Granda Plata 43" deck -- first batch

janpom · August 4, 2021, 1:22pm

I’m happy to announce that the Granda Plata decks (formerly known as MBNEF) are finally available for purchase. The decks have been cut and are now only waiting to be sanded and painted, which should be finished this week.

If you enjoy reading through very long threads, you can find most of the relevant information here:

If you’d rather just see some pics, here you go:

Pictures

About Granda Plata

Specs

11 ply baltic birch
109 cm length
25 cm width (27 cm including the side wings)
2 cm drop down
made in the Czech Republic

Flex:

Design ideas

Large. We don’t have large street decks in the EU.
Drop down. Just enough to provide foot support. No more than that so that ground clearance doesn’t become an issue with DS enclosures.
Side wings for more support and leverage in turns.
Flat otherwise to make it easy to install electronics under the deck without wasting space.
Make it pretty.

Testing, impressions

I had 3 prototypes made. I kept one for myself. One went to @michondr and one to @glyphiks.

I might have covered some 100 km on mine both on pneumatics and on thane wheels, including some race circuit riding.

Compared to the 40" EVO that I use as my daily commuter, the Granda Plata is:

Much longer. It requires a very wide stance. It felt awkward at first but after getting used to I feel more stable in that stance
More comfortable to stand on. That’s thanks to the mostly flat profile and the width when my feet (42 size) fit entirely on the board and don’t hang over. I believe the deck will work great as a long range cruiser.
Less agile. On EVO, it’s easier to go around sharp corners both because of the shorter length and because of the concave that gives you more leverage. Still, I didn’t have any problems turning on the deck. On the race circuit with thane (TB110) wheels, rather than lacking the leverage I lacked traction in the turns, often ending up in a drift.

Enclosures

The deck shape is similar to the Red Ember 44 and thus the RE 44 enclosures fit well, except for the profile.

BigBen SS enclosure

The enclosure can take a 12S5P 21700 as shown by @Linny here:

I have some BigBen enclosures in stock.

Eboosted DS enclosure

3D-printed filler parts

I designed 3D-printed filler parts for BigBen’s enclosure that serve dual purpose. First (as you would expect) they fill the holes between the enclosure and the deck. Second, they can be used for cable outlets. I can both provide the STL files or print these on request for the cost of the material. I also plan some changes/improvements to the design.

Price

Granda Plata deck - 120 EUR
Granda Plata + BigBen SS enclosure - 225 EUR

The decks come with the black paint as shown on the pictures above.

Note that the prices don’t include the VAT and the VAT won’t be charged for the first batch. 15pcs decks and 7pcs enclosures (one white) are available. I will probably have to charge the EU customers 21% VAT on the next batch though.

Shipping

Shipping in the EU is relatively cheap with PPL/DHL. I’ve been using them for quite a while now and they are fast and reliable.

In the EU, the shipping cost is the same for the deck alone and for the deck + enclosure. These are the rates:

Czech Republic, Austria, Germany, Poland, Slovakia - 10 EUR
Sweden, Finland, Italy, Greece - 26 EUR
other European Union countries - 17 EUR

For shipping outside of the EU, UPS is available and is unfortunately a lot more expensive. Also, the deck + enclosure will be more expensive to ship than the deck alone in this case. Please contact me for the exact rate and specify your country, city, zip code. Just for reference, shipping @glyphiks’ deck to Australia has cost about 100 EUR.

The decks will be shipped with no box, just wrapped in the bubble foam like this:

I should be able to include any items from the DAVEGA shop without charging you extra for the shipping.

How to purchase

Simply drop me a message here on the forum or email me at jan@davega.eu.

SEPA and Revolut payments in EUR or CZK are accepted with no extra charge.

PayPal payments are accepted in CZK only and with 5.5% extra charge to cover the transaction fees.

rafaelinmissouri · August 4, 2021, 2:34pm

it is beautiful dude.
great job!!!

mr.shiteside · August 4, 2021, 2:54pm

Are the enclosures Ben’s standard(ish) evo enclosures or is it some weird form factor that isn’t readily available? I’m trying to work out if I can spread the purchase. Also how many are in the first run? Thanks!

Edit just saw the answers to both of those questions in the post sorry, cannot read properly today

mynamesmatt · August 5, 2021, 1:42am

These look sweeeet! Im in sydney australia, Im so up for one. looks fantastic. I’ll PM you later

Nacho · August 5, 2021, 3:00am

Nice specs

michondr · August 5, 2021, 8:24am

I’ll extend @janpom with my experience - I finally found somehing for comfortable riding on thanes. I have shoe size 45 and I must have front of the shoe slightly overhanging (1-2cm) to have fingers directly on top of the wings and center of weight over the centerline. otherwise my calves suffered and I lacked maneuverability.

12S7P 18650 fits nicely in three rows single layer with custom enclosure, 12s8p should be possible without BMS (or a bit larger enclosure and smaller bms)

images of my 12s7p

what I’d appreciate would be longer wings for more leverage in tight corners and mitigating feeling of slipping. but that’s only for tracks. on streets it’s perfect the way it is

overall, love it! finally something long other than re44 (mine took 366 days from inquiry to delivered) or deamonseed 44 (afaik not possible to buy anymore)

City-Blade-101 · August 5, 2021, 11:19am

Super nice, doooood!
All best wishes for selling these to the esk8 masses

brown5tick · August 5, 2021, 3:07pm

Lovely job! Great to see these going into production. Looking forward to seeing them on the street sometime!

janpom · August 6, 2021, 12:07pm

Testing SR TKP drive with Trampa Superstar wheels and Metroboard tires. This is my favorite GP setup so far.

Yeah, I’m using mismatched motors. It works surprisingly well though.
Dual 6384 Reachertech does not fit on the hanger.

BenjaminF · August 6, 2021, 4:07pm

Are they the same/similar kv? What kind of differences are you seeing in the logs on those two motors? Temp differences? Current draw differences?

Im really curious about this setup.

janpom · August 6, 2021, 4:29pm

They are close. The Reachertech (bigger) is 170kv and the Maytech is 190kv. It appears the current is fed to them proportionally to the max current settings, which is 100A and 60A respectively, so the bigger motor is taking 10/6=1.67 times the load of the smaller motor. The bigger definitely gets hotter but to some extent this is due to the fact I have a 3D printed spacer between the motor and the motor mount so it can’t dissipate the heat to the mount and truck. The smaller motor doesn’t have any spacer. I’m going to have an aluminum spacer made so we’ll see after that.

So far I haven’t noticed any issues. I haven’t pushed the board near the speed limit yet though. That’s where I imagine things may get a bit sketchy due to the different kv.

BigBen · August 6, 2021, 4:36pm

Nice, proper science.

Skyart · August 6, 2021, 5:47pm

Following

glyphiks · August 7, 2021, 5:52am

Righto, this one has been with me for a little while now, but haven’t made the time to do anything with it due to me being a shitcunt.

Seeing as Jan is ready to start sending these things out into the wild, I figured I better at least have some feedback to offer, so I popped on some trucks and went pushing for a few kms…

First Impressions

The following are my opinions of this deck. And we all know that opinions are like arseholes, they don’t all smell the same.

Flatness
This deck is flat most of the decks that I truly enjoy, have considerable shape/contours that help with finding comfortable positions for your feet. What I discovered on this ride is that those contours/concave really help with your control of the deck. The lack of concave had me feeling a little unstable and a little less in control of the board.

I wondered if the little wings on the sides and the drops would be enough, unfortunately for me, they’re not.

The drops are beautiful, really nice shape and not too big. Love the drops.

The wings are barely noticeable. I’m sure they help a little, but they’re not really enough for me.

Flex

I was surprised at how little flex the deck actually had given it’s lack of concave and construction. This was a welcome surprise.

I feel like the amount of flex this deck has makes it perfect for an average speed cruiser/commuter. Just enough to absorb some road feel, but not enough to detract noticeably from response. So in that regard it’s good.

But the way it flexed was kinda weird to me. It didn’t seem to flex and then spring back like a lot of boards do, it seemed to kinda keep on bouncing, in a kind of wavy manner… hard to explain, especially because i’m not a huge fan of flex decks, but I felt it was worth noting.

Stance / Standing Platform

I’m tall. Like 197cm. The photo above is me at pretty much my maximum stance while push boarding. There is plenty of real estate on this deck, and if it were much bigger, it would pretty much be too big. I think this is a perfect platform size for esk8, especially with those drops at either end to lock into

Construction and Finish

I was surprised at how light this deck is. I assume that comes from the lower density of birch compared to maple or bamboo. The strength also surprised me, I expected it to be flexier than it is.

The deck is finished quite nicely with it’s black paint job, all the edges are nicely rounded and the paint isn’t laid on thick so you can still see the timber grains and textures.

The truck mounting holes are nice and tight with minimal/no slop and worked well with the Randall trucks that I mounted to it.

In Conclusion

I personally need to add some concave to this deck. That’s a personal taste and YMMV. I’ll be building up a little on the edges of the standing platform and probably a slight amount of W as well.

I’m likely going to stiffen it a little by adding a layer of 600gsm woven roving to the underside and 200gsm cloth to the top. Once that’s done I’ll add my concave and W, then skin it with a graphic to seal the deal.

I think this is a great platform for people to build on, and experiment with. It seems to be well made and reasonably priced for what it is.

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

Tony_Stark · August 7, 2021, 6:04am

Great review👌

janpom · August 7, 2021, 6:06am

That’s great feedback. Thanks a lot for the write up, Al. I’ll be looking forward to your thoughts after making the adjustments you mentioned. That’s certainly something to take into account if there’s ever Granda Plata v2.

janpom · August 27, 2021, 10:56am

Okay, this took a bit longer than expected but first 6 decks are finally in. More will hopefully arrive next week.

I will start shipping these out to the new owners early next week.

BenjaminF · August 28, 2021, 4:34am

I dont know why I imagined you being short, but I did. I definitely did not expect you to be 6’5"

Hmm I think that means you could big-spoon @DerelictRobot… I’d pay good money to see that.

Anyway, awesome initial impressions write up! I’m excited to hear from more people as these decks start shipping

DerelictRobot · August 28, 2021, 5:38am

Bro he’s Australian, that’s 5’6" in American imperial.

Stop embarrassing me in front of our friends. Gosh.

Edit: apologies Jan I got tagged in not realizing what this thread was. These are some nice looking decks!

cfelzien · September 2, 2021, 5:32am

I’m taller laying down.