Besides the wheel issues, I’m fairly confident your issue is probably within the battery. I’ve taken lots apart and know how they work pretty well and some of the errors line up with things I’ve seen / heard before. I think Flo will get you sorted out, sorry you’ve had to go through this whole process.
Did you send the batteries or kit off?
That’s cool he’s doing tricks but because it says on the revel site that this kit isn’t designed for doing tricks it’s in the same category of riding in wet conditions in that if it breaks under that type of usage it will not be fixed by the revel company.
I’m still waiting for costumer Service reply. I think they’re not working on the weekend
I swapped my battery with my spare but still get a flashing blue light so it’s sadly not the xr battery that’s broken. I’m guessing something on the esc is fried but I don’t dare to open it as that could void my warranty
Tried random button press combinations to see if there was something hidden but no luck
he’s giving away wheels that are dangerous.
why dangerous? are those wheels so big that could damage the direct drives?
No, but they are pretty hard on range because you cannot gear down a direct drive motor. The diameter is 30% bigger than stock so its like accelerating 30% harder and getting 30% less acceleration. So a rider will be tempted to throttle twice as hard and therfore drain the battery 60% faster. Ronnie test rode them on 4WD and was impressed by the ride and top speed but was surprised by the limited range.
Hey everyone!
I’m completely new to this forum but I’ve read over some of the topics and it seems like you’ve all been quite helpful with each other so I figured I’d try my luck at asking some questions on here! Okay so, I recently bought a Revel Kit of my own a few weeks ago (and am currently waiting ever so patiently for the tracking info to pop up in my inbox … please be soon cos it’s fr killing me) and had a few questions.
First off, I just moved to San Francisco from Honolulu not too long ago and can’t fully express just how much I miss being able to ride the waves. Sure, CA has beaches but none are comparable in my opinion. Luckily though, SF has a good amount of smooth asphalt and an abundance of side walks to whip around in. In my attempt to replicate that “surfing” feeling, I was hoping to do the same thing that Maven had suggested doing on this forum a couple of days ago. I’m interested in using the Waterborne Adapter in correlation with my Revel Kit.
Being that shipping is taking quite a while, I wanted to make sure I bought everything I potentially might need to prepare for when my Kit finally does arrive.
I was also hoping to get better insight as to what both Maven and I could do in order to best fit the Waterborne Adapter onto the board so that there’s no back lean or a gap between the board and the drive unit.
My custom built Revel Kit is currently an Extended Range, on a Loaded Omakase, with 77a 90mm Hyperdrive wheels, and 83a Nipple Bushings.
Anyways! Enough with the context, I’ll get right into the questions!
That’s all for now, I know it’s a LOT but big thanks to anyone who ends up reading all of this and sends some wisdom over my way!
The revel kit motot and sensor wires are solid copper. I think they would break if you tries to make them flex over a distance. I also doubt they are long enough to accomodate the height difference of the rear waterborne adapter. So you would want to look at silicone wire extensions. and Like i said in an earlier post makesure none of your solder joints break.
for sanfrancisco, I would recommend 4WD. The hills are too steep for any small battery esk8. 4WD double your battery capacity and distributes the downhill load over two speed controlers. Obviously up hill acceleration is 2x.
Alternatively, wire up alot of additional battery capacity to the belly of your board, wire it in parallell and make sure you undercharge the auxilary batteries and wire them to bypass the BMS for operation.
I’ve never ridden in sanfrancisco. My opinion is based on knowing what ca happen on a long down hill stretch wiht a relatively small battery, regardelss of manufacturer.
Is it possible to turn the bolts upside down on the rear waterborne adapter? if it is then just mount the kit right to the bottom of the adapter with an adapter as thick as teh bolt heads
Hi and welcome,
1a. I suggest sticking to surf adapters only in the front. Having them at the back is asking for overly complicated mechanics messing with the stability of the board. Look at YowSurf and Smoothstar, as Waterborne is not at all in the same league.
Coming from your surfing background you dont really need your board to be level at all times, so you can adjust accordingly to get the heights pretty right playing with riser pads and so on.
@Maven check out my post on those wheels. All four wheels are cracked after about 100 miles. One being much worst than the other (Heel side of drive train)
@Mikenopolis yeah, I just saw that video, its a shame because I liked the semi-AT format, but men, they should stop making those poor quality and dangerous wheels!
@Kaivela I was surpised to discover that we both are trying to make the same board: revel-waterborne-omakase. that could be a coincidence or may be just that build makes sense for an electric-surfskate.
anyways to you questions this are my thoughts:
altough I do understand why they designed it that way. would be nice if they split those for the next version.Best regards!
If you wanted 4WD on surf adapters, you could do tandem 4WD:
You would bolt an 8 inch aluminum plate to the rear surf adapters and drill holes for the trucks on either side of the surf adapter. You would also need to rotate one axle by 180 degrees and reverse the motor wires left to right.
So back to 2WD, you could do something similar. Bolt a short aluminum plate to the rear surf adapter and cantilever the entire unmodified Revel drive off the front or rear of the waterborn adapter.
That’s if you really want to do it. My personal opinion is that the surf adapters are a formula for speed wobbles at electric skateboard speeds ( or sanfrancisco downhill). Highly responsive front steering combined with no steering on the rear trucks. That’s just speculation. I’ve never tried them and could be wrong.
Even if you could build a 4WD Revel with both surf adapters I dont think it would worth it. it will end being so heavy, so much momentum, dont think you could pump on that. besides, for a sufskate you dont need that much power, you are going to gently surf your board, not to trying to win monaco GP.
I just wonder if 2wd revel surfer will be better in the normal position or with the revel rotated 180°.
that is to be discovered.
I concur. And I’ll quote my self on the topic.
But you never know. Sometimes you try something that no one thinks will work and it does.
I totally agree with this. Even putting it on the front might be a little weird. There’s no way that the surf adapter would play nice with DD motors. They already are prone to speed wobble because of the exaggerated mass at the wheels. They wobble easier, and if you were to stick a surf adapter on it, you probably couldn’t go more then 10 mph on a perfectly smooth street. I’ve had some issues with speed wobble on the back truck because of bumpy roads, but ended up replacing the bushings to fix that.
I think if you’re trying to conquer San Francisco, you need to be prepared to run through batteries. Hills take a lot of juice. I’ve been able to get up some 20% hills but it does slow down significantly. higher than that and I’d definitely look at 4wd. Additionally, what Paul has been saying about the batteries is really only applicable to the old landwheel batteries, and not the Revel kit batteries. Revel kit batteries use Samsung 18650 cells, and while at less than 25% battery you will get less acceleration, you won’t damage the battery. It would be the same as riding at 25% battery on a normal board with a 10s2p 30q battery - it might sag, but it shouldn’t permanently damge the battery.
The Revel kit batteries have a BMS inside, so they shouldn’t let the cells be damaged. I don’t personally have impirical evidence that it’s impossible to damage them, but I wouldn’t be scared like with the Landwheel ones. The Landwheel batteries had “special” lithium polymer pouches that allowed for very high drain. These pouches were in a 10s1p configuration, and sometimes when the kit reached that low voltage, they would over-exert themselves and die due to trying to provide too many amps at a low voltage.
@ShutterShock hi friend, do you do surskating? im not being ‘not nice’ to you, just asking because i do have a nomal surfskate, i dont have an electric board at this moment, I agree that there will be a problem in puting extra wheight on the front truck, but i dont see that some extra mass at the rear truck would be a problem for pumping because the rear truck acts like a pivot point and you have a motor to help pumping anyways, like when you are on a surfboard being pushed by the sea waves. 
AGAIN: this is about making a viable build for surfskating, not talking about winning monaco gp, or climbing the himalayas so those are different kind of problems, and are not an issue for the eSurfer build i think.
¿what do you think? 
I don’t actually own a waterborne adapter, but I’ve seen them. They’re definitely cool! My main point which I still stand by is putting an adapter on the rear truck with the motors is a bad idea, and would likely cause more problems than satisfaction.
I think what you are also saying is that the electric part isn’t a problem since you probably don’t go as fast, it would be interesting ot see what it does with an adapter on the front truck. Either way you’d probably want to switch out the bushings in the back truck
hmm when i read you guys, it seems to me like you are not acknowledging that the waterborne adapter is not just ‘an adapter’, but in fact ‘two different adapters’, one for the front truck and another for the rear truck.
the front one is designed for agressive turning while the rear one is designed for ‘no-turning’, in fact it is an stabilizer, like the tail of a surfboard.
I dont know if that were the case, but it sounded to me like you were talking about putting the front adapter in the rear truck, that indeed would lead to strange behaviours
i just wanted to clarify that point to avoid confusing information for somebody who read this.
Ryan, we might be underestimating the surf adapter.
Fabi clamped one on to what seems to be a pretty fast electric skateboard and took it for a long fast ride.
Its true he did not use the rear adapter. Even still, it might me much more stable than the double king pin trucks that you and I might have as our closest point of reference.