I suspect one potential risk is that a third party charger might charge to a slightly higher voltage. I’m talking about the difference between 42 and 42.5 volts. The extra .5 volts might fill up your fresh battery down hill braking capacity. If that happened then you could get some overcharge warnings on a freshly charged battery. You could test with a volt meter to see if there is a difference in fully charged voltage. Test the voltage after a full charge cycle on the regular charger. Then go for a ride and repeat the test with the third party charger. This little bit of testing and measuring could help you to avoid something unexpected. For example, I rode my first Revel Kit (Pre-Production prototype) for about 500 km wiht no problems and using the correct charger. Then on a camping trip, while stationed at teh top of a hill, I charged teh battery with the wrong charger (V4 Landwheel). Then I headded down hill. I made it to the bottom of the hill and rode for another 10 minutes and then the battery stopped working. I thought the battery was toast. But two years later, a friend of mine reset the BMS and the battery was fine again. Its a very specific situation with a pre-production version of the Revel Kit, incorrect charger and immediate downhill braking. It might never happen with a production kit. Even still, two quick voltage tests would let you know if your third party charger might be sending you out with a higher voltage than the revel kit is designed for.
Also, the slower the charge the healthier the battery. I have five year old L3-x and V4 batteries that are in mint condition using the stock charger. If I doubled the charging amperage the number of useful years could be much lower.
I was at a group ride this weekend and was surprised to learn that so many other boards like wowgo, meepo and backfire use the exact same charger with the exact same specs. I figured it’s just a run-off-the-mill chinese power charger.
But yeah curious about this too
these wheels are AWESOME! love them heaps, more comfortable than my Blue Cags.
The cores on my revel wheels cracked when I tried to replace the bearings. It’s probably not worth buying.
One wheel? or All Wheels? If it was all or most wheels its likely a user error. For example running on unlubricated bearings or over tightened bearings can produce tremendous heat expansion. I’ve done dozens of bearing changes on Revel Kit/Landwheel wheels. I have six sets on my electric skateboards (36 wheels). No problems.
I always change the bearings at room temperature and alwasy use a round dowel slightly larger then the bearing to make sure that I press the bearings in perpedicular to the socket.
I’m not saying its impossible for a bearing socket to crack due to defect. But most revel kit riders seem to have had either good experience or high compliments for the 90mm Revel kit/landwheel wheels.
I have thousands of kilometers on some of these wheels that date back to January 2018.
That could be the reason why they cracked.
Less torque and more speed. 75KV is for torque and lower top speed
So, @Bfrome. What course of action have you decided to take with the grit and residue. I’m thinking start with a soft dry toothbrush. Next use some compressed air to blow away the crumbs and then some blue tac to mop up. Make sure you clean up the top of the ESC, the underside of the battery terminal circuit board. The power switch and power jack.
You should also evaluate the underside of the copper plated adhesive antenna tape to see if the copper it has corroded.
You might want to finish off with a spray of corrosion-x to prevent further corrosion.
Let us know what you do and how it turns out.
@BearBoi
Any tips to add for the cleaning salty residue off the underside of the battery terminal circuit board?
Hey @Bfrome !
Is it possible to take a close-up of this white label?
To me it reads 86kv. That’s a relatively high kv value for a direct drive motor. Very interesting.
I first used a soft plastic scraper to scrape it clean, and blew away the debree with a compressed air canister, I then used isopropyl alcohol with a cotton swab to clean it. Be careful with anything cotton though, cotton is flammable and conductive, this should be used lightly and carefully (perhaps not what I recommend others use)
I highly vouch for isopropyl alcohol though, it is non conductive, very effective and dries quickly, totally safe for electronics. It is what most electric cleaners are based on, cheap and easy to get a hold of. It can make some types of plastic crack, but for a circuit board that is not a concern.
Was searching through the thread to see if it was possible to sync up a 6WD with the Revel drives. Disappointed to see it isn’t able to sync.
Couple questions for you:
When reversing your Revel drive (cantilevered) off the back, did you switch the wiring inside (left to right, and right to left) to get it to ride in forward mode by default? If so, do the wires need to be cut, and soldered back together when doing the switch?
Using the Revel with a dropped deck by cantilevering it from the back would be nice; however, I am not confident in my soldering abilities if wires must be cut to be switched around.
The other question I have is in regards to how you cantilevered it. I remember you suggesting to a member a pre-made surf rail adapter if they lacked fabrication skills. I lack a dremel, and the tools to fabricate my own. The only power tool I own is a drill.
I did have other questions regarding your ski suspension - Looking at the photos you had posted, I was not able to expand the photo to see closer detail of how the ski is attached. Not sure if it is: metal plate facing the sky, rubber riser, deck, then metal plate, rubber riser, truck base plate… or vice versa.
I find myself agreeing with most of your modifications or unorthodox ideas… I don’t mind throwing 6 wheels on there, 6WD, reversing the Revel drive, or throwing a ski on for suspension.
Coincentially, I am planning to reconfigure my four drives into an 8WD Revel Kit mounted on a ski, mounted to a Tarab.
Mechanically connecting two remotes together is pretty easy. You just need high quality double sided tape and some strips of ABS plastic.
This was my first attempt to network two Landwheel remotes together to give me a 4WD landwheel.
I used conventional double sided tape which slipped too much. When I switched to the clear mounting tape from Home Depot, the results were much better. It use to be called Lepages Extreme mounting tape and it came in a roll. It looks like lepages may have rebranded the same clear mounting tape as NO More Nails. I think you would get the same results from Gorilla Tough and Clear mounting tape.
I’ve made improvements to the tandem remote set-up. All of my boards are stored elsewhere for the winter. The next time I’m close to the tandem remote, I’ll snap some close ups for you.
In theory, mounting two Revel kits remotes in tandem should power either 6WD or 8WD.
So the first thing I tried to do was to rotate the motor wires without swapping sides. It works wiht a VESC. Switch any two wires and the motors run in reverse. It worked for the Landwheel’s also. FOr some reason It did not work for the Revel Kit. So I had to do a left/right swap of the motor wires. That worked. It was not difficult and no cutting or soldering was required. I believe the newest Revel Kit drives have consolidated from three motor wire connectors to just two connectors. In other words there are now using three wire connectors – one for each side. So swapping motor wires left to right would be that much easier.
If you want 4WD tandem then you need to reverse the motor wires left to right on the inverted drive.
However, if you decide on 6WD or 8WD then there is no need to reverse any motor wires at all. You can sort out the motor direction using the remotes. You still need to invert one drive for 6WD or 2 drives for 8WD. But the inversion is purely mechanical with no wire disconnection or rewiring.
For 8WD, getting the inverted drives to run in the same direction as the conventional drives is easy. When you sync the conventional drives, you want to sync the rear drive first. When you sync the inverted drives, you want to sync the front drive first
For 6WD, if the inverted drive is mounted on the rear, then you can sync the inverted drive and the front drive to the same remote, syncing the inverted drive first. Then you sync the remaining drive to the second remote. All three sets of wheels will spin in the correct direction without any re-wiring.
Thats it, thats all, no re-wiring required. You don’t even need to open up the enclosure. Everything is done from the outside of the electronic enclosure.Unbolt the trucks. Spin them 180. Reassemble with a spacer.
When you “180” the trucks for the inverted drives, you will need to insert a 1/4 inch spacer between the trucks and the drive. This spacer will fill the D shaped recess in the backing plate. This will make perfect sense as soon as you seperate the trucks from the drive. For the spacer, you can use rubber flooring, or a few layers of risers. The spacer needs to be the same shape as the recess but with a path cut down the middle for the motor wires to run. Its not hard. If you use rubber flooring, you can do all the cutting with strong scissors.
If you invert the trucks and mount the entire drive below the deck with the battery facing in the normal downward direction then you don’t need to lengthen any wires and you don’t even need to open up the enclosure. There is no re-wiring. Just invert the trucks, add a space, bolt it back together and rear mount underneath the drop down deck. The only downside is that you might scrape the face of the battery on a curb on the way down. Top mounting the battery with the battery facing up would give you better clearance but its more involved and requires additional disassembly to access the motor wire connectors, disconnect them, unroute them, and re-route them through a new hole that you would need to drill.
With the battery box top mounted on the deck and facing up, the cantilevered drive can be tricky. It is possible to do it with no soldering if you drill a large hole through the middle of the drive backing plate (dead center between the four truck mounting holes. You can then disconnect the four motor wires and run them all through the new hole in the backing plate and through a hole that you would have to drill through the deck (unless its a drop through deck which already has a hole). You would need a drill press and a step drill because the backing plate is white metal. Its much harder than aluminum and it would be a tad tangerous to try to drill it out with a hand drill. Not impossible with a hand drill if you screw the drive to a 2x4 and drill through the plate into the 2x4.
The wires would reach if you only add the thickness of a deck between the top mounted battery and the bottom mounted trucks. However, if want to add a one inch riser, then you are probably not going to have enough wire length.
However, if you use a drop down deck and cantilever the battery mounted under the deck, then you could put your one inch vibration pad between the deck and the battery/drive. In that case, you should have ample wire without any need to lengthen the wires.
I don’t recommend attempting to lengthen the wires unless you are proficient at soldering. The only time I attempted to lengthen the wires on a landwheel drive, I failed. One of the wires broke. It was part of a 6WD set-up. Two of my drives dragged the disabled drive and the ESC was destroyed. It was a very sad waste of a rare and wonderful ESC.
But while it ran as a 6WD, it was spectacular.
A 6WD Revel Kit would be even more spectacular than a 6WD L3-x. The Revel Kit has programable brakes, faster acceleration and higher top speed if you up the wheel size.
However, if you want a dropdown deck you are going to be stuck with 4WD unless you get a metal fabrication shop to build you pair of drop down brackets to attach to a flat deck. One of the brakets would need to be long enough to accomodate two drive assemblies and you would want to top mount all the batteries like this:
So If I recall correctly, the reason I suggested the Surf adapter was to help soneone wint no tools to put together a tandem 4WD (both drives on the rear) for a Vanguard style deck. The surf adapter would give you two sets of truck mounting bolts on one end of the deck.
I’m not sure if the surf adapter would make any sense for a drop down deck. I don’t think the nose and tail of a drop down board are strong enough for a foot long extension.
The layers look like this working from the top down:
Head of three inch stainless steel machine screws
Metal Plate (so the screw heads don’t pull through the rubber)
Anti-vibration pad
Deck
Antivibration pad
Ski
Truck baseplate (Drive wheels)
Stainless Steel lock nuts
The three inch screws likely need to be trimmed to length so you need a dremel.
For the unpowered wheels, they are mounted directly to the ski with nothing between.
My plan is Tarab, Ski suspension and 8WD.
The vanguard is a more comfortable deck but the steering gets very slugish once you move beyond 4WD. The reason for the slugish steering is that the front and back end of the vanguard can twist into different planes. The Tarab keeps the front and back wheels in the same plane. You also get to kick steer if you move the drives forward to give yourself a larger tail. But the Tarab provides far less suspension. Its an issue if your roads are in terrible condition.
So I’m thinking the Ski suspension will provide the comfort and the Tarab will keep the steering sharp with the slim possibiliy of kick steering an 8WD machine.
Before you run out and buy 3 drives, let me test if the Revel kit remotes operate in such close proximity. I have only tried the tandem remote with Landwheel L3-x remotes.
Hey everyone, first of all, Happy Holidays!
Is it really bad for the battery if I use the kit in below freezing temperatures? I haven’t been out in weeks due to finals and was wondering if I should wait for warmer days or just go out and ride.
I do have a meepo I could abuse while keeping my Revel kit safe lol but the revel kit is just more fun to ride.
Any other tips for riding in the cold?