Howdy! my name is Nick. I am a recovering junkie. rehabs, jails, death. I’ve never felt more alive than when I was on the brink of death. Until last year. Esk8ing breathed a new life into me. it brought me back to my child like state of wonder. the passion for life which I’ve never had has been placed in my heart, in my bones, last year i worked round the clock just to be able to afford MOAR ESK8!
It all started with an evolve because they would finance it to me. when trying to research electric skateboards cold with no leads, very few brands actually rise to the top through the much of the internet. I spent about a week or two trying to research and find information and honestly it was pretty scarce. anyway, in the end it was thanks to affirm for clearing my shit credit to get a board. Obviously i fell in love with the sport and I was lucky to get a decent board, I got the 2 in 1 so I had a taste of both worlds too.
Once I got back to work, I hit it hard. working two and sometimes three jobs allll summer into the fall. Didnt leave a lot of time for skating plus, I was starting to ge the itch for DIY. I have always been handy and mechanical so I thought I’d be pretty able to build swap and DIY myself some sick shit. Didnt really spend too much time reading up on everything I shouldve but I did start trolling the sales places for secondhand stuff. My first second board was a teamgee h20 I found on ebay for three hundred bucks and I was underwhelmed by the hubs but swapped the drivetrain onto a six foot plank of wood that I had with waterborne surf adapters on it. cruising and carving blissss. this is when the DIY bug bit me.
Shortly thereafter I wanted to see if hubs really were that lame or if it was because i had a secondhand board. SO i ordered a probably shittier chinesium apsuboard. whatever, it was cheap cheap and I wanted to skate with my friends and do another deckswap to try my hand at selling boards because I had gotten multiple inquiries riding to my bank and at one of the jobs I was working.
I purchased a secondhand battery and esc from a gentleman who yanked it from a miles rampage. I was wanting to swap the batterey in my evolve for more range and thought should be straightforward enough, I have electrical experience and stuff. I had also purchased another secondhand evolve, the bamboo gt this time. and I had also bought a fsesc dual 4.20 because I fried my CGT esc in the rain.
None of these purchases went as planned because I hadnt done my due diligence and was relying solely on my experience tinkering and building shit, which was hugely insufficient. Programming the fsesc via bluetooth was a huge fail. I also broke up the pcb of the rampage battery during dissembly thinking naively thinking I could just build a microwave spot welder and jam it in there and roll. The rest of the miles rampage was purchased in this same fashion, I thought the bigger 8 inch wheels would be cool on my evolve only to find out the axles werent the same size. I had also purchased a gen2 bamboo and a 6374 motor from a guy and that is when I learned about battery sag. As well as motor mounts and compatibility.
(( I know my story structure is getting wonky and my ideas are becoming scattered. I’ve been putting off this write up for three months now. When work slowed down in november, I started spending time here on the forum trying to actually learn how to properly build my shit because I had amassed such a huge pile of stuff and tallied up my expenses to be over 10k and only still had my production boards to ride. I feel some shame, some embarrassment a lot of foolishness and super green and inexperienced but shit, gotta start somwhere.))
So at this point in time, I deckswapped the apsu and sold it to my cousin who fell in love and still uses that board as his commuter in NYC. But I was starting to realize I was digging a hole. I super shoddily attempted to parallell two evolve GT batteries because the secondhand bamboo gt sagged like my non existent grandma, I just joined the outputs from both batteries and parallelled the charge wired. I think I fried another evolve esc at this point.
I found yet another miles rampage for sale in the city and scooped that up for a cheepcheep. I didnt totally destroy this one, I still ride it when its rainy cuz the kid I bought it from did a hackjob silicone bead around the enclosure and from what I’ve tested it works well enough. I also went and got a meepo awd for a bargain and my suspicions were correct. the only way hubs are good is in 4wd!
So I missed a lot of purchases here, its all really a big blur because it was my first year sober again and I spent it doing a rough rough breakup, working like a maniac and skating and buying and actively recovering from a nasty IV drug habit. So since I feel like I’ve told enough of the story to give a general idea of how my experience is going and I wanna wrap it up, were almost at the part of the post where I’m just going to list all the parts I’ve bought and what my build ideas are. I have nothing cemented and am really just trying to figure out what my best plan of action is. recently I’ve bought a laptop to program my vescs, a sunkko welder and researched proper battery building to make some batteries. Right now my only concrete idea is that I want to build a 4wd chain thane ripper that’ll hit 50mph. Aside from that, a beast of a off roader and a nice easy breezy cruiser. Firstly though, I’ll be happy just to get one full proper build up and running.
So in conclusion, thanks. for reading this nonsense and supa special shout out to all the predecessors. for everything. for pushing the limits constantly, for sharing their experience, for making everything available to help us.
pictures to come, probably more parts as I sift through em and remember em.
Evolve carbon GT, bamboo gt and gen2
Miles Rampage
Meepo AWD pro
Teamgee H20
Backfire Range x2
shitty pheonix toy board x2
Flipsky 4.20 dual plus
Stormcore 60d
Focbox Unity
makerx dual
torquesc 4.12 single
zesc v6 maybe idk?
multiple lingyi esc’s dual and single
turnigy 6374 190kv x2
maytech 6396 210kv x2
makerx 6355 190kv x2
(carvon guts) ?vesc 4.12 x2, 12s3p, unknown remote
flipsky vx1
flipsky vx2
ppm remote (nano i think?)
noname 6355 ???kv x2
nonamee 6368 ??kv x2 (from the first miles rampage)
10s3p from an old lectric longboard
noname 10s5p 18650 brick battery
DRI 12s4p sony vtc5
100 20a LG’s from batteryclearinghouse
72 LG MH1’s from same place
theres so much i’m missing. not only inventory but plans and parts of the story. My life is so chaotic between recovery, workaholism, procrastinating on applying for a nursing license and family life. but I’ve been putting off my formal introduction to the community for far too long. so here it is. all hangin out and a hot mess. I do really look forward to the rest of my adventures, as the ride so far has been wicked sweet.
. I too have dug myself an esk8 hole!
now i know where to order motors