After about 1 and a half years of good times and great racing on the previous setup, I was finding some limitations - primarily on caused by a narrow stance. Pushing through the uncomfortable stance was doable, but less than ideal. On top of this, I was getting wheel bite and burns from the rear wheel on the heel of my rear foot which affected my heel side turns quite a bit.
I’ve been extremely pleased with the 3-links and 4WD drivetrain, so my plan was to transfer this to a new platform. I did quite a bit of research for options and toyed with the idea of making my own Raceboard deck/enclosure, but naturally it just made sense to couple the 3 links with the V5 raceboard platform designed for them.
I’ll be posting my racing updates/progress in this thread, comparing times to my previous setup as well as anything I find might be useful to others interested in the build, but for now, heres a look at the build/conversion:
18th Sept - Out of the box:
As soon as I opened the box, I knew I made the right decision. In a sea full of production boards and all rounder timber decks, I’m grateful to have a platform that’s been purely designed for racing and personally built by a legend with so much racing experience @MoeStooge
I was also super impressed with the turnaround - Custom chassis was at my door in Western Australia just 20 days after the order was placed.
First thing I did was step on it and start making comparisons to my previous setup. Working out where bindings, esc’s and all the other bits would be mounted. One thing I worked out very quickly is that handling is going to be very different with my front foot being so much further forward than it used to be
20th Nov - Out with the old:
You might have noticed it took me almost 2 months to start this conversion. There were a few determining factors… I was pretty reluctant to tear apart a board I had achieved quite a bit with, and I knew I had some unfinished business with T-race, so I’m stoked to have been able to re-gain top spot before stripping it down.
The other delay was my uncertainty about my battery situation. Initially I was looking to have my p45b 12s8p pack stripped and rebuilt to fit the chassis, however @Marsen has something even better in store for me early next year - will update the thread when that happens. For the meantime, I have gone with 6x 4s HRB 9500mah Lipo’s in a 12s2p arrangement.
20th Nov - Main Assembly:
First thing I started with was disconnecting all the electronics, followed by removing the trucks. In hindsight I should’ve completely stripped the drivetrain while it was mounted on a deck, but I initially had the intention of doing as little work as possible to get it up and running and back on the race track. Little did I know that the trucks would be arranged in a completely different setup on the new chassis 
Continuing on with my naive thinking that I’d just simply be installing the trucks to the chassis and be done with it, I decided to slap on this awesome grip design by @Jaws. I stuck with my classic #3 as its been good to me. Hoping chassis number #33 will be double good
Next was binding placement - the rear binding has stirred up some controversy but it felt good to me 
Trucks went on next, pretty straightforward to install. Decided to put some red loctite on the main thread as I’ve heard of some people’s loosening out over time
Next was the ESC box at the rear. By chance, my standard top mounted boxes fit almost perfectly, just needed some minor adjustments to the power cable opening to fit across the chassis spine.
Making adjustments to the rod angle geometry to suit the new chassis was overall a pretty straightforward process, thanks to countless hours of working on the trucks on the previous setup. this all went together pretty smoothly. It goes against recommendations from most, but I’ve kept the widest track width settings from my previous set-up rather than going narrower. So far it’s felt rock solid and stable.
21st Nov - Rolling Chassis Complete, next step - wiring:
I started out by mapping out my component locations - lipo’s, ESC, wiring etc to give me a rough idea of how I was going to strap them in and also how long my lengths of cabling needed to be. In my mind, this Velcro setup was going to work really well but it has already proven to be a bit of a pain in the ass as it hasn’t stuck very well to the deck. i’ll be exploring some other options to secure them neatly once I have a bit more time on my hands. Open to suggestions also, keeping in mind that this Lipo setup is very likely temporary.
more Velcro added down the sides for my lipo harness, ESC power and 4wd can-link
once the harness was installed it started to look a bit busy, but overall it works quite well. I went against the grain and used xt90’s instead of xt150 bullets, mostly because I had a shitload of xt90’s but also because I wanted to reduce the amount of plugs I’d be plugging and unplugging overall. All of this setup is hopefully temporary till the battery upgrade in mid Feb 2025, so as long as it works for the time being I’m happy. If you look closely you’ll be able to find my drunken wiring mistake which made a lipo go POP. A harsh lesson learned to never mix booze with wiring (or probably any other job for that matter) Might have to pull the beer fridge out of the workshop …
I love @Tony_Stark 's motors, but I had to Frankenstein the phase wires a bit to match the colour scheme of the board - sorry 
It was a bit of an afterthought and I cbf waiting for shipping times to get some orange cable sleeving in, so I found some orange/grey rope at good old Bunnings, wrapped it around and heat shrunk the ends. Worked a treat.
Also had to butcher the front of the belly pan a bit to get the front motor phase wires through. didn’t come up too badly. This mod will seriously bug me if I ever change my setup in the future to a 2WD, but I suppose I could get another belly pan
Last bit of fuckery before getting the power on was to swap out the deans connectors for XT90 on the Lipo’s. I don’t know why I was hesitant to do it, but I guess I have had my fair share of fires in the workshop. Grateful that it ended up actually being a super simple process once I got into it.
Once the lipo’s were all done, the build was pretty much ready to fire up!
Overall, VERY stoked with the platform upgrade. from my limited testing I’m already feeling very confident in this setup. It’s far less twitchy than the previous setup and I think that’s due to having my foot closer to the front axle which results in having more weight at the front. Riding platform is significantly lower also. This change in stance has been a bit of an adjustment for handling, and I think I still need to dial in a few things board wise and skill wise to make it as competitive and hopefully MORE competitive than the previous setup.
I had about 30 mins of playing around before giving the T-race a decent go. Unfortunately, by that point the Lipo’s were already sitting at about 70-80% with noticeable sag, significantly decreasing my top speed. Despite the sag and major adjustment to handling, I still managed to get a decent time on the T for a first go
A few days later I took it out to a “medium” track. Certainly not the largest go kart track we’ve been to (100m straight, 700m total length), but perfect size to give it a really good run. This is where my confidence grew the most in the setup and I’m much more keen than I ever was to get back on some long tracks again! Here’s one of my runs at the track for anyone interested: Tas Ventouras on Instagram: "Track testing @bunbury_city_kart_club Super fun layout and the perfect size for PEV racing Well be back very soon 😁"
I have plenty of work ahead of me, dialling in both my racing technique and the board and I’ll aim to keep this thread updated with my progress as much as possible!
the rear binding stretches across a pretty large area and allows me to shift my foot to various positions on the kick. It feels comfortable so far but im definitely noticing im using different muscles to race this board. Even the front foot has much more pressure placed above the ankle/under the knee
.