Decided to finally make a build thread after years of pissing around making random other boards, so here it is - the cumulative efforts of all my prior builds and being annoyed with their performance. It’s still a work in progress, so ill try and regularly update this thread.
BOARD PORN
THE PREMISE
I absolutely had to have split angles, and a stupidly low standing platform. Over the years, i’ve realized the low standing platform of drop bracket boards is something I enjoy the handling feel of, and split angles significantly increased my confidence at speed. It’s a combination i seriously suggest everyone should try. I also wanted the board to be relatively rail matched, as my experience with insanely wide trucks like BN270s, BN280s, and Bioboards RKP 300s has led me to prefer narrower setups - in general, wide setups felt more sluggish on turn in response as well as just being bulkier to deal with on a daily basis. Lastly, i wanted to get away from larger pneumatic wheels and build this board for thane wheels or BRP’s, for the more “direct” road feel - and my lacroix nazare is right there if i want something more comfortable for long range cruising anyways. And lastly, this board has to be built with no expenses spared, and zero compromises. I’m tired of building something and being unhappy with it because i cheaped out or didn’t hold things to my standards. I don’t care how long it’ll take - this board is gonna be done right the first time.
THE DECK
With that being said, the first step was figuring out the deck - I partnered with @IDEA to have a set of split angle brackets made to my specification, which is shown in more detail in this thread (IDEA Split Angle Brackets Group Buy), but the end result was spending $400 on a one off run for a +10/-10 bracket with 45mm of effective drop when run in a drop through configuration. Those, paired with a stiffer IDEA deck gave me the perfect base to build everything else off of. Low, sleek, shiny, and very lightweight for what it offers.
THE TRUCKS
So, with my prior experience with RKP trucks being pretty mediocre and uninspiring, i decided to try out a set of TKP trucks awhile ago on my pushboard (a loaded fathom). Me being me though, regular Surf Rodz TKP’s just weren’t shiny enough. Hence, the advent of the @IDEA Surf Rodz TKP 180 and 150 hangers, narrower than his prior 220 or 260 offerings, and also introducing the option to flip the hanger on the bushing seat to change the effective rake and ride height. Additionally, these hangers use a stronger M8 bolt rather than M6, and are full billet aluminum. The initial plan was to use 180mm hangers on this board to keep it as narrow as possible, however i pretty quickly realized that i wouldn’t be able to do this, for reasons you’ll see in the next category, so this board is on a set of his 220 hangers. Still relatively narrow, and plenty shiny enough for me. And of course, @RipTideSports bushings and pivot cups all around.
THE DRIVETRAIN
So, with my preference of thanes or BRP’s, and me wanting the ability to fine tune the drive ratio, as well as the recent use of thane belts courtesy of @Tony_Stark (he makes some great shit), the choice there was pretty obvious, despite my prior experience with the bioboards 4:1 helical cut steel gear drives being positive. So, to cover as many gear ratios as physically possible, i went with the @Boardnamics press fit wheel pulleys in both 36 and 44T, as well as designing my own 53T set as shown here (Interest check for >50T wheel pulleys compatible with BN/SR125). This combined with motor pulleys in 15, 16, 18, and 20T gives me the ability to select from ten different ratios, all the way from 1.8:1 to 3.53:1. For motor mounts, i had to go with the @IDEA mounts, and i have a couple choices here, his idler mounts or the shorter ones. For the time being, it looks like i’ll be using the idler mounts in the rear and the short mounts up front. Lastly, to allow for the use of BRP’s, i’m going to be making my own wheel hubs that use the Radium SR125 interface, to be compatible with my 53T pulleys.
THE MOTORS
With this build being 4wd and performance oriented, the choice was obvious to go with Reachers - My prior experience with 7490s and 6485s from @Skyart has been excellent. The initial plan was to go 6455 and mount them inboard to keep things as tucked away and stealthy as possible - however, this was not possible due to clearance issues, even with wider 220 hangers. Since i was going to have to run the motors outboard mounted, there wasn’t really a reason to stick to 180 hangers, so i decided to make the change to a slightly wider set of 220 hangers, and larger motors. One RFQ on alibaba later, four 220kv 6475 motors were paid for and on the way.
THE BATTERY
So, while I have owned a HV build before at 18S on my prototype board for testing some actively adjustable baseplates, this board really didn’t need that much juice, and with my constraint of wanting to keep it single stack, it wouldn’t make sense anyways as my only other option would have been 18S3P, which is even less power. So, 12S4P in a single stack configuration it was. At the time, P50B cells weren’t an option, so i went for P45B cells for the minor bump in discharge characteristics and capacity. The battery is done with copper braid and ridiculous 8AWG discharge wires courtesy of @slizer18 , and QS8-S connectors all around for both the front and rear discharge ports. Additionally, a singular loopkey to power both lines simultaneously was installed, with a Perfect Pass QS8-S connector (man, i should have specified that all of the connectors were the nicer perfect pass ones). Overall? One of the nicest batteries i’ve ever owned, i can’t recommend this guy enough for your battery building needs.
However, that’s not the only option for this board. You’ll notice that the board is planned to use a pair of Makerx D100S’s, despite the battery only being 12S. That’s because this board has to fill multiple roles for me. It’s gotta be a nice everyday cruiser, more practical than my Nazare, while also being a monster on track… Hence, multiple battery options. The 12S4P will be for everyday riding and cruising, and i’ll switch to a higher voltage Lipo setup for racing. Hence, buying way too many Ovonic 6400mah 3S lipos. These were picked as they’re stupid thin and fit in an SS enclosure. So, six of them in series gets me an 18S setup that should be able to output some stupid amperage. I still need to make the discharge and charge wiring harnesses, but hey - the option is there.
The Spicier Pillow
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THE ELECTRONICS
So, as i mentioned before, this board is using a pair of Makerx D100S’s. Why? Because they’re some of the slimmest VESC’s on the market, and due to the way the IDEA platform has drop brackets mounted, the drop brackets take up a ton of volume inside the enclosure unless you mount the ESC underneath the brackets, so i needed a really thin VESC. Additionally, from what i can tell the D100S has a pretty potent power output all things considered, and my DV6S inside my Nazare has been putting in solid work. To help deal with thermals, I’ll be getting a sheet of copper lasercut to the D100S mounting pattern and thermally adhering it to the drop brackets, using the entire thing as a huge heatsink, without looking like one. For the remote, i’m still deciding between my old reliable, the Spintend UNI1, or the fancier choice, my Flipsky VX4 with the 3DS thumbwheel mod. Who knows, i like them both. Lastly, i’ll be purchasing a Voyage Systems Megan, as i absolutely adore having telemetry onboard like my Davega display on my Nazare. The only other thing i’m considering for the future use is adding active brake lights, and maybe some built in ambient lighting - buuut that’s a problem for future me.
Don't let the magic blue smoke out
ALL THE OTHER FANCY PARTS
So, while everything else is pretty nice already, that alone just isn’t enough. This board needs more shiny shit on it. So, what did i do? Full titanium hardware. Everywhere. Almost every single bolt or nut on this board is titanium, so it will never rust, and weighs approximately one pubic hair less than it otherwise would have. Some of the more special things? Titanium anti sink plates, titanium kingpin bolts, and titanium wheel locknuts. Additionally? The regular eboosted SS enclosure just isn’t nice enough. It’s also ever so slightly too shallow to fit the VESC under the drop brackets. So? I’ll be 3d printing my own mold and doing a carbon fiber layup to make my own custom SS enclosure for the board. One other thing? One of the bigger projects i worked on last, was a prototype truck system to allow for active baseplate angle adjustment. I want to revise that to slim it down and make it a lot more practical, for this board. It’s gonna be a long and expensive project to do, the last one cost me over a thousand dollars to make, but it showed some serious promise. Lastly? I’m tired of all of our boards having the equivalent of an open diff and performing like crap because of it. I’m gonna try and devise some sort of mechanical limited slip differential between the adjacent motor cans.
THE COMPLETE(ISH) LIST
So, this is the total list of pretty much any of the major expenses i can think of on this project so far. There’s definitely some stuff missing, most of the smaller items and random materials for example, but it should account for the vast majority of things. Thank god that the first year salary for a mechanical engineer is decent enough i can afford to do this.
So yeah, this is what i’ve been working on for the past few months in my freetime, dumping basically all of my extra money into haha. It’s taught me a lot about part design as a fresh mechanical engineering graduate, and it’s been nice to have somewhere to apply my engineering knowledge and hands on knowledge.
