My Esk8s. A journal of sorts

As far as I know yeah, it functions like a dual ESC

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I got a bunch more work done the day before.

Funny to think I still have such a ways to go…










Theses are my first set of Newbee drives and they are still going.
I did have one bearing seized from these last snow adventures… But I had an extra laying around.

Sounding good for old drives and old motors.

So then we got the first preview of the new look.

I am totally liking the look of the new box and these hubs look really tough.

It’s like a little tractor now!!!

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You put Saturday and nice weather together, and good things happen.

We took the boys to the creek to play on the thin ice.

After the creek I loaded up the van with toys and headed over to the school playground where my 5 year old had a play date with a neighbor kid.

And the magic of esk8 came alive with the Lectec board.

These kids playing together with these toys was so cool, and the buddy really took off riding the board superman style.

Meanwhile I rode the Dinghy, the E20, the GT, and the Pint.

Fun was had by all!!!

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I did a little bit of tinkering yesterday.

I slapped my new shinny bumpers on the GT.

This was sketchy as hell to do on the bench.

And I worked a little bit on the box for the Gravel Flux.

This plug cap seems great.


I also took what is a major step for me.
I placed the box and drilled holes for it.

This is a step that always makes me nervous

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Today was awesome.

Today got super nice and spring like.
And I rode a bunch.

On two wheels, and one wheels…

First up I took the Ride1up Portola on a 6.5 miles ride to pick up my daughter.
I could have driven.
But the neighborhood she was at connects to mine with a nice trail, so riding was the clear choice.

Next up it was 5.5 miles on the GT.

I met with my buddy Daniel and was able to try out his board with the new fangled 3D printed grip tape

My GT is 18S and can go about 22 mph. His little growler is 24S and I think he can top it off at 32 mph which is insane

Look Jeremy @Soflo I got to try the stuff… I’m not jumping on the bandwagon… What I do want are JoeHooks for the GT … but he doesn’t make them for my Footpads.

After Onewheeling the EUC kids came over and I rode 6.5 miles on the Patton.

We went on Campus to do stairs, which I still can’t believe became so easy for me to do on the Patton…

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I’m not sold on the 3dprint griptape either, but i can see it having a solid place in the market within a few years.

I’m still in love with the Ignite 4mm hex foam grip on my onewheels.

I wish they could figure out the adhesive thing a little better so we could have 3d foam backed hexagons!

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Some sweet footy from Saturday at the Playground.

The Lectec smoking the GT off the line!!!:laughing::laughing::laughing:

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Ok then.
Monday February 3rd was the day the Gravel Flux came back in effect.

I didn’t have far to go in the process…

The yellow box was fastened on, so next up was poking new holes on the deck for the cables


Some drilling and dremeling later we have usable, ugly holes…

So the aluminum plate holds the box to the deck.

Tiny screws hold the unity to the aluminum plate so it’s not ever moving.


And Butyl tape is the real MVP!!! it’s everywhere! it’s under the box to hold it in place, it’s being used for gasketing, that stuff is awesome

The charge port got soldered on including a fuse… And caked with super glue. So it’s not moving, and protected.

Then Butyl starts it’s job on the bottom holding down the phase wires.

My new thing with this build is that I am slathering silicone paste everywhere, all over the place,I’m not sure if it’s really a good idea but hopefully it doesn’t mess stuff up.


Finally we get gorilla tape covering everything…
Gorilla tape andsilicone paste do not go super well together, so that already started being dumb

****** Ride Break******
We now take a break from the tinkering session to do school pick up.
And I have to report that Luca now Ryan just one of you everyday after school, and everyday he has to go down this steep grass hill. it’s like his daily challenge, and he gets mad if he doesn’t do it.

Back to tinkering.
First up I built a little cage with Legos around the unity.


Next time for what ever reasons that could possibly really dumb I slathered silicone paste all over the unity. it’s like a Diddy party…

Then an ABS sheet covers the cage and the unity and the battery sits on top of it.

It’s a pretty tight squeeze in there and I have to push the lid down a little bit,but it fits

Once I closed the lid I was ready to go ride!!!

I really happy with the look with the yellow box. I really enjoy the pumps of color




I did have to go back and finish putting the ABS plate on the bottom to protect the cables.

The last whatever setups I did like this I only did ABS on half of the deck which is hard to keep water out of, and It looked kind of crappy.

This time I decided to do the whole bottom and use all of the enclosure holes which is really kind of an obvious thing to do I’m not sure I didn’t do it before but here we are.

First off is the real MVP once again the butyl that I used to make a perimeter around.

Then I just went up and down with the bolts

I think this turned out like really sweet.

And finally we get some glamor shots.

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This almost captures how ridiculous it really looked with the Akashas…

It was much wacky!!!

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Boy.
Time flies around here.
Need to keep up.

Lets jump back 10 days to Monday February 3rd.
Whenthe Gravel Flux got done.
And before it even got ridden we had more parts rolling in.

The Dualitys are here for the Almost a Flux.

I am basic, and just got the MTB 300s like I have on the Flux.

I got into figuring out the hardware for the trucks.
Sometimes I don’t have all the right bolts…
This time I did!!!

The next move was filing down Josh’s shinny nuts. @monsterbuilder .

With this flat edge I can use them with the Dualitys.

Here we have another stare down between the LaCroix and the Tomiboi.

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On Wednesday February 5th we resumed activities.

School pick up with the Pint even on wet winter days…

Next up the Gravel Boi goes on the bench to get dismantled.

I swear 30% of my DIY life if peeling off Gorilla tape…

Disassembly went on without any major issues.

Unlike the gravel flux this enclosure box was completely dry inside, but if we recall I had killed a Unity on this very board I think last winter with water ingress.

Once on the gorilla tape and butyl tape was off it was fairly easy to remove the motors because of the Radium mounts are so awesome to work with.

Next up I did the tires I had to move tires around to put a couple new mud pluggers on here.

These trampa Phatladz hubs start clicking a while back, but then I learned that if I put RednTacky in the bearing seat they stop clicking!!! so I do that now and it’s fine.

And then I got to slap the tires on there and just plop the box on top so I could get my first preview.

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Thursday February 6th the new and improved Gravel Flux is successful in it’s maiden voyage for school pickup.

Thursday night I did in fact do a tiny bit of tinkering to move things along.

I got the train drive installed which was about as easy as you cut possibly be once again because of the Radium mounts. (So good @Tony_Stark )


I had gotten a couple of handles off of Amazon and I decided I was going to be able to use this nicer MaxZfind one with the dualities.

Just took a tiny bit of filing.

And then I got to get another nice preview, which these little benchmarks make me happy.

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On Friday I had to Drive to the skate shop to get some grip tape. I had ordered some Jessup Roam, but it never arrived so I went to get something locally which they don’t have anything as course as the Roam,but at least it had wide enough crypt tapes I didn’t have to get two sheets and have a line.

However many years it’s been since I first put grip tape on a skateboard man I still love it.

So finally what the grip tape on there I plop the box on top just to get yet another nice preview.

I’m really stoked on the way this thing looks,it’s really sweet to me.

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In an unusual series of events.

No tinkering or riding happened Saturday…
Or Sunday…
Or Monday…

Is winter over yet…

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I did move things along on Tuesday.
Very little.
But every step gets me closer.

And this is one that stressses me out so, it was good to get behind.

I lined up the box and drilled through the aluminum plate the box and the deck so that I now had my mounting spots.

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It’s Wednesday February 12th.

More stuffs, more tinkering.

Luca’s first dedicated onewheel accessories showed up.

I got him the flared foot pads the soft version.


I’ve had the Halo foot pads on here which are the biggest foot pads you can get and have a ton of real estate but they’re also heavy and brittle.

So I am losing quite a bit of real estate but they should be a better fit for Luca anyway.

They look really nice on the board, these are parts that Future Motion got right actually.

How cool is that till you get to kick up the board.

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In the Evening I spent some time in the garage.

The goal last night was to get the cabling resolved.

The first step was to get the box really set on there and I used a ton of butyl tape on the bottom of the box to get it to sit.

Drilling through the box and the deck for the cable holes is another task that makes me really nervous but I got it done and it’s not perfect and I did it somewhere different than the Gravel Flux which turned out to be less than ideal but we’re making it all work

So I got to the point where I was able to hook everything up and run motor detection to see if everything still worked which is yet another one of those moments that can be nerve-racking.

Fortunately the Vesc Gods were on my side and everything is coming up censored.

Up until this point I had not put the charge port in the box yet, That’s less than ideal… Ishould have done it way earlier when it was loose but I drilled the hole and soldered the wires on. so moving on!!!

Next up is just all the taping on the bottom.
I decided to leave these XT60s here on the bottom because I didn’t want to do direct soldering, or move the XT60s
I just didn’t want to mess with it now I’m going to have to deal with it when I try to do the ABS plate.

We got the bottom all taped up with a massive amounts of gorilla tape.

I’m just using butyl tape to try to seal all of the holes into the enclosure.

And just like I did with the Gravel Flux I’m using Legos around the unity for support to put the battery on top.

It was just happenstance that the Z-mote I have for this board happens to be yellow and obviously I could not be more thrilled.
I really enjoy the pops of color

It’s lives.

So I have to do the bottom ABS plate which is a whole thing.

And I have to do a little bit of cleanup with the battery and shrink wrap and put some foam in there but for the most part I’m all set.

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And here we finally are.
Caught up.

It’s Thursday February 13th.

Missouri decided to actually have winter this year.

So it’s butt ass stupid cold outside.




This lining up the boards for a picture maybe the most I do today.

Oh.
This is interesting noting.

It’s too fucking cold for me

But I actually have a neighbor that legit uses an Esk8 for commuting, and he rolled by today…

Unfortunately, he has major social anxiety, and he does not want to be Esk8 buddies…

Still cool to see people using them for practical purposes.

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Staying on it.
It actually got to 26 in the afternoon…

So the Pint made it to school pickup.

The flared footpads are definitely a much better fit for Luca than the Halos.
The kick does at great job at keeping him locked…

They feel great to me too. Really comfortable.
And great activation for me.

Unfortunately not for Luca…
He is having a hard time with this sensor…

I’m going to have to take off the plastic and add some foam grip tape.

It would be nice to not have to always run single sensor…

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