looks like a rough ride for your chargers. My crystal ball tells me they are not going to last. If you don’t rattle the electronics, then the DC output wire may fold and snap inside the insulation.
Have you thought about a fixed mega battery wired in parallell to the two drives, mounted between the two drives. Then you could get one mega charger.
Metro boards also sells this 16AH battery. That’s 2.5 x the size of a revel kit Xt battery.
Or three of these would give you 18AH for almost half the price:
I don’t have any affiliation with Metroboards, I just associate them with oversized batteries so it was the first place I looked.
You might need a longer board unless you want to top mount the mega battery.
Other options might include:
a) Cantilever the Mega battery off the front or back of the board
b) Undermount but extend the length of the board with something like the surf adapter https://waterborneskateboards.com/products/extender-bracket-for-electric-skateboards?variant=20649876521030
You can also make your own extender out of aluminum or pieces of an old downhill ski.
You might really appreciate the suspension characteristics that a flexible length extension could give you.
c) If you undermount your mega battery in a way that still lets you swap batteries, then you would need a switches or XT connectors to disconnect your mega battery from the swappable batteries. You don’t want to connect full and depleted batteries together .
Anyway, you seem pretty creative, I thought you might be able to come up with a neat way to transform your 4WD Kit into somethign that is bettery tuned to your 100 Mile rides.
So it sounds like the middle screw threads are stripped and you can’t back it out of the backing plate.
That’s tricky. You could try stripping the paper off two twist ties and seeing if you can get a few loops tightened around the underside of the screw. That’s assuming you have enough space to slide the wire loop under the head. If you can, then try to get at least two loops under the thread and then use the twist ties to pull up on the screw as you use a screw driver or drill to back out the screw.
I assume you have tried removing all the other screws and lifting up on the shell while you try to back out the centre screw.
We did a nice Group Ride today in Ottawa. Lots of different vehicles. The Lacroix and the Baja Board are monsters when it comes to speed and acceleration. The 4WD Revel Kit can almost keep pace with either board. I’m sure the other riders were not going full out. But all in all the 4WD Kit keeps pace (on pavement) with some of the more expensive and luxurious models out there.
I tried the Metro board briefly at slow speed. Its a really nice looking board. It was brand new and set to beginner acceleration so I can’t say much about accelleration but it looks fast and steers nicely. The brakes were good. It was a $4000CDN purchase so not much less than a Lacroix Lonestar. The deck was a bit stiff for my tastes but i did not ride it fast enough to be able to say if the 6 inch pneumatics compensate forthe lack of flex. It certainly seems like a well thought out system.
If I could pick anyone of them for free it would be the Lacroix for sure.
But for the same price, I could build an 8wd Revel Kit. Hmm, what to do?
Yeah, the chargers are a concern especially cause those are especially cheap ones. I only use them for Endurance Rides cause they’re light & cheap. If they break it’s easy to replace them. We’ve had people break expensive chargers using the board/cargo net system.
I’m going to place a neoprene pad underneath then for the next Endurance Ride to cushion the vibrations.
I’m actually planning on doing exactly that big battery you describe with the help of ChiBatterySystems.
Going to mount a large battery underneath the board & have 2 cables charging the batteries as I ride. The drives function while the batteries are being charged. Basically a Charge+Ride system.
Going to use a Tarab so I can still swap batteries when I want to. It would fit on a Crossbow but then the batteries wouldn’t be easily swappable.
Hoping to get 25+ Miles Range out of a system like that.
So I think the Chi battery guy has a great idea with the portable recharging banks. However I don’t think its the right solution to extend your range. Here is my rational:
I don’t think the Chia board bank is ruggedized for bolting to an esk8. Its intended to carry in a back-pack and charge when stationary. All sorts of stuff could break if you mount it to a jackhammer.
The charging connectors in particular are not ruggedized. They will vibrate out, scrape on the ground and get damaged.
As I understand it, the board bank has a higher voltage battery array and it has a buck board to step down the voltage for boards of different voltage. It would be much more efficient to just parallell in a 36 volt battery. A 36 volt battery in parallell is going to keep all batteries at the same voltage and it will protect your revel Kit batteries from voltage sag on hills and accelleration. Letting the revel kit batteries sag and then waiting for a power bank to charge them up at wall charger rate…thats really inefficient.
Imagin if you put a motorcycle gas tank as the main tank for your car, then you used a windshield washer pump to replentish the motorcycle gas tank. Thats the best analogy I can think of for using a power bank to charge on the go.
Also, the Chia power banks are pretty expensive compared to just getting a battery of the correct size.
Its really not hard to parallell in some extra batteries with a Revel Kit. I’ve done it a dozen times with the old Landwheels. The Revel Kit is not much different. You just run a positive and negative wire into the Revel Kit electronics compartment using the exact same path as the motor wires.
I recommend against using the Revel Kit charging port as a the parallell connector. If you hit an obstacle, you will snap the DC connector and would likely damage the charging port.
The Tarib would be a good choice for a mega battery Revel Kit. It’s not the only option but it is a good choice.
The Chi guy knows his stuff for sure. If he’s willing to do a custom 36 volt battery for you with an XT connector then I’m sure it would be great. Just make sure you are not using wall charger connectors and wires to connect your booster battery to your Revel Kit batteries. You want to tap into the main power wires that feed ESC. Do a good solder joint and heat shrink connection. Make sure you turn the power button on with no battery installed to deplete the capacitors That will make it safer to operate on the Revel Kit.
Yeah, slightly skeptical regarding the Flux as well but the first batch seems to have gone well & they’ve made a bunch of improvements to the second batch.
The Trucks are MBS trucks that are used on the Jaws.
The enclosure is ABS but seems well constructed.
The Flux appears to be somewhat of a mix of different LaCroix models in terms of features.
I agree that the pre-order is a big risk. There are hardly any reviews of the Flux yet & LaCroix’s track record is proven.
@EboardSolutions:
So I probably should have PM’d Joe with my impressions of the Flux instead of posting publicly. Some of my impressions of the Flux were incorrect and it was all off topic for this thread. So i’m just going to delete those two previous posts.
I feel that my impressions of the Flux were colored by the high profile placement of the word “Pre-order” on your shopping web site. – so much so that I missed the fact that it was a pre-order for the second production run. But there might be a lesson to learn from my incomplete skimming of your store front web site. How about eliminating the word “Pre-order” . It is often associated with kickstarter type campaigns where the product is still just an idea.
How long does Revel support usually take to get back to people? They haven’t responded to neither my email nor the multiple chat messages I left them about the cracked battery case. Feels like they’re ignoring me now. I never had to wait over a week for a reply from them before. They responded and replaced my remote battery super fast.
I would say that it depends on how busy things are with the limited staff. Some days there are more messages than others, you could always try kindly prodding them to respond, maybe your message got lost in the noise
Has anybody here swapped out the front truck for something else? Something that gives more maneuverability? What size or angle should I get if I decide to swap it out?
My suggestion woudl be to stick with front truck geometry that matches the rear truck geometry.
I had two experiences that reinforce this idea:
Installed the Revel Kit on the back and Landwheel L3-x trucks onthe front and the steering and stability was quite poor relative to Revel Kit parts front and back
Installed double hung trucks on the front of a 2WD Revel kit. Seemed super cool for a few runs up and down the street. Then on the third run I encountered a spectacular slow speed wobble that I just barely rode my way through. I went lock to lock about 8 times before the wobble tapered off. I was eyeing the front lawns as a soft place to land but managed to stay upright.
Trying to find trucks that are 200mm wide hangar size like the stock front truck but it seems pretty rare. Most on the market are 180mm hangar size. Maybe I will just try to stick to the stock trucks and order a surf adapter for better maneuverability. I’ll keep your advice about the same geometry in mind in case I do find trucks the right size. Thanks!
So not just a guy ordering parts and assembling them