was a little underpowered for the board in total. I still have the Board with me but i will give it back, because the guy is asking 1.500 for it.
Tilt and I talked for hours on end about different hardware and building your own battery stack, molding your own enclosures, different drivetrains and their advantages and downsides.
I still had my doubts about the whole thing but in my mind the idea of building my own Deck started to form.
Going home, i continued to chat with tilt via messenger about hardware, asking every question that would come to mind. I am still baffled about the guys calmness in the whole Situation. When i set my mind to something new, im like a sponge.
Day1:
I was starting to look at used boards on different second hand platforms and found a BMS board that i thought i would use for the build. I jumped on it immediately, because it was being sold for 115€ with trucks, bindings and motor mount. In hindsight, i should have waited a little longer, because after looking at images of the board, it looks like it has some water damage and delam issues, but i will get the board anyways.
I continued talking tilt’s ear off about hardware options. I talked with ClaudeAI about it non stop. I looked at the vendor homepages of Trampa, Bioboards, Linnpower, Acedeck, Onsra, Eboardsperu, Maxkgo and a few others. Tilt told me about a brand that makes decks and enclosures: Tomiboi which i checked out. At the time i didn’t give it much thought because i was overwhelmed by the options i had but whenever i thought about a deck, the sleek design of these decks came to mind.
Day2:
Looking further on second hand platforms, i found a trampa board which was basically in brand new condition with Trucks, Deck, Bindings, Wheels for 500€. Chatted the guy up and haggled with him down to 400€.
Day3:
I continued to look at all Vendor sites, talking to tilt about Battery pack sizes and chatted with Claude about what i want. The board started to take shape in my head. I now knew i wanted an all terrain board that i also can ride in the city with a gear-drive system and at least a 10s10p battery pack in an under board enclosure. The Tomiboi board came to my mind more and more.
Day4:
I started to think around the Trampa Deck that the guy offered me for 400, talked to tilt about it and we came to the conclusion that if i went the Trampa route, i would be completely limiting myself to the Trampa ecosystem when i wanted to upgrade. So the decision was made to go with a Tomiboi Odachi drop down with 20mm drop down depth.
I tried to order the deck but was greeted by a 2k+$ shipping fee. I asked Claude about that and it told me that this is only a placeholder value. I sent a mail to Tomiboi and now im waiting for them to come back to me.
The decisions that plague me mostly at this point are centered around the Truck, wheel, drivetrain combination i will use for this as the electronics are the easy part. I want to have at least 8“ tires and a geardrive system, preferably 3Dservisas, but since they are out of business, their parts are hard to come by.
I will update this thread as i continue to work on the board.
never have to worry about availability of spare parts, customise to suit whatever trucks and wheels you want.