Another one? What’s this about?
you say as you open up another one of my unintelligible fits of word soup.
I’m so glad you asked. Let’s rewind a year
For university, I moved up into the boonies of Upstate New York, a land covered in a thick white blanket for much of the winter. I decided to build a mountainboard to make it possible to ride no matter the conditions. Born was Dusk, a board that I recently rebuilt and love riding.
However, the board had one major problem, it couldnt handle the snow.
Two things held it back. For one, the gear drives had a huge diameter, causing them to drag in powder snow. This made it really difficult to ride if there was more than 4cm of snow on the ground. Second, the board didnt have much traction in ideal conditions. I was barely able to accelerate, causing me to get stuck if there was any incline. Although part of this blame falls on my tire choice, it was clear 2wd on 8" tires would be insufficient and lead to embarassing moments.
Despite my constant moaning about how 4wd is pointless for the vast majority of people, I knew it was only a matter of time for me, and I wasnt willing to convert Dusk to 4wd.
@abusfullofnuns was dishing out some cheap decks, and I have a small pile of spare parts to reduce costs, so I figured i’d get started during my winter break.
Board Objectives:
Capabilities:
True “All season” riding where I dont really have to worry about anything. Snow, rain, blah blah blah. fuck riding on the beach though. NEVER AGAIN.
Performance:
I actually don’t really care about power output with this one, but for reasons I’m about to get into, it needs to be pretty powerful. Only geared to ~30mph with 9" tires.
Range:
Honestly, i’m good with just 20 miles with this one. I dont see why i’d ever have to go far with this one, so I can ensure a 20 mile worst case scenario range with the battery i’ve chosen.
Towing
Ah yes, this makes the board more interesting. Through my school, I’m getting trained to work in the engineering workshop, which includes welding and other machinery. With this, I intend on making a full size trailer that can hopefully haul a person, or a ~100kg payload at 20mph. I also found one of these at Lowes for like 10 bucks, which helps. I can probably make my own anti sink plate from scratch in the workshop that can hold this, since I can bend 1/4 steel there.
obligatory bill gordon joke
Parts and Discussion:
Deck: Lacroix Nazzare Deck
Enclosure: Pure Outdoor/Monoprice top box
Battery: 12s8p Lishen 21700SA pack
ESCs: 2x Flipsky 6.6 Minis
Front Motors: 2x Reacher 6455 v6 205kv
Rear Motors: 2x Reacher 6485 v5 205kv
Trucks: @MBS Matrix 3 320mm hangers + 70mm extended axles (purchased from Apex)
Wheels: 9" on Trampa Phatlads.
@ApexBoards Chain drives
Lets discuss part choice
Deck: Cheap, big, lacroix graphic stripped off, comfortable
Battery: I have these lying around. Before Ted turned into a shithead scammer, he actually passed on his 18650 battery store b2b discounts to me by drop shipping me cells, where I ended up with 100 of these mid tier cells for like 2.90 a pop shipped. The original objective with these was to make some @TheBoardGarage 7s4p portable board chargers, but I had outgrown small batteries at that point and figured there would be a better use for these cells down the line. I originally wanted to do a 10s10p so I can utilize all 100 cells, but the lower voltage leaves me with a top speed that was just too low for my liking. I’m ditching a bit of capacity, but it is what it is.
ESCs: I dont like flipsky, nor do I like their products, but I have a pile of these ESCs lying around and i’d be an idiot not to use them. If one breaks, I have more to put in 
. The plan is to run each side at 70 motor/25 battery amps, so it shouldn’t be particularly taxing for the ESCs. They may just be exposed to those higher currents for longer if I’m hauling something around. If something happens, i’ll switch over to makerx DV6s and get some more performance out of the board, even though that isn’t really a priority here. No loop key either, I’m just gonna disconnect the discharge XT90 inside of the ESC when i’m not using it, plus a robogochi to yell at me in case I forget.
Motors: This setup is unconventional and is dumb, but it’s what I have lying around. While i’m stuck on 8", the front wheels are gonna top out around 28mph, and I dont know how the motors are going to interact when the front wheels are at their duty cycle limit. Hopefully the rear motors will also be throttled back if they’re connected over CAN? This is more of a temporary thing. I originally wanted 6355 motors, but if i’m towing something I suspect they’ll overheat. I’m still thinking about an asymmetrical setup with 6355s in the front and 6385s in the back.
Editors note: This asymmetrical setup is what I ended up going with
Drivetrain: Chains are just good in the snow. I spent a good few hours researching chain drives, and the only thing that would really work with my anticipated setup is this one. @Facko 's setup didnt have enough reduction for my liking and I love the execution of Apex’s system. I’m a big fan of the Jump drives, so I’m curious to see how these perform. I’m hoping the lower power 4wd setup means I wont be breaking motor shafts and chains.
This build is a pile of parts I own and a few pending orders.
I originally was calling this project “snow board”, but when said out loud, it sounds exactly like “snowboard”, hence snowSPACEboard.
fucking 