Nothing Fancy’s been doing great lately.
With my dad racing on it in a few weeks, It’s a good time to give the board a once-over and tune-up.
Tires
Selecting a tire
On my shelf, I had a bunch of decent options for different tires
- 200mm CSTs
- 6" NOVAs (Thanks James)
- 7" NOVAs
- 8" NOVAs (Thanks Allen)
- Linpower Slicks
My dad’s a decent rider, but he’s not a “”““racer””“”, so I wanted the priority to be on comfort(So no small tires) and stability. On the off chance he does start sliding, I want a forgiving slide profile to help him recover from it (so no linslicks, I’ve found their sliding to be rather abrupt)
That leaves the CSTs and 8" NOVAs. He’s going to be racing, so traction is the deciding factor. NOVAs > CSTs
Allen Powell very kindly gave me with a set of 8" NOVAs. You’re awesome dude!
I’ve been running 200mm CST tires for ~the past month on MBS Rockstar II hubs, my Linpower Slicks have been sitting on a shelf. However, I need to steal the hubba hubs back from them. Some light prying later,
And on go 8" NOVAs, stretched onto the wide hubba hubs.
The new stance is growing on me.
Megan Install
For how amazing she is, Nothing Fancy totally deserves to have a Megan.
I bought a broken Megan from @Ash and repaired it (check out this thread for details)
Made a custom terminated CAN cable
Drilled a hole in the deck for the power switch and the new CAN cable
Threw the Megan baseplate on top of the handle mount
I started designing a whole custom box for the front to neatly integrate the power switch with the handle and Megan, but then I realized that it doesn’t matter and I don’t care, so I just hot glued the button
Mint.
Already feels like it’s always been there 
Opening her up to connect the cables and do an inspection, everything looks in shockingly good condition for how many miles she has.
re-routing the switch through the new hole also meant that it’s long enough to not need to unplug it anymore when going inside the enclosure, which is nice.
Charge Port
While I was inside, I opted to change out the charge port. It used to be a Male XT60 hot glued to a 3D printed adaptor thing. what in the world was I thinking when I decided to use male XT60…
Had to do some minor enclosure modification,
But now it’s a proper panel mount XT60 Female. Should be a lot safer and durable then the Male XT60.
There’s something profoundly special of the state of a messy workbench at the end of a task
Approval from the on-duty inspecator
Caution
While reassembling the board, I noticed that the right side had a subtle rattle that the other side didn’t.
Now, I would normally write something so subtle off and not bother fixing it. However, I’m lending it to my dad for the weekend. Safety standards are higher then normal.
Opening up the drives for the first time in forever
Oh… Oh no.
AHHH
W. T. F.
I took apart the other side, to see if it has the same issue.
Nope.
So, the bearing went bad and started rubbing against the axle?
That’s the wild part- the bearing is totally fine
Me noticing this a tiny rattle turned into a complete drivetrain disassembly, and deeming the board inoperable a few hours later.
sigh
Louie captured my mood pretty well
Wild speculation about the failure mode
I have a couple theories;
- They’re 12s motors that I’m running at 20s, so can’t fault the motors.
and tbf, Apex did mention this when I asked about running them at 20s when I purchased em. So maybe the motors were just WAY out of spec and there was nothing I could do.
-
It happed only on the right side. I’m regular, putting it on the outside for heelside turns. I frequently ride on track, frequently pushing harder on heelside turns then toeside turns (skill issue).
Doing heelside turns, it wasn’t uncommon for me to unweight and spin up the outside tire. Mario actually captured a video of this happening (last video in post 212)
Perhaps the fact that it spun up to such a high speed and/or snapped back to a normal speed caused the damage over time? -
Perhaps just enough gearbox juice leaked out of the drive, and down the shaft of the motor. A little bit got under the bearing, which allowed it to start sliding on top of the shaft. Once it started sliding a little bit, progressive damage to the shaft allowed it to happen increasingly frequently and causing increasing amounts of damage
Perhaps all three are wrong, perhaps they all had a part to play.
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So, now what?
I can’t keep using these motors (safely, at least).
So I’ve got to replace the motors.
Kinda okay with this tbh, I wasn’t a huge fan of the Apex motors anyway. (relatively) inefficient and very, very loud. They were the weakest part of the build, so of all the parts the could’ve needed replacing, I’m glad it’s these.
Exact route TBD, but I’ve got to solve it in the next two weeks for my dad to race with. Should be possible to do.
For now, I’ve cat-safed the workbench and set it aside as a problem to solve later this weekend. Being busy and having way too much to do is better then the alternative, I suppose 
