Let me introduce you to my first sorta build, my first but unlikely my last electric board.
My journey started at Christmas when someone was talking about the Brisbane Qld Lime scooter trials. I had looked at electric skateboards prior but being a good law abiding citizen quickly abandoned the idea when I discovered they were illegal except on private property. What was this revelation they were telling me, a mere few weeks prior the laws had changed and they were now legal ?
Down the rabbit hole I went, trying to learn as much as I could as quickly as I could. Learning about the shortfalls of some of the off the shelf boards but also realizing that DIY was not always smooth sailing. Trying to decide if I should go an all out custom (which might be 2 years til I could ride it…) or maybe start with a budget board and go from there.
So off I went and started ordering stuff, first was the budget board, an Ownboard W1S, while I was at it I ordered some Señor Pepe wheels & a Mana-one-07 deck from @haggyboard.timo to start my custom.
It had begun !
Ownboard was reasonably quick getting my order here but didn’t stand a chance vs Timo, his presale service was amazing, nothing to was too hard for him. After I paid for the order was packed and shipped in amazing time, I’m sure he has an alarm like in a fire station and when an order comes in he springs to action.
My Haggyboard’s order arrived first, the wheels packed in what appeared to be wax paper, to keep in the freshness. The wheels quickly took a back seat to the Mana-One-07 deck tho, what a thing of beauty. A nice W concave, premium grip tape and finished really well.
After foolishly putting the Señor Pepe wheels on a push board without enough wheel clearance that I had been practicing on and having an abrupt and close up inspection with the concrete I concluded that I did not like wheel bite & I had to take it easy for a few weeks while I healed up. So of course the Ownboard showed up shortly after, on a day that I had to go into the office and as I was walking out the door, of course…
After the obligatory “check everything is tight” on the Ownboard I had to first make sure it worked and wasn’t going to implode or self destruct. It was a pleasantly uneventful repetition of charge, ride, charge, ride. It didn’t take long however until the modification bug started to bite. The Señor Pepe wheels were just sitting there after all, I can chuck them on and use them for now until I’m ready to put them on the custom right ?.. well it’s a good thing I bought two sets as I don’t intend to put the factory front wheels back on any time soon. The 78A vs 85A and better quality wheels translates to a nicer ride and better grip. Sure the back is still hub motors with factory sleeves but being able to lean more on the front wheels and know how they will respond made this a worthy upgrade.
Mmm, this board is feeling good, do you know what else feels good ? Firm & Perky Orangutan Nipples !
opps, wrong type, lets try that again
Yellow because banana is the best flavour and not because I’m heavy 
Now before you ask, no I did not leave the Mana-One-07 deck just sitting there this whole time, it got strapped up with the trucks & wheels off my push board. Having two teaspoons with Bmx’s & scooters that thought it was cheating when they had to push or pedal & I had an electric board meant that it got a fair work out in analog mode. There was that niggling in the back of my head tho asking how it would go electrified.
And so The Hown Board was built, first sizing up the competition
Checking out the Ownboard electronics
Now as luck would have it this is about the time where I broke the camera lens on my phone so there is an absence of some build photos. In the first photo you can see the the wires from the battery monitor near the Xt60, it appears that the ESC must have come with all the plugs on and to avoid messing with them a wire was run to the battery, you can see the small black plug on the battery. Hadn’t really accounted for this but decided to cheat and simply soldered them into the XT60 on the ESC. Do this at your own risk tho as I don’t know if there is a difference in how it’s fused but it works.
For mounting the enclosures to the board I went the insert route, the holes in the enclosure would suit M5 Button head cap screws nicely so I ordered in a pack of these
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/50pcs-Stainless-Steel-M5-Self-Tapping-Thread-Insert-Screw-Bushing-M5-0-8-10mm-302-Slotted/32973770517.html
They were a little long at 10mm but a quick and dirty fixture in the lathe had enough of them to around 7mm length. Without a machine shop I’d imagine you could drill and tap a hole in a steel plate, screw them in and use an angle grinder to shorten them or maybe the store does shorter ones ? dunno as I didn’t bother asking.
Next step was some unnecessarily special tools for drilling to the correct depth
The two tubes are some aluminium round stock drilled to size and the ends of one turned down to locate in the recessed enclosure holes. To avoid drilling deeper then I had to I used a 7mm drill to start and locate the hole, then changed to a 7mm endmill (cheapest I could find on AliExpress) to make it square bottom and also used a thread tap to start the tread as I had turned off most of the thread lead in on the inserts. Inserts were screwed in by putting a nut / washer / insert on the bottom of SHCS, the washer stops it when the insert is flush with the deck. I took my time with the inserts where I would drill and install an insert, attach the enclosure drill the next one, rinse and repeat. I wasn’t keen on routing a channel in the deck for the wires so decided to take a different approach. I had a length of this laying around
https://www.hep2o.com.au/shop/hep2o-polybutylene-pipe/hep2o-pipe-straight-coil-18-mm-x-25-metres-copy/
Split it down the middle on a benchtop bandsaw, laid the cable on the board, put the cut pipe over it and in one of those typical I just want to ride it moments, where you do a “temporary” fix that works so well it becomes permanent put some duct tape over to hold it to the board.
So here is the finished board at it sits for now
At the moment I am running 20mm of riser blocks as I flatly refuse to accept any wheel bite now and run my bushings loose enough that I have bite marks in the paris truck clone from the bushing washers. I could probably drop this to 15mm and still be fine but I have something in development that I will be testing when it’s done.
