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!
Iām completely new to this forum but Iāve read over some of the topics and it seems like youāve all been quite helpful with each other so I figured Iād 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 ā¦ please be soon cos itās fr killing me) and had a few questions.
First off, I just moved to San Francisco from Honolulu not too long ago and canāt 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 āsurfingā feeling, I was hoping to do the same thing that Maven had suggested doing on this forum a couple of days ago. Iām 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 thereās 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, Iāll get right into the questions!
- Are the bases of the trucks that come with the Revel Kit similar to Paris trucks? I know that Paris trucks have extra long bases and from the pictures on Revelās website, they look similar enough but iām not entirely sure. If the bases are too long then the front trucks wonāt fit flush on the Waterborne Surf Adapter and I may need to either file it down or add a thin riser to compensate
- Kasanda had mentioned that youāre able to pull the rubber layer on top of the Revel Kit back, and reveal the hardware that connects the drive to the actual trucks. My question is if Iād be able detach the trucks from the drive unit, and have enough wiring slack to safely put at least 1 inch of risers between them? That way the drive unit would stay flush with the deck, and the wheels are lowered to compensate for the extra height from Surf Adapter being up front. Iād really like to do this without any soldering or extensive modifications as I feel more comfortable keeping the product within warranty.
- Being that I live in SF, there are a crazy amount of different hill grades, thanks to Kasanda for the info regarding how to properly maintain avoid damaging the battery. But, my main question what the hill grade rating actually is per your guysā opinion. Iāve seen mixed reviews on the listed 20% rating stated in the website, and was hoping to get some more idea as to what other think about it. Iām 175 pounds with gear and while I donāt plan to ride SFās steepest hills, I also donāt want to bomb straight down a hill that Iād end up having to walk back up
Thatās all for now, I know itās 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.
Iāve 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,
- Paris equivalent.
- I dont suggest messing around with with the revel kit battery / motor mountsā¦ they work well already as rear wheels.
- Keep the wheels 90mm or less and youāll have less problems for the torque taking you up the hills. Ease into the acceleration.
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:
- I was going to start with the default trucks and wheels that come with the revel and a raiser to avoid wheel bite, see how that goes and then (maybe) change trucks and wheels.
- I was going to see if a raiser can be put between the truck and its holder. if that cant be done then the solution will be to put the raiser between the deck and the rebel kit. may be will look a bit wierd but it should work fine. also you could find some foam to fill the empty space between the deck and the revel kit.
- As said by @pkasanda you would need the 4wd setup for more power and range unfortunately I think that wont work. For a surskate build you are restricted to revel 2WD, the reasons being the same of point 2. its a shame in the revel kit that the rear truck is hard attached to the battery. 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.
Thatās 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. Thatās just speculation. Iāve 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 180Ā°.
that is to be discovered.
I concur. And Iāll 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. Thereās 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 couldnāt go more then 10 mph on a perfectly smooth street. Iāve 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 youāre trying to conquer San Francisco, you need to be prepared to run through batteries. Hills take a lot of juice. Iāve been able to get up some 20% hills but it does slow down significantly. higher than that and Iād 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 wonāt 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 shouldnāt permanently damge the battery.
The Revel kit batteries have a BMS inside, so they shouldnāt let the cells be damaged. I donāt personally have impirical evidence that itās impossible to damage them, but I wouldnāt be scared like with the Landwheel ones. The Landwheel batteries had āspecialā 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 ānot niceā 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.
Āæwhat do you think?
I donāt actually own a waterborne adapter, but Iāve seen them. Theyāre 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 isnāt a problem since you probably donāt go as fast, it would be interesting ot see what it does with an adapter on the front truck. Either way youād 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 āan adapterā, but in fact ātwo different adaptersā, 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 āno-turningā, 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.
I get it. First thing I said was that I had never ridden on one so I could be completely wrong.
Anyway, Fabi seems to handle speed and sharp turns with it quite wellāso I think my assumption that it would be unstable at speed does not jive with the actual outcome of mounting the front adapter on an esk8.
As for the rear adapter, try using an aluminum plate to cantilever the drive infront or behind the rear surf adapter. The rear surf adapter looks pretty strong. It should be able to handle some cantilevered weight.
Interesting, I did see that itās not quite the same because of the angle the pin is at. I donāt think Iād enjoy it but it will be cool to see what the others think haha
Whyād you wanna pump on at esk8 for? You got motors for propulsion. Youād just want to carve really sharp turns and enjoy the constant āwaveā of flow which a yowsurf or a smoothstar would mimic much better than a waterborne according to reviewers, and theyāre only for the front. If you wanna pump stick to non-motorized.
Hey everyone! Thanks for checking out my post!
To me at least, riding a surf skate is less about pumping and propulsion and more about the ārail to rail flowā that a surf adapter can grant you. With regular trucks the arc of the curve when carving is way too soft, I have seen YOWsurf and SmoothStar but unfortunately the higher price point is what kept me from pursuing them. Especially considering that Waterborne also offers the Rear Rail Adapter, which is still much cheaper as well. The Rear Rail Adapter greatly enhances the rear trucksā lean, but limits turning. Because of so, your rear trucks become a pivot point and allow you to quite genuinely turn on a dime. It also keeps your rear wheels from lifting up on tighter turns and heavily increases stability because with less allowed turn on the rear trucks, youāre able to limit understeer and more freely transfer weight (which in my opinion, is the biggest reason for instability. At least for me, because iām not used to my back end being able to turn just as much as my front end). Iām more interested in being able to carve my way through the city on an ESK8 during my way to work and have some fun at relatively high speeds than having to pump really hard on every single incline I face (which is a lot), and doing so in a way that feels most natural to me. The Revel Kit is incredibly cool from what Iāve seen and heard, and I really want to find a way to make it work (especially since I bought mine last month and want to make it worth waiting for aha) so that I donāt have to purchase two separate boards (one with power and one without) for what would fulfill the same purpose of being something fun to ride on my way to work.
@pkasanda had mentioned that I could possibly cantilever the Revel Kit while using the Rear Rail Adapter. Could you talk more about what exactly you mean as Iām quite interested.