*Before I start, just know that this is going to be a long read
Hey everyone! My name is Brian, and this is my first actual post on this forum. I’ve been lurking for years and normally just keep to myself doing my own thing, partly because I know this hobby isn’t exactly the most welcoming (I love this hobby and the people in the community, but people online can get pretty heated sometimes for the smallest things). But this clear build is genuinely my proudest creation, and I had to share it. Figured I’d also throw my hat in the ring for this ‘build of the year’ thing while I’m at it.
A bit about me before we get into it: I’ve been skating for about 7-8 years now. I started straight with electric skateboarding and am, as a result, genuinely not very good at analog skating (sorry). I’m originally from NY, where I’ve lived my entire life, but I really got into the hobby during my time at UIUC after meeting Tyler Elbrink (@Tyy) and joining the UC_PEV group on campus. Huge shoutout to the ECE OpenLab, where I work and where about 90% of this board was actually built. I’ve also ridden with the Chicago group a few times. I’m graduating soon, so I’ll sadly be leaving UC_PEV, but I’ll happily be heading back to NY and joining the group there.
https://www.instagram.com/uc_pev/
A LITTLE ABOUT ME
I always thought electric skateboards were cool after watching Casey Neistat ride his Boosted Boards. In 2019 (Covid era), I bought a very shitty electric skateboard from Amazon. It was a single hub motor, 10s2p battery, absolutely tiny. As bad as the board was, it was a great way for me to figure out that I loved this hobby. After about a year of that thing, I needed an upgrade, but at the time, the only “good” options were either an expensive Boosted Board or some Chinese company with insane shipping costs and zero reliability info. Then I discovered Mike Beard’s videos back when he was still in college at USC, and that changed everything.
Casey Neistat inspired me to get into eskate. Mike Beard inspired me to get into DIY eskate. I saw a lot of parallels between us. We were both college kids trying to build an electric board on a budget. Side note: I know why his company got hate when he first started, but I have always had nothing but amazing service from MBoards. I’ve learned so much from his videos and from messaging him directly, and I genuinely swear by them.
I built my first electric longboard in 2020 with okay specs for the time, and before starting college, I’d made 4 boards total (a non-flexy, a flexy, a short commuter, and one for a friend). Then, in summer 2023, all of them got stolen out of a storage unit at school after my freshman year. Luckily, I had insurance and got everything back in money form, which I dumped into one single build. That build was the starting point of what is now my cruiser board. I met Tyler that same year during my sophomore year and instantly fell in love with the UC_PEV group. From 2023 to now, I’ve made so many friends, built/helped build/modded a ton of boards, and actually started going on group rides. I kinda became the unofficial mechanic for the group, since I have 24/7 access to the lab and I’m decent at building (good at the mechanical stuff, still a newbie at the electrical/programming side).
If you look at my Instagram, you can tell I like doing random fun shenanigans with my boards. Yes, the banana board on my page is a fully capable raceboard that I actually practice with like that.
https://www.instagram.com/bliang_is_bored/
https://www.instagram.com/bliang1397/
*Picture of me aura farming
BACKSTORY
During my junior year of high school in 2021, I applied to and got an interview from Cornell (slight flex, but I promise it’s relevant). During the interview, they asked about my hobby of building electric skateboards, which I was more than happy to ramble about. At some point, the interviewer randomly said it would be cool if the enclosure were made out of some clear material so you could see the internal electrical components, and that random comment planted a seed in my mind. I genuinely started planning the build mid-call. Safe to say I forgot it was a college interview at that point.
Unfortunately (or fortunately), I got deferred and eventually didn’t get accepted. Luckily, I got into UIUC, which meant I was destined to meet Tyler and join UC_PEV. Blessing in disguise. But the idea of a fully transparent electric board stuck with me. For all four years of college.
My first 2 years, I just thought, “Okay, it’s possible, but I don’t have the money/time/skills yet.” My junior year, I realized that if I didn’t build it in college, I’d never have access to the resources to pull it off, so I started actually planning. I bought a deck from Ghost Longboards as a commitment piece; basically, a “you have to do this now” symbol to myself. Shoutout to ChatGPT for helping with some of the planning and OnShape for the modeling. I started full modeling in the summer of 2025, and finally got to actually building during my senior year (late 2025 to now).
THE NAME
The name is Honmoon. Honni for short.
For those of you who haven’t watched KPop Demon Hunters (go watch it), the Honmoon is basically a magical translucent barrier that the hunters maintain to protect the human world from demons. A semi-transparent shield with hints of rainbow tints. I thought it fit perfectly. My board is literally transparent, and it represents like 4 years of me slowly building up to actually pulling this off. The barrier in the show gets broken down and rebuilt stronger over time, much like the process I went through with this build. The LEDs inside also tie into the rainbow-ish colors of the Honmoon. I might be butchering the lore slightly, but you get the idea.
THE PARTS
Deck: 40" Plat Chev Ghost Boards Deck (¾" acrylic)
Trucks: Old Scrap Evolve Trucks
Wheels: 120mm Cloudwheels (1st gen - fight me)
Battery: MBoards 12s3p Molicel P42A Pack (pre-PCB)
Motors: Two 6368 140KV Flipsky Motors
Drivetrain: Omni Esk8 Cruiser Gear Drive Kit, 15:20:40
ESC: MakerX DV6s
Remote: GB Engineering Remote Lite (previously Hoyt Puck 2.0)
Enclosure: Custom-designed polycarbonate enclosure manufactured by SendCutSend
MISC: ⅛" polycarbonate sheet for deck reinforcement, clear PETG 3D printed band for enclosure cap, ¼" laser cut acrylic for enclosure caps, clear-ish griptape, white ⅛" riser pads, rubber + metal washers on every screw to keep stress off the polycarbonate, ⅛” polycarbonate for the Omni-eskate gear drive front panel replacement, LED light strips, blood, sweat, and tears. I am not joking about the blood part; I got a nosebleed once while working on this board and just kept going.
SPECS
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Board Weight: 26.8 lbs
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Range: ~30 miles
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Top Speed: ~32 mph
These are calculator values and haven’t been tested yet.
THE ASSEMBLY
I am genuinely terrible at taking progress pics, so most of what you see here is thanks to my friend Leo, who graciously took photos while I was working in the lab.
My initial plan was to heat and bend a sheet of polycarbonate myself for the enclosure. I failed miserably (like, genuinely embarrassingly bad). If polycarbonate is not hot enough, you just can’t bend it, but if it gets too hot, it starts to melt the polycarbonate and makes bubbles in the material itself. Bubbles in polycarbonate give it internal stress points. So I sent it out to SendCutSend and had them professionally cut and bend it instead. The silver lining is that I reused the failed sheet as a bottom reinforcement panel for the deck, which actually worked out great and gave the deck way less flex. Failure recycled into a feature.
The end caps were the next adventure. I tried to clear 3D print them, but it turns out clear 3D printing is very hard, very slow, and comes out cloudy instead of actually clear. So they ended up being ¼" laser-cut acrylic (I’ll eventually swap them to polycarbonate) with a clear PETG 3D printed band to mount them. To make sure the enclosure screws didn’t crack the polycarbonate or acrylic, I added rubber and metal washers on the top and bottom of the deck for every single screw.
Now, about the battery, quick sidebar because I think it deserves it. This is a 12s3p Molicel P42A pack from MBoards, but it’s a pre-PCB pack, meaning I bought it before MBoards switched to using a PCB to connect the cells. If you look at the pic, you can see every individual wire running from each cell group to the BMS, and honestly, I think it’s beautiful. There’s something about visible, hand-built wiring that just hits different, especially in a build where the whole point is that you can see everything. The new PCB packs are probably objectively cleaner, but I lucked into having one of the old-school ones right when I needed it for a board that’s all about showing off the guts. No notes.
The remote situation was its own saga. I originally really wanted to use the GB Engineering Remote Lite because it’s fully transparent, and I wanted to try something other than the Hoyt Puck (I personally don’t love the shape of the puck or the Post Mote; no hate at all, I use Hoyt Pucks on all my other boards, just personal preference). However, George Bennett was doing some model updates around the time I ordered, so I was waiting months for it. I got a little antsy and ended up buying a clear Hoyt Puck 2.0 from MBoards, which arrived very quickly. Then the GB remote finally showed up, and I instantly swapped to it. Way better shape to hold than the puck, and it just fits this build better since it’s fully transparent rather than the frosted-clear of the puck. The configuration website is genuinely cool too. To George, if you’re reading this: sorry for asking for so many updates and being annoying about it, your product and customer service are great. No negativity towards you at all. Just wanted to mention the timeline since it was part of the build.
The last big mod was replacing the top panel of the Omni Eskate gear drives with polycarbonate, so you can see the gears turning while I ride. Making that part was awesome because I learned how to use a CNC for the first time. I added these panels onto the board after my photoshoot, along with the LED strip on the inside of the enclosure, pointing inward to light up all the internals.
Here are some general pics from me working on the board:
COMPLETED BUILD PICTURES
NOTES
- At first, I was deathly afraid of riding it, but once I stepped on and got comfortable, it just felt like a normal e-board. It sits a decent bit above the axle, but I only do light carving, so it doesn’t really matter.
- The unofficial weight limit is one Brian Liang (me). No research was done. It’s based purely on vibes, and it’s my board, so my rules. I’ll gladly let anybody lighter than me try it as long as they follow my rules (which you only get to hear in person).
- I fully understand this is probably not the strongest e-board on earth, but that’s not why I built it. The deck is ¾" acrylic, which isn’t ideal, but a custom polycarbonate deck would’ve been insanely expensive, and I’m a college student, so… yeah.
- To me, this board represents my entire DIY eskate hobby — it’s a personal showpiece, not a daily driver. I know somebody is going to comment “i WoUlD nOt TrUsT tHaT bOaRd. tHaT tHiNg Is A dEaTh TrAp.” To that person: “Alright brah, anyways.” Not the point.
- What I love most is being able to physically point at stuff inside the board. People ask about components, and I just go “idk, let’s take a look.” I can also write on the deck with a dry-erase marker and wipe it off, which has been an unexpectedly fun feature.
- And yes, I know everyone hates on first-gen Cloudwheels. I honestly think they’re fine as long as you know what you’re getting.
- One slight concern: I’m a little worried about transporting this on the NYC subway because people might genuinely think it’s a bomb. Might have to make a cover for it just for the ride to the meetup spot.
FUTURE DIRECTIONS & COMMUNITY QUESTIONS
I eventually want to swap the ⅛" polycarbonate reinforcement panel for a ¼" one, just to make it more rigid and have less flex. It’s not strictly needed, but the extra strength would ease my mind while riding. There are also wires out there with fully transparent outer jackets that I could use to swap out some of the wires currently in the build, but I probably won’t actually do this. It’d be a lot of extra work for not much gain, and honestly, I don’t want to be able to see my poopoo soldering. I might also add anti-sink plates just to relieve some stress on the truck holes. As mentioned before, I might have to make something to cover it up when I transport it on the subway in NYC, so people don’t think it’s a bomb.
Overall, I learned so much building this, and had to use a bunch of weird, unusual eskate-building techniques to make it happen. If anyone has questions about specific parts of the build or wants to know more about how I pulled off any particular piece of it, drop them below.
THANKS TO THE COMMUNITY
Massive thanks to everyone who helped make this happen. Tyler (@Tyy) for being the reason I joined UC_PEV in the first place, and for years of skating, advice, and friendship. Leo (@leopirsal) for taking progress pics for me since I’m genuinely terrible at it, for keeping me company in the lab during the late-night build sessions, and for hyping up this build, which gave me motivation to keep building. Dylan Wang for the photos that actually make this build look as good as it does. The entire UC_PEV group for being the best community a college skater could ask for (I’m gonna miss you guys so much). The ECE OpenLab for being basically my second home for the last few years and giving me access to literally everything I needed to pull this off. Mike Beard / MBoards for the parts, the videos, the advice over the years, and being a huge inspiration for me getting into DIY eskate in the first place. Casey Neistat for being the original reason I ever cared about electric skateboards. George Bennett for the awesome remote (and putting up with my update spam). And SendCutSend for taking my failed polycarbonate dreams and turning them into a real enclosure.
This build is the culmination of 4 years of obsession, a deferred Cornell application, and a college community that genuinely changed my life. Thanks for reading.
