or maybe an Endeavor Propel. I’m not completely clear on that.
Anyway, one of these fell into my lap and I took it out yesterday for the first time. I am definitely impressed with the independent suspension and general feel and ride of the thing, but it doesn’t turn worth a damn.
They are adjustable but they were pretty close to their outer adjustment. I dialed them the rest of the way out and will test tomorrow, but I don’t think it’ll help much.
The springs are really beefy. And I weigh 200 pound. So I’m thinking of re-springing it with smaller springs but it occurs to me that maybe that’s the Achilles heel of these things - they have to have big springs to keep the suspension near the top of its travel.
If I put smaller springs on it it will sag into probably the middle of the travel and screw up the ground clearance and travel.
Has anyone done a springendectomy on one of these boards? How did it work out?
TL;DR
The shocks are pretty easy to change, but you have to take the entire suspension off the board. They use lotsa locktight so use plenty of heat on each bolt. They also have an excellent youtube channel with a buncha How-Tos.
I just changed the shocks on the rear suspension a few days ago.
I kept the springs, but replaced the entire rest of the shock.
FYI, the shocks don’t alter the turning radius at all. Mine turns pretty good, but you have to really lean into it and trust the board…
You can buy different bushing from Propel on their site.
The board comes with the mid strength Grey ones… you can get stiffer Black ones of softer White ones. The bushing are the sorta A shape and slide in behind the Top plates, the ones that have PROPEL and ENDEAVOR on them.
The Virtual Garage has a video on it.
Im only 150lbs so the stock springs and bushings are pretty perfect for me.
You’re correct about the springs being setup to keep the suspension close to the top of its travel. Since you’re a bigger guy, you might want to actually replace them with stronger springs.
Also, if its a used board, the shocks may need replacing anyway.
I just got mine on Amazon, they’re just Mountain bike shocks. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C3VH2P62?ref_=ppx_hzsearch_conn_dt_b_fed_asin_title_1&th=1
You need the 125mm version, but you can choose whatever spring weight you want. Im not sure what the stock white ones are… 400lbs I think…
I know they look very similar so maybe I’m on drugs, but @skidmark if you have a set of calipers can you please check the diameter of your spring wires? Mine are 0.244"
Well, I notice a couple of things.
I see your board has the old style belt tensioner design but also the Carbon Deck. Also, does the Top plate have just 4 bolts?
Pretty sure they stopped using that when the Endeavor 2s came out.
So your board is probably an Endeavor 1 Pro model.
Anyway, mine are 2.33", so maybe they used to use thicker springs in the Endeavor 1 days. Or the previous owner replaced them… Yours look stock to me tho.
Yes, 4 bolts on the top plate, so a Pro 1. I did learn from the video’s you sent me that there is are bushings under those plates so I’m going to order a set of the softer bushings and see if I can loosen it up.
Yeah, they make a lot of clunking noises.
The main problem on mine was the top shock eyes in the rear. They had become oval from the angle and which the force hits it. Cuz of the backwards mount angle.
Even if it’s just to get familiar with it, tear it down and inspect all the joints and wear-parts. Give her a good clean.
As for turning, they do take a good bit of heel-toe pressure. When I carve, my weight is either all on my toes, or standing on my heels. I found that it’s easier to ride if you ride it like a snowboard.
When you carve on a snowboard, since you’re attached to it, you have to lean your whole body up onto your tipy-toes, or you rock back onto your heels.
At first, I had a hard time turning my Endeavor too, because I was trying to ride it like a skateboard. If that makes sense!?.
I use a different style (stance, center of gravity, carving method, etc…) when skateboarding vs. snowboarding. Once I started thinking ‘snowboarding’, it all clicked.
What I did to get comfortable, was go into a big empty smooth parking lot, and just did circles and figure 8s as tight as I could. I’d turn frontside and backside, leaning as far as I could, before falling off the board…
Also if you need to turn quick, stomp you back foot…
Like, to turn hard left (if your’e not goofy foot), lean back a bit and kinda stomp down with your back heel real hard. The board should want to turn pretty quick.
Also if you’re on a loose surface, or grass, you can burp the throttle in a turn and drift it a bit to turn even tighter… Combine the 2, and you can do donuts!..
I also discovered that I carve in 3 different ways.
1- I lean at the waist and kinda twist my body. Losta work, hard to carve.
2- I bend at the knees when I cave. Kinda like doing a small squat, or sitting/standing from a chair.
3- I kinda stiffen up my whole body and I juts pivot back and forth at the ankles.
4- For off road; bent knees to absorb the bumps, and pivot at the ankles using the Stomp technique.
An important thing I learned about the Endeavor pivot system too, is that it get softer past a certain point… Its hard to explain, but once you lean past a certain point it gets softer, like it keels over…
Think of a compound bow; hard to pull at first, but once you pass a certain point on the cam, it gets easier. Similar principle here.
So, if you leaning too much in a turn, you’ll pass that point and it might feel like the board wants to dump you off the side.
Don’t step off, don’t slow down, give it a bit of throttle.
It sounds weird, but if you speed up a bit and the centrifugal forces will kinda stand you back up past the “keel” point and it’ll feel stiffer again. Makes it easier to regain your balance.
Hard to explain in words, but hopefully you’ll feel what I mean.
Anyway, I’m rambling.
I posted a video in an other topic.
Watch the last video till the end and you can see what my feet are doing. Maybe it’ll help.
this is on the stock bushings, i didn’t even adjust them out of the box.
I can tell from your Swing Beat video that yours turns way better than mine. In fact After my last ride I was hanging out in the parking lot and some guy came by so I let him ride it - he said the same thing, “I can’t turn it”
Actually 2 guys, they both left their girlfriends with me and took off on the board, it was pretty entertaining.
It’ll be interesting to see if the new bushings help or . . . if the whole board needs a rebuild - maybe the pivot joints are all gummed up. Since I need to take it apart anyway to fix the clonking I’ll take a look at everything.
As soon as the new bushings arrive.
The funny thing is with my original mountain board I have really old mountain board spring trucks
and there are no bushings so I spend all my time trying to get the thing not to turn But boy is it maneuverable. I see why they designed the trucks like this.
According to Propel’s video, on the v1 bushings, you need to remove the suspension, and access them from the bottom. Lame.
They may not come out the top, like the v2s.
It looks like one of the major v1 > v2 changes…
Ohh well, it’s a good opportunity to clean and inspect everything, I guess.
What color are your bushings?
Dumb question, but you adjusted them this way right?
Um no? I did dial the spring tension all the way out but I had no idea there were
turning tensioner nuts. Now that I know that I’ll go dial them all back and try it again.
Turning tensioners are already out as far as they’ll go. The Bushings are black. I have white ones on order. They’ll be here on Thursday so maybe I’ll be able to make time over the weekend to rebuild the suspension and install them.
One thing, though I got scammed when I ordered the bushings:
Subtotal:
$28.00
Shipping:
$30.00 via Parts Fast Shipping(3-7 WD)
Then they sent them USPS. So beware if you’re ordering from Propel to take a close look at how they are shipping to you.
I guess it depends which warehouse you’re getting it from.
But yeah, their shipping is atrociously expensive.
I had to buy new motor not long back, and the shipping was more than the motors… LOL… They came Fedex in like 5 days tho, but still, pretty expensive.
I’ve wanted to put the Maple deck on my GT for a while now too but it’s just too expensive to ship, I can’t justify it.
It would be cool if they’d offer the maple deck as an add-on at checkout.
But, to be fair: “via Parts Fast Shipping(3-7 WD)” is just their way of saying that they ship parts fast, in 3 to 7 work days… And they do too, I bet you’ll get that in like 4 days. heh
So, black bushings are the hardest, and white bushings are the softest.
I’m 150lbs and the stock Grey ones are perfect for how I ride.
So I’m curious to see if the white ones are too soft for you at 200lbs.
Could it be because of tariffs… I wonder.
This is how tariffs hit me at JLCCNC. 125%, Thanks US Government.
(bottom order before tariffs, top order after tariffs)
Ouch! That’s a lot of tariffs. But I saw the same thing. It actually killed one of my projects. I was within a month of going to market when the price of necessary components more than doubled. The wall warts that were $11 at Digi-Key were suddenly $30.
So for me everything is on hold until tariffs get settled out. Fortunately it’s spring, so that’s just more time to sk8.
I assumed they had a US warehouse that they were shipping out of. For $30 I should be able to get FedEx overnight, or at least 2-day. But if they are shipping directly from China then it makes more sense.
An other thing that would be super cool, would be a Custom Endeavor “Board Builder”.
You start off with the Stock Endeavor chassis then:
Select Bushing Strength (White, Grey, Black)
Select Shock type (Regular or Hydraulic)
Select Batt size (12S4P or 12S5P)
Select Drivetrain type (Belt of Gear)
Select Deck (Maple or CF)
Select Grip tape (padded or not padded)
Select lighting configuration (Taillight only, Taillight/Headlights, Taillight/Headlight/Underlight, or other combinations)
Select Hubs (Bravura or Bravura Monaco (which color)) But I think the Monaco’s are being discontinued.
These are all things they already sell, just not together.
I understand that you can ALSO buy those parts separately, but then you end up spending way more and you now have a bunch of unused parts you have to store.
I finally cracked this thing open to install the new bushings. In the process I had to remove the deck. Now I know why this thing’s got such long legs:
Ok, all fixes are in. I put in the white bushings and it is a world of difference just standing on it. I’m looking forward to taking it out - this afternoon if things work out correctly.
I also did a thing with the grip tape since I wanted the screws accessible.
Lastly the loose control arm turned out to (hopefully) just be a loose screw. I tightened up the nylock nut and it seems to be stable now. But the fact that it had been wobbling around in the joint makes me think that probably the control arm and the base took a little damage. I’ll know pretty quickly I suspect
Nice… I hope the setup change works for you.
I hated the stock grip tape… And I also wanted access to deck screws.
So I went to YocGrip.com and had them laser cut some custom foam padded grip tape. It might not seem like much, but padded grip makes a really big difference. It cuts out all the really high frequency vibrations, yunno, the ones that makes your feel kinda tingle.
Anyway, I had them cut hexagons above all the bolds.
So I can carefully peal them off, access the bolts when I need to, then put em back when I’m done, and it looks like Full grip tape again.
You can upload just about any design you want, or pick from some stock ones.
I just sent them this.
Ok, it’s a proper board now. Passed all the tests. Turns great, handles much better, no problem on the twisty turnys in the forest. inspires probably too much confidence I found myself going really fast.
There’s still a slight clunk in the back end so the damage is done, but it’ll make the summer. I’ll try to get a rebuild in there next winter.
TL:DR: If you’ve got a Propel get the white bushings.
But boy is it maneuverable. I see why they designed the trucks like this.
