Welcome guys, after a whole load of research and wait, i finally jumped in on my first build.
Parts list :
- Deck: RedEmber Xapham
- Eboosted Enclosure
- Fullsend 12s8p Molicel P42A battery with LLT Smart Bms
- Double Stormcore 60D+ from BBB
- 4x Radium 6485 Motors 205kv
- 4x Radium Gen 3 lite motor mounts
- 4x Radium 62t Wheel pulley
- 4x Benbucklerboards 18t steel motor pulleys
- MBS Matrix II trucks from BBB
- Matrix II Adjustable baseplates from Etoxx, anodised by Radium
- 12mm Speed rings, bearings and 405 belts from BBB
- Titanium spacers and hardware from Radium
- Raijin RX Rally hubs, anodised by Radium (TBA)
- Green Davega X and Davega X plate
- Hoyt Puck Mod Poastmote for remote
- Evolve 7” tyres
- Custom Raijin Green oni Grip tape (TBA)
Special thanks to Radium @Tony_Stark , Rajin racing @Jaws for the help setting up the Vescs, Fullsend @glyphiks for being good guys, and all of the EADC facebook group.
Edit: I’m adding @mynamesmatt to the special thanks because he helped me a lot early on with the parts choices, and good guidance overall, thanks bro
This build idea started when I realised I couldn’t find the perfect board to suit me, like all diy builds I guess. I really like the Lacroix Nazare, but the range was a bit short, I could only do 32km, and I would like at least 50km range. It’s fast and stable, but it’s a bit of a boat with those wide trucks. I tried a lot of other boards, some of them really good, but nothing quite compares to the power and acceleration of the Nazare.
I now know that I like high power, and that I would like more range, so let’s research. I stumble upon Redember, who makes big decks (who doesn’t like a big deck), with lots of room for battery and good shape for a wide stance, and as a bonus, they look freaking sick. Next step is the enclosure, and lucky me, Eboosted makes an enclosure for the Xapham, and as he says on his website
“This is the largest enclosure for the largest deck I ever created”
Me likey. It should fit a 14s8p battery of 21700, pretty awesome, or a 12s8p with room for two double escs, to go four wheel drive. Huh. Four wheel drive. Sounds fun.
I proceeded to order these two, and the waiting game starts. @jamie from Redember is an artist, and art takes time to create, so the deck took a while to get here, but it gave me time to research and prepare (and save up) for the rest of the build.
Deck is here, and as expected it’s a masterpiece.
Next step was the battery, I always knew I was going to ask someone who knew what they were doing to make that for me, I didn’t want to go down that rabbit hole just yet. I knew a guy in Melbourne, and coincidentally around that time he started his own eskate business. Enters @glyphiks from Fullsend. I sent my enclosure to Glyph and he made an awesome battery, 12s8p made of molicels P42A, that thing is a beauty. The Fullsend guys are a treat to deal with, and they know what they’re doing, can’t recommend enough. That battery is 1382Wh (roughly 32Ah), should give me 50km good riding with my weight, that’s great.
If your battery doesn’t arrive in beer packaging, you’re missing out
This is clean AF !
Little fitting test with the Vescs
While all this was happening I was researching motors, the maytech ones used on the Lacroix looked pretty good to me, so I was about to get that when Radium announced their new 6485 5000watts motors, and they caught my eye. I was going to get the motor mounts and wheel pulleys from him anyway, and I know how high quality his products are, so I got these motors. That’s 20kw of potential power on this board, woooh! Thanks @Tony_Stark .
For the Esc’s I was always going to use the stormcores, I hesitated for a bit with the Xeniths, but I think Stormcores have a better heat dissipation, and the new Xenith V2 makes it a little more difficult for 4WD, so stormcore it is.
Perks of working at Benbucklerboards, I had a workbench to assemble and test everything.
All the radium gear and the MBS trucks with the etoxx baseplates
Trampa hubs with 3D printed spacers, and sunmate 7" ( temporary wheels, waiting for the nice new hubs hehe)
Trusty Davega in that perfect green shade to match the theme, thanks @janpom !
I had to cut some holes in the enclosure, to fit the heatsinks for the escs (Universal heatsink from Fullsend).
not a very clean job but it will do
More holes for the motor wires.
And the bolt holes that need to go through the deck as well, that was a bit hearbreaking, but what can you do.
Another two holes for the charging port and the power button.
I also soldered a fuse to the charging port, with a 15A fuse, easy to replace, should protect against shorts. Also soldered the connector to a 12s 12A charger.
Tested the battery, it charges, no boom, wooh!
This deck has flat mounting space for the trucks, and I want to use mountainboard trucks that work best at an angle, which is why I had to use these adjustable baseplates. They came in aluminium colour, but I had @Tony_Stark anodise them black so they wouldn’t stick out as much.
So I installed the adjustable baseplates on the Matrix II
And started messing around with the motor mounts, to check the fit and angles. ( These mounts are so good BTW)
Cut a bit of foam to go between deck and enclosure.
Mounted the trucks on the deck and adjusted the baseplates angles. I started with a low angle (around 30°) for stability, I’ll adjust later if I don’t have enough turn.
I then fit the motors and pulleys, to start the alignment process (these are temporary wheels as I didn’t have the new ones yet)
18t motor and 62t wheel is 3.44 gear ratio, with these motors, top speed should be around 75kph, nice.
and to discover what size belts I will need (turned out to be 405)
Next I fit the sex bolts in the deck and epoxied them in place, and mounted the stormcores
While that cured I admired those sick powertrains
And then started my ordeal, setting up the escs.
It started well, I set up both escs separately, and then connected them via Can cable so they could talk to each other for 4Wheel drive. The motor spin, everything looks good!
But then I realised two motors where set up as sensorless for some reason. I re-updated the firmware, to 5.2, same issue. I tried 5.3 same. 5.1 too. I’m giving you the short version, but I tried everything, re soldering the sensor wires, changing to all kinds of firmware, running detection manually ( I even started a thread here: Issues with sensor detection fw 5.2 - #27 by Dunkan ). No luck, at the time I’m writing this, I haven’t found a solution, and I’m running all of them sensorless.
I have a feeling the issue is coming from the vesc firmware, but it could be sensor related too. I think Radium is working on filters to help, I’m keen to try them.
During the set-up ordeal I took the time to wrap the motor cables and fit them with rubber seals. Not that they needed it but the Radium Red wires didn’t fit in my green theme, sorry @Tony_Stark !
3D printed some guards for the motor mounts, Tony thought of everything, it’s awesome. Those will be green eventually
Also printed the great poastmote mod @poastoast
And then came the time to put it all together for a first test.
I’m really happy with it, some areas could be cleaner or neater, but it’s my first build, so I’m giving myself some room to improve.
The Davega is connected and showing an unloaded top speed of 80kph, fast 
Went back in the shop to put Loctite on everything, and the maiden ride was the next day.
I do have to kickpush to start, but following @Jaws 's advice I set the motor refresh rate to 30khz, making the start up smoother, it’s really not too bad. The acceleration is great, and the speed is insane. Plus the noise is nice
I might try 5.3 HFI start function in the future, see how it goes.
Ho yeah, for that maiden ride I didn’t have the sick final grip tape yet, so I stuck some dope grip on, and it worked amazing. I would keep it but the Raijin grip is just too sick, I can’t not use it!
More photos, stay tunes for the final reveal in a few weeks
