yep, i came to think the same. IMO the best is to use only the front adanter and NOT to use the rear adapter, just put a raiser there to compensate the extra height of the front adapter. that is what i said before:
but doing that will make a weird empty space between the deck and the battery, so…
also…
or may be for the next version of the revel…
those are my conclussions
So I’ll do a hard disagree with @Spade on his recommendation to go with hub motors instead of direct drive. Hub motors are crap, they last a year or less unless you are riding on perfectly smooth roads. Hub urethane feels aweful. One reason the hub motors might have less rolling resistance is that it is like rolling on steel wheels with elastic bands wrapped around them for cushioning. The harder the wheels, the lower the roling resistance.
The Revel kit is not perfect. But it does a few things really well. The battereis are small, light and swapable. That means you can travel light for short range and bring extra battereis for long range.
The remote, accelleration and braking are highly refined compared to everything else that I’ve tried. Some might disagree with that statement. I think most would agree.
You know if its the most important thing for you to have the drive seperate from the trucks and motor assembly then you could remove the trucks, cut the neck off the drive and throughbolt the drive to your deck. Then the Revel Kit would attach to any deck in the same hideous throughbolting style as the Mepo drives. The revel kit is designed so that you don’t have to drilll any extra holes. but if you really want extra holes all you need is a drill and a hacksaw to have it your way.
I’m not being sarchastic. I have cut the neck off of a landwheel drive in order to achieve a particular mouting location.
So I just realized that there is away you could use the rear surf adapter without lengthening the wires and to also have the revel kit mounted to the deck.
Step 1) Peel back the neck rubber
Step 2) Remove themachine screws that hold the truck to the drive
Step 3) Positioning the battery to the rear of the truck bolts, bolt the neck of the revel drive to the deck with the neck of the drive sanwiched between the deck and the rear surf adapter. You may or may not need to use a few risers to fill the recess in the neck.
Step 4) Now mount the trucks and drive assembly to the surf adapter in the normal orientation for rear trucks (180 degrees rotated from the original position relative to the drive). You should have about 1.5 to two inches of extra wire by running the wires direclty from the drive to the back of the trucks (instead of underneath and through the trucks.
The only problem left to solve is that your Revel kit will always start up in reverse. To fix that, disassemble the drive enclosure and reverse all of the motor and sensor wires left to right and right to left.
So to recap. Seperate the trucks form the drive. Mount the drive backwards so that the battery is to the rear of the trucks. Mount the drive and surfadapter to the board. Spin the trucks 180 degrees and run the wires straight from the drive to the trucks without assing underneath the base plate. This will give you some extra wire to work with.
Any specific reason you’re looking at a revel kit vs something like the torqueboards dd kit? Seems like the TB kit is a bit more configurable for what it seems you ultimately want the revel kit to do.
Its not the worst idea. The DIY DD hub assembly does have very flexible silicone wires and lots of length… But its a much more expensive route to travel. I think it will be $2000 USD by the time you get Vescs, batery, remote, enclosures, wheels and the drive assemble. Also, I don’t think it’s less work to do a DIY compared to seperateing the Revel Drive from it’s drive assembly.
But the silicone motor wires would be an advantage.
This sounds like a great plan. If you have the revel kit mounted properly it shouldn’t really slap very much. I put some extra insulation between mine and the deck because the stiff deck I picked had a microdrop. In addition you’ll need longer hardware, the given hardware is only just long enough for the drive on a flat deck.
I agree with your reasoning here
The entire point of the Revel kit is that it can be placed on almost any deck, as one piece, with only the truck hardware. It is arguably the most customizable attachment. That’s the whole reason it exists lol separating them would defeat the purpose of it and be a completely different product, like @spade said, diy is probably easier if you want something like that
The neck of the drive is not going to break either way. Being right next to the deck puts more stress on the neck of the drive than having the drive suspended away from the deck. The deck always flexes a little even for a rigid deck --alot if its a flexible deck. When you put a rigid drive against a bendy deck, the drive ends up serving as a straightening split for the deck.
But either way will work. To foam or not to foam.
I just came to realize that I made a stupid mistake:
I missunderstood the difference in the meaning of word “shame” for “sad”, “pity”. and i feel so bad about it, it was not what i meant to say, but english is not my native language and I want to say im so sorry about that and I apologyze if i made someone feel bad about it.
I want to clarify to whoever read this forum that i think the revel kit is indeed a great kit, it does great all it was intended for and is by far best in the market for its price. they for sure should be proud of that they made.
You used the word correctly. The phrase “its a shame” is equivalent to “its too bad” or “i wish it were different”
On its own shame is a stronger word. Like “Trump has shamed the US in international circles.”
Lol lets not bring any political opinions into this but @Maven that makes sense, simple mistake.
You could always just diy too but I understand the ease of bolting on the kit haha
you had a very good idea, but i wonder if you could do something better: what about this:
could that be done? then you wont need to fix the drive to start up in reverse.
anyways i thought the revel was easy to run in reverse, like when you link it reverse in 4wd mode 
because as far as i know the revel kit is the best and easiest way to go, this is just an unexpected annoying problem to solve that was not in the original design
So yes, you can do that. I covered that in an earlier post on this surf adapter topic.
And like I said in that post, you just have to be super sure that your 36 solder joints don’t break. The Motor phase wires in particular can damage the speed controler and or cause spontaneous powerful braking if one of the phase wires breaks.
you can reduce the number of solder joints if you buy sensor wire extensions. But i am not sure these are available for the revel kit size of sensor wire connectors.
regardless the surf adapter subject, I would like to ask you, what happens when you are doing full throttle, but yet you goes faster than motors specs: for example in a downhill situacion, or when you are on speed 1 and the board is being foot pushed or pumped hard. is that behaviour risky for the motors or the battery? would it be better to have the board turned off in that case? I do know that kind of situations could involve a risk for the driver, I know, but Im asking about the board safety at this time, just to know what kind of behaviours could damage it.
you can try it! make sure you pad up properly before you do though. The motors are strong, they’ll take a lot of abuse. you can’t turn off the board halfway during riding - only at a complete stop. Speed 1 or 4 doesn’t do anything different - speed 1 just caps the top speed at a low speed when the throttle is pushed all the way, and subsequently. I’m always riding at speed 4… speed 1 when I’m in extremely crowded places and narrow sidewalks to avoid hitting anyone, have never touched speed 2 and 3.
I’m quite certain that the Revel kit only produces regen current when you brake – so coasting down hill without braking – or foot pumping without braking – neither of those activities should be contributing to any overcharged battery condition. If I’m wrong then you would get an overcharge vibration alert. I don’t think i’m wrong. So that should anwer you main question which is that propelling you board without throtteling the revel kit should not damage the Revel kit.
But you also mentioned down hill braking an that is a topic unto itself.
If you scroll through the 900 posts to this thread, you will see that I have written a few encyclopedias on the dangers of traveling down hill on a full battery. You should review those if you live at the top of a hill or in an area with very steep and prolonged hills.
Briefly, the Revel kit does a slight undercharge that gives you a block or so of safe braking depending on grade. If you get a vibration alert on a full battery, you want to stop braking and either safely jump off or ride out the hill without using the brakes. If you continue to brake beyond the first vibration alert, then you are at high risk of an overcharged and damaged battery.
The majority of Es8 products will just let the BMS pull the plug on the ESC – leaving you with no power and no brakes or possibly 100% brakes. The Revel kit won’t do that. This gives you a chance to save your own life if you need to brake on a steep hill but you will be cooking one or more cells in the battery as you save your life. Its a small sacrifice for not dieing and it is an easy circumstance to avoid – just don’t travel down hill on a freshly charged battery and immediately heed any overcharge vibration warning from the remote.
On any Esk with a small battery, you also need to to be careful of riding down a mountain even on a well depleted battery. Regen current on a steep down hill incline charges a battery about 8 times faster than a wall charger. That’s ok for brief periods but sustained high regen current on a prolonged down hill slope will cook a small battery. In most cases, the BMS would pull the plug on the battery and you would be left wiht no brakes on an incredibly dangerous slope. The Revel Kit would not let the BMS pull the plug on you – so you would not lose brakes but you woudl be cooking the battery on the way down if you ignored the vibration alerts.
So if you live in a region with extremely steep hills, you should be looking at set-up that has a very large battery and one that allows you to undercharge. There are other options including a DIY that is configured for electric braking only (no Regen).
To your question about the 4 speeds, those settings only reduce acceleration to give you longer range. So there shoud be no difference in regen current based on the speed that you select.
Traveling down hill without power might do nothing harmful or might do damage. I don’t know. However it is an unitended use so its hard to say that it is a good idea.
In general Regen won’t do any damage to the speed controler but it can do damage to the battery if the battery is already full or if the rejen current is sustained and intense due to prolonged steep hill braking.
But you should be able to push or pump all day long on a powered up revel kit without any regen related problems.
this behaviour is why i’ve got concerned about kit safety. dont want to fry it
about batteries and downhill brakes: yeah, i already have read that entire testament you made, i think is very informative, all the people should read it doesnt care what brand of board are they using, brands should give that kind of explanations to customers, if not before purchase at least in user manual indeed Revel has a very good driver safety there.
what i still dont understand is why one could damage the board by just ride it until dry its battery, that behaviour is like a bad user experience.
I guess there should be some ‘no more power’ threshold in the esc to not let the board broke itself
but at least customers should be told about that behaviours
Lithium cells need a minimum voltage or they are damaged if depleted below that minimum voltage.
The ESC can only measure the total voltage across all cells because there is only a positive and negative wire from the battery to the ESC. So when the ESC issues a vibration alert, it means you are at critically low voltage (total voltage across all cells). The weakest cells may be lower than the average and would be the first to be damaged if you continue.
The BMS knows the voltage of each cell. but if you let the BMS pull the plug on the ESC then that event can leave you without power or in the middle of regen with no battery to run the Regen current through.
Revel Kit does not let the BMS pull the plug so it is more important to heed the critical voltage alerts.
Even on a skateboard that lets the BMS pull the plug, youcan still damage the battery by repeatedly restarting the skateboard. The BMS has no memory of the past voltage drops so restartign and contining ratchets down the voltage in the cells making dammage to the cells likely.
Soyou have the same potential for damage whether or not the BMS can pull the plug on the ESC. Th only difference is that the Revel Kit does not shut down. You can damage your Revel kit battery by ignoring the vibration alerts without ever having to step off the board. With skateboards that allow the BMS to pull the plug, you atually have to step off and restart the power in order to drag the voltage down to damaging levels.
Got it?
All Esk8’s need better battery documentation including the Revel Kit. However the Revel Kit does have a brief on-screen warning that says " voltage is critically low". It also cuts you acceleration but still allows you to brake. So you can’t say there is no infomation to tell you what to do. there are actually three…vibration, loss of acceleration, on screen warning.