Seeing @ShutterShock’s nomination of my board for Build of the Year (BOTY), I figured this thread was overdue for an update.
And oh boy.
do I have updates.
I recommend you save this one for when you’ve got some minutes to spare
Gear Ratio Update/Overheating
Last I left this thread, I was going to be doing experiments with different gear ratios to try and solve my overheating and inefficiency issues. I switched from the 22T pinions that I started with to the 18T pinions. I raced with them for a couple weeks, but wasn’t able to get any good A/B testing to compare to the 22T pinions, as the temperature outside cooled off around the same time.
However, Qualitatively, the motors seemed to be getting hotter then they did before, relative to ambient temperature. Additionally, it didn’t help the board’s efficiency.
Very belated kuttos to @Flyboy and @Shadowfax for spouting facts.
After experimenting with the 18T pinions, I switched back to the 22T pinions before AVS Race-n-Ride, crossing my fingers that the slightly cooler weather would prevent my overheating issues(which it luckily did!)
The main reason that I did this though is because of a new issue that cropped up. At high speeds, 0~20% of the throttle would become a brake. The best way I can describe it is a “drag brake”. This meant that high speed turns that required braking became incredibly difficult, because going from braking to power would require that the throttle move through this range. Switching to the 22T didn’t eliminate the issue, but reduced it’s effect(it seems like it’s correlated with Motor ERPM).
What’s interesting is that I’ve seen this before. I left it out of my my first post for brevity, but when I first rode my stooge it was borderline rideable. Any speed above 10mph would cause the bottom half of the throttle to become “apply all the brakes”. Long story short, upgrading from firmware 5.03 to 6.02 fixed the issue (or, at least, made it undetectable).
So, my best guess is that this is an issue with the G300’s latest firmware. While not the most elegant solution, but switching back to 22T was the easiest way for me to alleviate this. Anyone had similar issues before?
Motor Inefficiency
I did set a new PB for inefficiency tho
Race-n-ride recap
Since my last update, I raced at Apple Valley for Race-n-Ride!
Feat. @hoytkid
Feat. Dylan C
Credit for AVS photos: Smls
Bonus: @poastoast hitting me with a drone
Every second that I wasn’t on track, I had the board plugged into a generator charging at 600W. I can’t express how amazing it was to not need to open up the bottom of the board to do this. Highly recommend all stooge riders look at doing a similar upgrade- really allowed me to focus and enjoy the race event by reducing the amount of “board admin” that I needed to do between race stints.
In other good news, the overheating stayed away! The board performed incredibly admirably. Most notably in qualifying, I chopped 10 seconds off my Riderfest qualifying time! I had set it just a few weeks earlier.
Here’s the race video if you want to watch yourself. (I’m 5th into turn 1)
Pro final race was about as exciting as they can get for us midfielders. After the opening lap, I was in a fierce battle for 3rd place with Jimmy Tran(edit: @zero_ads) until the checkered flag. With one lap to go, I briefly pull ahead on the exit onto the straight… but Jimmy managed to out-accelerate me down the straight. He did a great job of holding me off for the remainder of the race. Massive to @Ruxx who found the space to pass us both on the final lap, recovering his position from an earlier fall.
I’m immensely proud to say I ended finishing 5th in Pro class Everyone ahead of me deserved their place 1000%, and it was an honor to race amongst best.
360 Camera Mount
Oh, and yeah! Nothing fancy, a Insta 360 One X2.
Here’s bittersweet onboard footage of me briefly pulling ahead of Jimmy in 3rd place.
The mount is a gopro slide mount VHB taped onto the back of the board. I got a gopro to 1/4-20 adaptor attached to an extra gopro extension(that turns the bolt 90 degrees). This means that if the board ever flips, the camera will have both axies to bend along. This “mechanical fuse” will (hopefully) prevent it from becoming a lever, which would either cause the camera, board, or mount to break.
Sticker Logo!
A Reacher motor, literally wrenching an ankle
Thanks Jess from San Diego for this awesome logo! Naturally, I got it printed on holographic stickers and proceeded to put it on anything even remotely related to my raceboard.
I also got a bunch of non-holographic stickers made! Not sure what I’m going to do with 25 of them, so… uh… mention this to me at esk8con and I’ll give you a free one 
Megan
My board has a display now! This thing is just plain awesome.
Local logging, GPS tracking, responsive display, easy mounting, fault display, app integration… I could fill this whole post with praise. Like, I get push notifications on my phone when a vesc faults! So extra.
Installation was quick. I already had an extra set of CAN wires broken out, so all I had to do was crimp a replacement connector onto them. I had made a 3D printed replica of their baseplate, so quickly swapping that out for the metal one that came with it and I was done.
Big shoutout to @janpom and @rpasichnyk for their incredibly work on this product, I highly recommend it to anyone on the fence about it. Double shoutout for making a custom ARD case and programming a custom splash screen.
Brake Light
I wanted a brake light on my board. When I built my wiring harness, I left an extra PWM plug for exactly this purpose. I can get a microcontroller to “sniff” the PWM value from the receiver, and activate the brake light when the pulse is <1500ms.
Orrrrrr I could do what I do best and overengineer it. I could get addressable LEDs, have the microcontroller decode the braking percentage, and progressively light up the brake light to match how aggressively I’m breaking. And if I’m going that far, might as well do the same thing for throttle.
After spending a few weeks with it, there’s some code improvements I want to make to make the light even smoother… but it’s good enough for now. We’ll see if I ever get to them.
Faulting on Launch and Current Vesc Settings
Practicing Launches with Reggie Thomas and @Lyfe_Of_Jimmy, I ran into an issue of my G300’s throwing ABS_OVERCURRENT faults at low speeds. (previously I had thought it was my tires slipping, but the Megan graciously informing me of vesc faults)
Easy solution. Just increase Abs max to 600A
(If you look closely, you can see my blue then red acceleration and brake light mounted on the back of the board)
2024 delineation
I was told by Evan that any work done after 2023 can’t be used by voters for 2023 BOTY. So yeah, uh, don’t consider any of these other mildly cool things that I’ve done to the board in the past 19 days
A couple weeks of practice later, and my vesc settings are at 180A/motor. Not quite skilled enough to fullly handle that amount of power, but this is the most rad screenshot I’ve got right now.
Battery Amps: 269.5A
Total Motor Amps: 635.9A
Just for giggles, Battery Wattage: 269.5A*45.7 = 12.316 kW
Charging Brackets
Previously, the XT60 and DSUB15 connectors that I used for charging were only held on with some VHB tape. I printed some brackets with inserts, and they’re now mounted much more rigidly. So much easier to plug in a charging cable when the other connector isn’t moving all over the place. 
Go figure.
Power Switch
In tandem with the charging brackets, I finally got my power switch to work!
This one was a doozy, see if you can figure it out from these symptoms:
- When I didn’t have the power button connected, the board would power on fine.
- When I plugged in the power button the board would not power on, until I pressed the power button. After being powered on, it wouldn’t power off when the button was pressed or held.
After tearing my hair out with software, the problem ended up being that the ground side of the switch was put into the wrong pin on on of the G300s. By chance, this wrong pin was data line that is pulled low, but only when the G300 is in a powered off state. This is why the G300 would detect that the switch was plugged in. When it’s powered on though, that data pin would no longer be connected to ground (mostly), so the switch would no longer work properly.
Simply moving the pin to the correct position(ground) fixed the issue. After the power switch being installed for months, I can finally power on the board with one button press.
(The button next to the mount of the camera)
Tires
As of Wednesday, I have gone through my first set of BRPs
Moe’s out of stock right now… If anyone’s got a spare set they’re not attached to, hmu.
Belly pan Scraping
As I’ve improved my racing skills and pushing the limits of the board, I’ve begun regularly scraping my bellypan when going around turns. I’m expecting to wear a hole in it soon. I could probably fix it by adjusting the 3-links to allow for more turning, but I really like how my board is setup right now(and the front is already setup for at max turn).
I don’t use the full internal volume of the belly pan(see pictures of battery layout in 1st post), so I’m thinking about a custom bellypan with a different shape that which allows for higher deck angles before scraping. TBD, we’ll see. Definitely a high priority problem to solve, every fall I’ve taken thus far has been because of scraping(which unloads the tires and causes a slide).
Annnnnnd… Here’s how she stands today!
Bruised, battered, and hands down my favorite board.
Thank you to the numerous and great racers that I get to see every week. You guys help make projects like this possible
Congrats on making it to the end! I’m in your hands now.
Go and vote for build of the year 2023 (if you haven’t already) !