Previously on esk8.builders:
Summary
Jul '18
Almost a year ago I decided to try my hand at esk8ing and bought a Wowgo to test the waters. After many accidents, saves, fun times, and yes; expensive hospital bills, I can say that it’s one of the most rewarding hobbies I got into. Now after 800 or so miles it’s time to ditch these hubs and invest in something with a bit more guts. Now that I’ve finally started buying parts I figure it’s time to make a build log!
-Deck: Zenit Marble 38
When looking for a deck I knew I wanted one with a kicktail and it had to be stiff since it needed to stay stable and predictable at high speeds. I knew I’d be running large wheels as well and the large flared wheel wells let me do just that. It also has a sweet marbled design layered in the fiberglass to boot! I originally used this for my Wowgo since the v1 deck was so bad, and threw a Psychotiller enclosure over everything to avoid the split enclosure look.
-Trucks: Taco 180’s
Just some random cast trucks I pulled from a pintail I never rode to replace the stock Wowgo ones. They seem good enough and I swapped the bushings for Riptide Canon WFB 88a so they’re stable in the mid 20’s but good for carving at any speed. I will switch them out but for now I don’t see an issue.
-Motors: Carvon Speeddrive R V4
You know when I said a “bit” more guts? well… anyways, I had been saving up for a set of these but never knew when or if I would get a chance to purchase them, so when @kylem21 posted he was selling his pair I knew I had to jump on it. (thanks!)
-Battery: 12s4p
TorqueBoards 12s2p. I was originally looking at Psychotiller packs but the value of the included enclosure and battery meter swayed me over. Samsung 30q cells, which are a step up from the Samsung 22p’s in my old wowgo 12s2p battery. That one was giving me issues with power loss when drawing a lot of amps, full throttle from a stop for instance.
-Enclosure: TB 12s Enclosure
I had a sweet Psychotiller one but didn’t use washers under my nuts so they tore through the plastic. This one comes free with the battery so I figure I’ll check it out.
-VESC: Focbox x2
What’s to say? I’ll be running in FOC since I loved the slence of the hubs compared to my friends belt driven board and I’m fine not pushing my limits until I get lots of pads. I don’t know a whole lot about these so I will be reading a lot until they arrive and I guess go from there.
-Controller: GT2b
I’m going to print the MadMonkey case for it.
-Wheels: ABEC 11 97mm Flywheels
Found a set on ebay. Man are these expensive and hard to find.
-Other bits
- 6x bullet connectors
- heatshrink, 10awg wire, xt60 connectors
- xt60 parallel splitter M to 2F
- Loop key circut terminated in xt60
Aug '18
So here’s where I get to start from. Since the enclosure broke I used duct tape to hold it on temporarily. Unfortunately it left a lot of goop behind that I need to clean off which is an absolute PITA. I bough a pressurized can of solvent made for removing bumper stickers but it seems to do the job without stripping away the deck. A few things to note are the foot stop on the tail to help orient my prosthetic leg and make sure it doesn’t vibrate off, there’s also the X-Things, and while I don’t really need them they look cool.
EDIT: Whoops this picture was taken before the X-Things arrived
Aug '18
Carvons are here, just as sexy in person as I thought it would be.
Aug '18
Well it’s the end of the day and I got an email saying my focboxes have been shipped and will arrive soon. (the 10th hopefully?) I just bought everything else I needed including the GT2b, 97mm flywheels, random connectors, heatshrink, and wires, as well as bullet connectors. That should be everything I’m super exited to put this all together! I hope everything will arrive before the weekend but we will see.
Aug '18
Wheels are here.
Aug '18
Update time! Sadly my phone overheated in this California weather and wouldn’t turn on for two days so I haven’t been able to get glamour shots, but it works! Last night me and a couple friends were working on finishing everything up and troubleshooting why one motor kept cogging and such. We went on for a good four hours reassembling everything only to realize in our sleep deprived state that we didn’t do detection after we were swapping phase wires. Once both motors spun the right direction though the cheer of success throughout the room was well earned. Unfortunately I lost my charging port somewhere in the process so I only have about half a battery charge 
I rode it a bit once it was finished but not for long. I can’t wait to get off work and give it a go. Tomorrow I’ll clean up the deck (it’s so dirty) and post the final update. From there it’s just a matter of saving for a 12s pack and doo-dads such as a battery meter and new enclosure.
Aug '18
Due to motor cut outs at full throttle or aggressive throttle, I bought a new battery sooner than expected. TorqueBoards 12s4p Will be here soon! I have a theory that the vescs wanted more power than my puny old 10s2p can output. It has some pretty heavy voltage sag and I think it just shuts down to prevent overdraw
Aug '18
With the 10s2p
Aug '18
You can see I didn’t use the phase channels going into the enclosure and instead compressed the wires against the deck. I will fix this when I heatshrink the bullet connectors.
Aug '18
15 miles in on my first ride and I have to say this is a major step up from the Wowgo. Full 'thane wheels are amazing, I have seen the light! Aside from the super plush ride the range has amazed me as well. Right now it’s at 61% so it looks like I can get over 30 miles on a single charge. Only complaint I have is the brakes aren’t strong enough to hold me in place on any degree of incline so I’ll have to up the power. It’s certainly not stellar going in hills from a slow start buy these are speed drives am I rite?
Speaking of speed I see Strava and my Android app clocked me at a maximum of 30mph. There is more to give I just need to get some pads first. Overall well worth the $1,800 total. This is a vehicle.
Aug '18
This is the second enclosure to crack on me within the first week of use.
Aug '18
So I’ve been riding around d for a few days and having a grand 'ol time exploring parts of my town I’ve never been to before. However on my second ride one motor that’s connected to the slave vesc started cogging at startup about halfway through the ride. No problems at speed but I have to give a couple kick pushes to get it started which I’m not at all a fan of. Phase wires and sensors are all good, nothing’s changed after a few more trips so I’m going to poke around it this week and see if I can discover anything. Strange that it was fine for like 20 miles though and suddenly stopped working.
Aug '18
Found the problem. One of the wires on the hall sensor came loose causing sensored mode to not run properly. I stripped the wire a bit and stuffed it into it’s respective place before taping over it with duct tape.
Sep '18
found a slim aluminum LED light protector that you run the adhesive light bars through for protection but had a great idea to use that as my load distributor. Once it’s screwed in I’ll run a strip of LED’s over the top to cover up the bolts. I’ll have to finda way to do so while being able to easily unscrew the enclosure at a later date. Here’s a side section of what I’m talking about. My only concern is that it would be too tall for the bolts I have now but that’s an easy trip to Lowes. Cutting it in half I will have almost the perfect length for each side of the enclosure at just over 19" each
Sep '18
I had a mini heart attack yesterday evening on a ride when a phase wire came unplugged because it was too taught and pulled right out of the bullet connector. Thankfully everything still works after resoldering. I also hot glued canbus connections and power connectors because some began to loosen with all the vibrations.
Sep '18
Got a light, thanks @accrobrandon. I need to redo my wiring, the enclosure barely fits over everything and won’t screw on, hence the dog leash lol.
Oct '18
I’m really having some trouble with the mount for this spotlight. I lost one bolt the first night due to vibrations but now they seem to stay in well enough with the power of red loctite. However now the nuts are being pulled from the aluminum groove in the light itself and the whole bracket falls off. I’m going to try to ride to class tomorrow night and will bring tools along with the to tighten it up as I go. For now I’ll leave it off the board and let the loctite set.
Nov '18
I finally got around to securing the enclosure properly. I used two thin aluminum rods designed for running RGB lights across walls to spread the load across the entire enclosure flange rather than placing all the stress on 6 nuts and bolts. They’re not exactly the same length but they’re similar enough to where I can grind them down a bit to match.nI definitely need shorter M5 bolts though lol.
Nov '18
Bearings got here today.
I really should have cleaned my board before starting this lol.
Removing the motor can reveals the shiny bits all as they should be.
All the magnets in the can look good.
This is the offending bearing. All i have to do is remove it and replace it with a fresh one. I ended up not needing the gear puller and large bearings but at least I’ll have them on hand for future maintenance. The only issue now seems to be my inability to remove this bearing. Looks like it need to pop out from the outside of the can but it’s really stuck in there. Even with a small tube that fits over the bearing from the inside lip and wacking down on the end with a small hammer didn’t pop it out. Perhaps a bigger hammer?
Nov '18
The gear puller was useful after all. Also, I thought it interesting that the old bearing was SurfRodz branded. And yes, it is definitely seized. I couldn’t spin it without the leverage of the motor can.
New bearing is in. Now all I have to do is slide it back over the stator without a metal tube to make my life easy. Oh well, just gonna take some more time and frustration. That’s the whole point of building isn’t it? 
I replaced the small one which is a 6900rs.
The large bearing is a 6805rs.
Now
Parts include:
-
Old version of the Zenit Marble 38 w/o carbon fiber layer & bigger wheel wells
-
Carvon Speeddrive V4, purchased directly from a member who purchased them from mikenopolis. ~100 miles on 'em when I got em and I have put roughly 1,200 more since then. Aside from a broken magnet, a stripped screw, 2 missing screws, and iffy bearings, they still run great. Trust me, they do! just in need of some love and not daily abuse.
-
Surf Rodz Pink 200mm 45 degree
-
Randall 35 degree base plate on the Liquid Carvon hanger
-
Torqueboards 12s4p 30q pack & enclosure
-
ABEC 11 97mm 75a rear (still don’t have kegel adapters) Caguama 85mm 77a front + riser pad to keep level
-
Carbon Fiber Rectangle Things
-
Foxbox 2x
My first summer with this thing has come around and it gets pretty toasty. The motors always are too hot to touch but the heat around the vesc’s worries me so I’m thinking of adding a dual foxbox heatsink to keep them cooler.
I also get momentary disconnects if I hammer the throttle so I gotta figure out what’s causing that. vesc settings? bad solder joint? crappy phase wires? Probably.
More to come.
Will keep experimenting. I really dont want to have to resort to using reverse.
