MBS Based AT Board | First build | MBS Comp 95 Deck | Matrix II Trucks | Flipsky 6374 170kv Battle Hardened Motors | Focbox Unity | 12S7P 29.4AH Pack

[Nuruda]

Final Build Specs:

• Deck: MBS Comp 95 Birds
• Trucks: MBS Matrix II Metal
• Wheels: Trampa Urban Treads on Hypa hubs
• Motors: Flipsky 6374 170kv Battle Hardened
• Pulleys: 72T IdeaTB wheel pulley, 15T Motor
• Mounts: IdeaTB
• ESC: Unity
• Battery: 12S7P Molicel P42A 29.4AH w/ smart BMS by Rad Boards
• Enclosures: Peli 1200 for battery / Peli 1040 for ESC
• Remote: Maytech mini
• Bindings: MBS F5

Original Planned Build Specs:

• Deck: MBS Comp 95 Birds
• Trucks: MBS Matrix II Metal
• Wheels: Trampa Urban Treads on Hypa hubs
• Motors: Fatjay 6368 190kv x2 / Street Wing 6374 170kv x2
• Pulleys: 66T Trampa wheel pulley, 15T Motor
• Mounts: Ideatb
• ESC: Meepo V3 / neoBox 6 x2
• Battery: 10S6P (3x Meepo standard packs in parallel)
• Enclosures: Tuppaware top mounted battery box
• Remote: Flipsky VX2
• Bindings: MBS F5

This will be my first DIY, so I’m trying to keep it simple and minimise potential pitfalls as much as possible. That means compromises are being made, but I’m cool with that. For the sake of easing my budget, I’m also borrowing parts I have lying around as well as stuff from my production board. I plan to eventually upgrade a lot of the borrowed or less fantastic parts over time. I know this will cost more in the long run, but it’s just how I like to work. This is also why some of the entries on the parts list have two products. The first is what I have, the second what I hope to replace it with going forward.

A lot of the parts haven’t been purchased yet as the current pandemic has cut me deep on available funds. Also MBS products have become scarce in the UK. Life would have been easier if I went with more Trampa products, but most is out of my price range. C’est la vie!

I’ve already made a few mistakes in my choices, so I’m hoping by putting this down here I’ll spot more before I make them. I wanted to make this board so it would be very versatile and give me lots to experiment with, but it feels like every choice I make backs me into a corner I didn’t know existed.

A perfect example of this would be the Fatjay motors. Tom (Ideatb) suggested them as a budget choice over the Racerstar ones I had been looking at. I was looking forward to playing around with different gearings by changing my motor pulley. But I didn’t realise these motors have a 10mm D-shaft and there ain’t a lot of motor pulleys around for that. So it’s basically 15T or nothing. I kinda wanted to start at 14T to find a nice balance between torque and top speed, especially as these are 190kv. A lesson learned and something I will remedy with my next motor choice, most likely Street Wing.

Another dumb choice was cheaping out and not getting Ideatb’s pulleys. I originally planned to have some 3D printed to but then I noticed Trampa’s are oddly not that expensive at £25. They suggest the 62T for Urban Treads, but I figure I’ll get the 66T as it will be fine and then I’ll have something good for some 8inch tires later on. Then I started to think about belt length. I used the calculator everyone suggests (Timing Belt Calculator - Belt Length Calculator | B&B Manufacturing) but there is no option for 66T pulleys. I can only select 64 or 68, so I have no idea if that is going to throw off the reading by a significant amount. Now I’ll likely have to waste money buying multiple belt sizes to find the right fit. If I had got Tom’s pulleys, he would have supplied appropriator belts and it would have been one less headache. Some things are worth cheaping out on, some are certainly not.

I’m not a speed demon, so I’m keeping it 10S for now at least. I figure this also has the added advantage of being a little easier on the ESC. I’ve never used a VESC before, so I have to be very careful as I don’t have pockets deep enough to keep frying them. I’ve spent a LOT of time reading about them and other peoples experiences though. This has given me a pretty good basis for what I want to do and how I would configure things to make them pretty simple but effective. Range is also way more of a priority than power, so I’m happy to tune things down if it means I can eek out a few more miles. For that reason I eventually plan to have a 10S8P+ pack build in either 30Q’s or 40T’s. My brain says 30Q’s because they’re so tried and tested, but it’s hard to ignore the awesome capacity and increased life of the 40T’s. But I’m not convinced the extra physical size and weight of the 40T makes them viable for such big packs. I still need to mull that one over.

I guess that about covers it. I would love to hear other peoples thoughts on the build and any tips they could give. I might disregard your advice because I’m an ass, but it’s not because I think I’m always right. Often I need to do things my own way because that is how my idiot brain is wired.

I will keep updating the thread as I start to get more parts and have something to actually show.

Here are some images of the parts that will be added for illustrative purposes:

[Agressivstreetlamp]

all this talk, wheres the pics?
sounds like a nice build though!

40T are pretty tried and true at this point as well.

Which mounts are you using? If it has a pulley then belt length is more flexible

[Agressivstreetlamp]

@Nuruda

Range is also way more of a priority than power, so I’m happy to tune things down if it means I can eek out a few more miles

what about weight and space? if you can sacrifice weight an space, I can only recommend the qb26800 cells. they can be had dirt cheap and have way more capacity per dollar. They just have much lower capacity per weight or per volume

[Nuruda]

all this talk, wheres the pics?

Most of the build hasn’t been bought yet. Nothing to show sadly. As I said, money is gone now due to the pandemic stealing all my work. I was just getting started when everything kicked off. I have Idea’s mounts which are still sat in the box as I have no trucks to mount them to. The motors are on their way though. Hopefully not too long. I would just post Tom’s pics from the builders forum, but that seems to have gone weird in the past couple of days and half the images are now missing. I think it is this one though:

what about weight and space?

The board will be pretty heavy either way, so I don’t mind a heavy ass pack. It’s pretty inevitable really as I’m a bit of a range junkie. My box at the moment can fit 10S8P of 18650’s, but I could easily get a bigger box. This one cost nearly nothing. I’ve never heard of the cell you mentioned though, i’ll have to do some research. We’re lucky in the UK that we have access to a very reputable wholesale supplier, so we can get the more tried and tested cells quite cheap when we’re ordering enough to make a pack.

[Agressivstreetlamp]

Queen battery is a canadian suplier though you order from alieexpress (that’s the normal order actually)

Can’t resist plugging my spreadsheet,
notice columns S and T show the WH/$ or Watt/Dollar is much higher (1.5x to 2x) for the QB row
but the Power / kg is half. The Energy per / kg is about the same. So really you’re going half power but also half cost. lots of variables so feel free to compare for yourself
QB is row 3 and 30q is 9

Battery eskate

[Nuruda]

@Agressivstreetlamp

Can’t resist plugging my spreadsheet,

Thanks man, that is a very good spreadsheet.

[Agressivstreetlamp]

[Nuruda]

Dug out some pics I had of the very little I have done so far:

The battery box started as a simple sandwich box from Ebay. It’s pretty tough and water tight as far as I can tell since it is designed to keep air out. I messily drilled a hole in the top for my XT-60 and surrounded it with black silicone to water tight it once more. This didn’t hold very well so I had to go back and hot glue the XT-60 in there and then put black silicone inside and out for piece of mind.

The inside of the box is pretty roomy, giving me plenty of space for the 3 packs I have so far and room for 1 more and wires.

This obviously looked a bit lame, so I sprayed it black and lacquered it for protection against bumps. The paint went a bit weird on one spot, but meh, I don’t need it to be perfect. Slapped some stickers on there because why not?! The box will be held onto the board by two large velcro straps. I already use this box on my Meepo with said straps and it’s been working perfectly.

Finally we have the beautiful motor mounts courtesy of Tom aka @IDEA. Can’t wait to actually get the Matrix II’s so I can put this on.

Motors will likely be the next thing to arrive as they have left China now and are likely sat in the queue for customs. I’ll post more pics when they arrive.

[Nuruda]

Bored and still got no new parts, so I decided to pointlessly build my motor mounts. But ain’t they sexy?!

[Agressivstreetlamp]

You could paint those if you wanted.
I woul suggest sanding and then cleaning with alcohol.
Paint bubbles if there is oils on the material from touching it.
Thats very likely what happened with the box

Lookin good!

[Nuruda]

I dunno as I quite like the raw metal look for this build. Looks really clean on my friends. Also the MBS Birds deck I want to use is all browny / wood looking. I think that plus raw aluminium is going to look real nice

Just ordered some 415mm belts which I think should fit ok. It’s taken a while playing around with belt length calculators and measuring the mounts to figure it.

[Nuruda]

Pro tip - When you go to order your motor pulley, don’t forget to add the second pulley to your basket…

Cheers to Ben at www.nexusboards.co.uk for the nice looking pullies and for having very reasonable postage making this a less painful mistake

[Nuruda]

So plenty has happened with this build quite recently after lockdown stopped sucking me dry financially.

First I slapped the Fatjay motors on Idea’s mounts, and don’t they look sexy?!

Well they do, but there is a problem. These fuckin’ shafts be tiny!

I’m told they would likely be fine, but I’m uncomfortable so they’ve been fucked off and replaced with a pair of super new 2020 Flipsky 6374 170KV with rounded magnets and battle hardening epoxy (still in the post though) from Nexusboards. Look at this shit, there’s science!!

Also ordered a VX1 in red from Nexus (also in the post) which should look pretty dope. I know I said I wanted a VX2, but I’ve since decided fuck UART, PPM is my bro.

Sooo, what can I actually show you. Well I upgraded the tuppawear battery box to an actual case. The cheeky shit only cost £16.

4 packs in there, loads of room for wires. That’s me happy. Slapped a port and a battery indicator and it’s being used on my Meepo now until the new board is done. Yes my Meepo has a 10S8P. I’m a spaz.

Then I thought balls to this, lets order some Matrix II’s as they go out of stock really damn fast (and they did). Here’s a pic of them making sweet sweet love to Idea Tom’s lovely mounts.

It was at this point I decided to stop pissing around trying to use Trampa pulleys and being a cheap fuck and just order a set from Tom with some belts that I already know will fit. Also ordered my deck because at this point we’re just in spend yolo mode. They arrived on the same bloody day too!

Gotta say that deck is sexier than I expected. The paint job is much darker than it shows in pics and looks lush. Might have jizzed.

Tom’s shit looks as solid as ever. Worth every Polish penny.

Not content with leaving it at that, I pulled the trigger on some complete Trampa wheels as I didn’t know you get free tubs when you order completes from them. Bloody good value from Trampa that, which is not something you get to say often. So Hypa hubs, hard compound 8" Treads with some bearings I picked up from ATB shop when I got my trucks, because I actually am still a cheap fuck.

If that doesn’t get your e-peen rising, you’re not my kinda mother.

Slapped the mounts, shit motors and box on to get a sense of how it’s all going to look. And I’m as pleased as a bishop in a Sunday school my friends.

So what’s next? Original plan was to get a couple of Neobox’s, but since they’ve turned out to be vapour, I’m now thinking one of the clearance Unity’s will fit the bill nicely for a good price. My buddy Lee Rad has had 3 from them and hasn’t complained about them burning his house down, so I’m going to assume all is gravy.

Peli do some reasonably price micro boxes that will make a fine ass enclosure with a few holes drilled. After that she’s ready to roll and I can pick up bindings as and when they come back in stock.

Phew, talk about TL;DR…

[Nuruda]

Few more updates on the build now. New Flipsky motors came from Nexus Ben. They are beastly bastards to be sure. One was missing a grub screw annoyingly, had to order some and they are the most ridiculously small size. I think they use a 1 or 0.5 hex key… Then I had a clicking motor, fuck! Thankfully diagnosed that with help from some mates. Turned out a grub wasn’t seating right. Swapped it out and clicking went away.

Also got my custom red dyed VX1 from Nexus. The finish is a little uneven, but for the price (£35 I think) I’m not going to moan since I didn’t have to wait for China shipping. It’s only a stop-gap until I get a puck anywho.

Thought I would order my case for the Unity since I had settled on a Peli 1040. Hard to be sure without the Unity here, but looks like it will fit nicely. Just need to decide how to mount it. Might just be lazy and use the truck bolts…

[Nuruda]

Little more progress done. The Unity turned up (and I’m as surprised as anyone about that) and seems awesome. First setup was tricky as my VX1 wouldn’t pair. A speedy replacement from Nexus Boards and that was sorted.

[Nuruda]

So I’ve not updated this in quite a while as the build was 80% done and working fine. The VX1 remotes continued to be useless fucks, so I canned them and switched them for the uber basic Maytech mini (from Trampa). I expected it to be shit, but it would get me going. So I was as surprised as anyone to actually love the little bastard. It has two speed modes - Kinda mellow and full power. That’s all ye fucking need! I don’t one 5 modes with the first 2 being so devoid of torque they couldn’t move an amoeba on the board, let alone my rattley bones.

So all in all the board had been doing ok with the little 10S8P monstrosity of Meepo packs I put together. It sounds a lot, but it only amounts to about 16AH which netted me around 18 miles in good conditions. The speed and torque were ample as I don’t need much power to shift my skinny arse. But range anxiety is a fun killer for me, so I real pack needed to be built.

Enter Lee Rad aka Rad Boards. I sent him 84 of Fogstar’s finest Molicel P42A’s and a Peli 1200 as he was convinced he could stuff it with a 12S7P pack and a smart BMS. Well fuck me sideways and call me Susan, he only went and done it.

I took it out today with the new pack and it finally feels like it has the powerplant it deserves. It finally feels done… Well, until I can’t resist slapping some Moon Drives on it of course.

[Nuruda]

Well I’ve been ripping this beasty for a good 10 months now and it hasn’t let me down once. The Trampa tires wore out eventually, as is to be expected running knobblies mostly on tarmac. So they’ve been replaced by some Aliexpress cheapies, similar (if not identical) to Apex’s shit slingers. They’ve been wearing well and the grip is every bit as good as the Trampa’s, so definitely getting more of these when I kill these ones.

I think I’ve destroyed only one belt in all this time, which I’m thinking is damn good going. I dropped the motor pulley to 13T which has allowed me to fit 365mm belts instead of the awkward 370’s that no UK belt place stocks. Belt tensioning is still some kind of voodoo that I can’t get right. They always seem either too loose and slip under braking, or too tight. Happy medium is an elusive shitbag! Other than that, I couldn’t be happier with the Idea belt drives. I keep seeing friends with Moon’s and thinking of upgrading, but since I rarely get chance to offroad, I’m left wondering if there is any point.

I also added a battery gauge to the ESC Peli (not enough room in the battery Peli…) which is pretty nice. Got a bit tired of firing up the BMS app to check it.

Finally is the sweetest upgrade yet - A mate of mine offered me a good deal on a Haero Bro that I couldn’t say no to. Everything was nice and easy to switch due to the battery not being fixed. Ummed and ahh’d about putting some Dopegrip on there, but everytime I try it I feel like I’m riding the grip and not a board, you know? I like board feel. So I went with some aptly named Vicious grip, which is insanely course. I think that plus the shape of the new deck will lock my feet in more than enough. The foam of the Dopegrip would have been overkill.

The trickiest part was moving over the F5’s. I knew the inserts on the Haero were M6, but I wasn’t sure on the length. So I spoke to someone at Haero via a Whatsapp link on their site, but that wasn’t much help. He did suggest 15mm length, which seems about right, but he was insistent they had to be 1.5mm pitch and that this was the standard pitch for M6 bolts and a general snowboard binding standard. Yet every M6 bolt I found was 1.0mm pitch. The guy from Haero was insistent that 1.5 was standard and 1.0 was course, yet everything I have read elsewhere says the course measurement of metric thread pitches IS the standard, with lower pitches (0.75 for M6) being the fine pitch. I don’t want to give the guy at Haero shit over it, I’m sure it was just a misunderstanding, but it was confusing for sure.

Alas I got M6 16mm as that was the closest I could find and they are 1.0mm pitch and fit perfectly in those inserts. Sadly though 16mm is too long and I’ve cracked the deck slightly by cranking these down… I’ve now found 15mm versions, so hopefully once I switch the crack won’t get worse. Only myself to blame for that bit of fuckery.

[Nuruda]

Finally found some weather decent enough to test the Haero deck. My god! I had no idea how stiff the MBS was until I tried this. The “pop” and flex in this deck is now one of the most satisfying things about the build. I am never getting tired of this.

[Balta_6]

What’s your top speed with this setup ? Also you got the reference for the center peli case ?

[Nuruda]

Top speed I’ve yet to find. I have the trucks set pretty loose, and with yellow blocks it’s not the most stable at speed. Wobbles start just over 30mph, so I’ve not exceeded that. But it feels like it has a lot more to give, which I find odd as the 13T motor gear should limit me and my VESC settings are pretty conservative compared to what most people run these days. I do weigh about as much as a gnats arse, so take that into consideration

The battery box is a Peli 1200, which I couldn’t recommend more. They’re utterly bomb proof and not even that pricey in the grand scheme of things.

1200 Protector Case