Ugh. Why is the hardest part of DIY esk8 doing the build thread? 
Ok here we go.
WHAT I DID:
Got the new wire channel/standing pad grip taped and prepped with VHB.
I debated several different adhesive choices for this. Contact cement, adhesive transfer tape, silicone, super glue, etc. I knew I wanted it to be stronger and more long-lasting than my previous solution. The thin-film double sided tape I used to stick the rubber sheets down did not last long at all before it started coming loose and peeling up at the edges. When that happened, I took the coward’s way out and started super-gluing the peeling edges so I wouldnt have to rip everything up and start over. That just meant that when I did get around to peeling everything up (yesterday) it was even more of a pain in the ass cus now I had to remove superglue residue as well as mounting tape gunk. Yay.
Something like contact cement or superglue would definitely be stronger, but it would also make the install completely permanent, which I figure is a bad idea. Silicone would be less permanent, but would be just as much of a bitch to remove (if not more).
Plus, in my experience, once you have used silicone to stick surfaces together, you can never use anything else on those surfaces ever again. You’ll NEVER get those surfaces clean enough for another adhesive to stick to them. The silicone residue will keep that from happening, forcing you to use silicone forever. I have this issue with the JST connectors on my VESCs. I ignorantly used silicone to secure them when I built my first DIY in 2019, and ever since then I’ve been stuck having to wait for silicone to cure any time I swap out JST connectors.
So, I wanted something strong and long lasting, but not permanent. Adhesive transfer tape might work. For those who dont know, it’s basically tape without the plastic film/substrate/carrier. So literally just adhesive in the shape of tape lol. I’ve seen it called “glue on a roll.” It comes in lots of varieties, many of which I’m sure would be plenty strong enough for my purposes. But most of the heavy duty varieties I found were extremely thin, and I need something that can conform to the uneven surface of my standing pad and deck.
I decided on good ol’ VHB. I’m sure it will be a pain to remove, but it feels rock solid so far and I’m hopeful it will hold up well. If you’re buying VHB, make sure you get genuine stuff. There’s tons of counterfeit stuff out there. If you want to be sure, order from somewhere reputable like Digikey or Mcmaster. That costs a fortune though so I rolled the dice on an Amazon seller, after shopping around quite a bit. I’m reasonably confident that the stuff I got is real.
I didnt want to use any adhesives in the wire channel, because I knew it would just turn into another dirt trap. But I couldnt get the wires to stay in place while I stuck down the standing pad no matter how hard I tried. Oh well. I figure if the dirt and rocks didnt hurt the wires before, they wont hurt them now lol
The VHB adhesive is so strong that it was able to stick the silicone wires very firmly. I’m impressed.
Got the pad stuck down, and trimmed the edges to match the deck. My 3d printer isnt quite large enough to make a pad that covers the deck from edge to edge, but I dont mind the little bit of uncovered area. I thought about trying to stick some of the off-cut down there, but I figure no matter how strong VHB is, that small of an area would still tear off eventually. So I didnt bother.
When I was disassembling the board, I found these three spots where the silicone wire jacket was failing. I fixed the first two by just squirting some silicone in/around the splits and sculpting it with a q-tip. I did this to my other phase wire connector a while ago when it started splitting, and it’s been holding up ever since.
The 3rd pic was a bit more serious. The best thing to do would have been to desolder one end of the wire so I could slip some heat shrink over it. But that would have been a lot of work, and I was determined to ride Mistfall home last night, and after the shit with the tape residue I was very behind schedule. So…
I cleaned up the wire, shot a bunch of silicone in/around the hole in the jacket, and stuck on this piece of jacket from an 8AWG wire as a patch/covering. I figure the silicone will cure it all into one solid piece. We’ll see how that works out, I’ll keep an eye on it.
I designed this box mounting system a while ago, to replace my original solution (which was just some oversized washers). The idea with this system was a thin “washer plate” to spread the load, and the thicker plate with the hex pattern to capture the m5 hex bolt heads so I could tighten the box down with just the nuts on the underside of the deck.
This turned out to have several flaws.
First is the rust. When I took my battery out yesterday, the whole bottom of the box had evidence of moisture and rust. Not great. So clearly I didnt do enough to seal up the mounting holes. I also probably should have used stainless plates.
Second, the thin plate being the load bearing “washer plate” was just… so incredibly dumb. Not sure what I was thinking.
Third, this system meant there were M5 nuts and oversized washers on the underside of my deck, right in the middle where they are at most chance of causing a high-center. Which happened lots of times. Cant tell you how many times I’ve been yeeted off the board when I tried to roll off a curb and the box mounting nuts get hung up on the concrete.
All in all, a bad system. But I figured out a way to salvage it, and I’m pretty impressed with myself.
I removed the thin “washer plate” entirely. It was rusted to shit and totally deformed, and clearly not up to the task. That left me with the “captive bolt plate” which is much thicker. The M5 hex bolt heads just so happen to be the same hex size as m5 nuts (thanks, metric system!). And so if I use these m5 flanged nuts upside down, then they become captive nuts while also pulling the load down onto the thick plate. I’m extremely happy with this, and I cant believe I didnt think of it when I was designing this box mounting system originally.
I shot a bunch of silicone around the holes so that when the plate was tightened down the silicone squished fully into/around the nuts and the mounting holes in the box. This should be totally waterproof if I did it right. Then I put some normal m5 nylocks on top of the upside-down flanged nuts, double-nutting the bolts so they cant be loosened or tightened.
This is important because the plastic of the box is quite soft, and the rubber sheets underneath it are too. I could easily just keep tightening these bolts until the box is destroyed and the metal plate hits the deck lol. This way the bolts will stay exactly where I put them, without needing to snug them up against something rigid. Also keeps me from absent-mindedly over-tightening the bolts and poking them up into the bottom of the battery pack.
And, bonus, since the nuts are on the inside of the box that meant I can use countersunk hardware on the underside of the deck, meaning no more high-centering! These just deformed the bottom-sheet of the deck until they are totally flush. I think they’ll be plenty strong enough like this without needing washers to spread the load (see the discolored circles where the old oversized washers were).
Got the drives open, everything looks good. I couldnt be bothered to take them apart and clean off all the old grease, so I just wiped out the housings and slapped some new grease on the gears. It’ll be fiiiinnnnnneeeeeee…
Mounted the handle plates when I reassembled the drives. Used longer (16mm) bolts to make sure they have full engagement with the aluminum threads in the gear drive housing, and red loctite of course. Should be fine. I printed the grip with Ranki 98A TPU, 2 walls and 15% gyroid infill. Its a bit too soft, I can fully compress it and feel the threaded rod underneath. Might reprint it at some point.
The order of operations for assembling this handle is kinda funky.
- Measure between the mounts, add the length of the nuts, and cut the rod to length. Clean up the ends so they’re not sharp and so the threads are all clear.
- Thread the TPU grip onto the rod. You’ll either need to grab the rod with vice grips, or you can thread two nuts on and snug them against each other to create a fixture you can drive with a wrench/socket/drill. If you drive it with a drill, be careful you dont build up so much friction that you melt the printed grip.
- Put the heat shrink onto the rod on either side of the grip, but do not shrink it yet
- Thread the two inner nuts onto the rod ends to cut threads into the nylon.
- Remove them and re-thread them onto the rod ends backwards (nylon first).
- Pull one gear drive off the hanger so you can insert the rod between the mount plates. Replace that gear drive, and make sure both drives are fully pressed into the hangers.
- Adjust the inner nuts outwards until they just barely touch the mount plates. You dont want to put any spreading/bending force on the mounts. Make sure the rod is centered between the mounts, and that there is enough thread sticking out both sides to fully engage the nylon in both outer nuts.
- Thread on the outer nuts to lock everything in place. Again, make sure you’re not bending the mounts.
- Tug the heat shrink in place, trim off any excess, and shrink it down.
Should be rock solid now! Dont forget to let the loctite on the mount screws cure.
Got these new Kenda 473 tires installed. They mounted up great. They have a bit of a domed profile at 40psi on these MBS Fivestars, but have good contact across the whole tread when I’m standing on them. I bet on a wider rim they would be really flat.
The reason I needed longer axles is because 9in tires bulge too wide on these narrow rims, and they rub on the gear drive housing. I didnt have enough axle space to move them out at all, and I was already at only half engagement on the axle nut 
The longer axle gives me plenty of room, so I bought a couple packs of stainless steel spacers (2mm and 6mm). Spaced the wheel out, and installed longer (50mm) wheel hardware to engage with the gear drive cookie plate. Needed an extra spacer on the outside of the wheel too, cus I actually ended up with a bit too much axle length. Oh well.
Also put fresh hardware all around the board. Axle nuts, wheel bolts/nuts, baseplate hardware, etc. My old axle nuts were totally shot. The nylon was so blown out that I could unthread them by hand
HOW IT WENT:
Everything went great! Mistfall has never looked better, and never rode better. I could not be happier with how everything worked out. So much planning and thinking and design work went into all these updates on the front end, and it really paid off. I’m so thrilled!
I got everything finished up just after midnight. I was exhausted by then, been working in my shed in the heat for 14 hours, but I was determined to ride Mistfall home and by golly I did just that! Rode the ~10mi home with zero issues.
The first thing I noticed when I stepped on the board was how much the turning/handling was improved! The extended truck mounting holes I drilled dropped my standing platform 5mm, and removing the rubber sheet on the front dropped it another 3mm. The difference that made is mindblowing! I seriously considered tightening my bushings for the first time in years because of how much more turn-y it was. But I didnt, and I dont think I will. It doesnt feel less stable. If anything, it feels more stable! I just have to get used to how my inputs translate to more turning than I’m used to.
I’m definitely feeling the lack of the rubber sheet up front. Bumps and cracks were a little more painful than they useed to be. Though that could also be due to me spending 14hrs on my feet that day We’ll see how I feel when I’ve got more miles on it.
I extended the grip tape up the nose of the board further than it used to be, which worked out really great. I have a posi/posi stance, and my front foot is often braced into the front pocket where the deck tip turns upwards. Having grip tape all the way up that point really improves my control. And not falling off the edge of a 3mm sheet of rubber lets me really lock into that pocket in the deck. I love the Haero so much, and it feels really nice to get all that crap out from between my feet and this well designed deck.
Speaking of… The rear standing pad/wire channel thingy is not my favorite. I designed it to taper off at the edges, thinking that it would get my feet closer to the deck and allow more of the deck shape/concave to be preserved. But what that actually did was create a pretty aggressive w-concave. I’ve never been a fan of w-concave. It was not super comfortable on that 10mi ride, though I’m reserving final judgement till I get more miles (with feet that are less sore). Hopefully it’s not as bad as my initial impression would lead me to believe. I would hate to have to fight with that VHB already. Especially since I’m out of grip tape.
Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed I also adjusted the location of the motor wire deck mount thingies. The red 3d printed parts that hold my motor wires to the deck. I rotated them slightly to point more backwards. I was hoping that doing so would allow the motor wires to relax and bend away from the wheels a bit. It’s never been a problem, but I’ve always been worried they will get too close and rub. Moving the deck mounts didnt actually seem to help with that though. Plus, I used to use them as kind of a foot stop and now they are not in the right position for that. If my foot migrates backwards too far then I’ll end up standing on my unprotected motor wires. So maybe i’ll move them back. That’s simple enough.
My silicone wire repairs all held up fine on the ride home, including that insulation patch on the bad wire. Fingers crossed!
The new box mount is holding snug, and not having to worry about catching those nuts on something is a big relief!
Re-greasing the drives didnt quiet them down at all, which is unfortunate. But such is the cost of straight cuts.
New handle is solid! No rattles or shakes, and it’s in a much better position than my duck handles. Much more comfortable to use.
Finally, the new tires. I obviously cant draw any conclusions from only 10mi of riding, but so far I’m very pleased. They are extremely well balanced. Like I mentioned above, despite having a bit of a domed profile at 40psi, I could clearly see from the road dust/wear pattern that the whole surface of the tire is in contact with the ground when I’m standing on the board. Grip seemed great, no sketchy moments even turning really hard (which my new lowered standing platform enables). The really thin line down the center of the tread pattern had me concerned these would be slippery until that wore down. But that fear seems unfounded!
I’m really curious to see how these tires look on a wider rim. Maybe someday I can afford a set of Rockstar Pro II XL’s (terrible name guys ). As is, I just spent WAY more than my current $0 esk8 budget on these relatively modest (and badly needed) maintenance items.
All in all, I’m very happy with how everything worked out and I cant wait to put more miles on this new and improved Mistfall!
A lot of thought and effort went into them
and I really cant afford to do that. I’ll keep yall updated.
