Last season I got my hands on this cheap Chinese kit. . Here’s the short story of how I got here, what I had to do to make it somewhat reliable and waterproof. Hopefully I can also get some input on how to improve it both visually and technically.
So quick recap. Past season friend of mine bought used board with kit on the right. Only thing I knew about it that it was 2 yrs old, and previous guy had replaced the esc with some ebay one. Tried the board a bit, and fell in love in the hobby. I was on a budget, so I ordered, what I believed, was the same kit for about 450eur with taxes and shipping, since the kit friend had was decent thought I would do few upgrades like bearings and would be good to go for this season. Oh man how wrong I was. You can read more in topic above.
What I got was this. The moment I opened the box, the whole room filled with smell of some industrial solvents. I am still not sure if someone tried to poison me, or this was an accident on manufacturers part.
I quickly found out that over the years they had made kit a lot cheaper, removed ~3mm of metal from both axles, and remade belt housing. (For comparison, see topic I mentioned) In summary, the specs
Max speed ~ 42km’h
Pulleys: 52t drive, 14t motor, 15mm 3m belt.
Motor specs unknown, I believe older one is about 190/200kv, new one is is 220kv, due to top speed being 5 aprox 5km/h faster on old version.
Wheels: 89x54mm, 82A duro tested
Battery: 10s 157wh 4.3Ah samsung (10s 2p). Honestly I don’t know, gives me 14km total distance on conservative driving.
Esc: their own homebrew 1 layer esc with bluetooth and wifi (has app aswell).
In nutshell, this is really weird boosted clone.
Since at the time of purchase I was piss poor student I had no deck. Friend of my had 2 decks. One was cut down downhill deck, other was deck that he rode car on top and snapped one side. First one I tried was shortie with right bolt holes so I made this:
Say hello to gopnik board No 1 (those 3 stripes came with the board
, and I mounted trucks incorrectly).As you may expect, it became to short almost instantly. It didn’t helped that original esc was deathtrap. It became boiling hot in first 2km’s, remote had 1 second lag between registering any input. The only thing that worked was the app. Luckily I was prepared for this and based on one youtubers suggestion, installed lingyi esc.
However it was not as easy as I was being told. I had to cut some plastic out and install shims covered with thermal paste between cooling plate and lingyi. Ended up just barely squeezing it in. All of the struggle was worth it. Board was responsive, no lag, 14km’s of range regen breaking etc. My fun was cut short. Couple of days later, on my way home, classical Latvian rain stepped by and almost ruined the board. So I started waterproofing. The image you see above is after one month of driving with my waterproofed version of case. After reading horror stories of rubber gaskets failing and water getting in I did what every young gentelman would “If you’re sealing something it’s worth overdoing it”:
I even drenched the bolts in silicone, as well as made sure no water goes through the USB port. So far it worked wonders. I have opened case twice, each time I had to reapply silicone. But so far there are no leaks. I covered board with 3 coats of ‘‘kontakt chemie 71 uethan’’ coating. While I was at it I also changed deck to the 2nd one with snapped of edge. Meet the Esk8-1 or codename E1:
This is her status after +300km’s and daily abuse. If this is shitty DIY worthy, feel free to post it it there.
So before this gets too long ill end the topic here, there’s more stuff that broke, anomalies I solved so Ill keep this updated. I am honestly interested in your folks opinion on this. Something bothers me about the looks of it on the tail side, and I still haven’t figured out how to fix it.
