Not yet, soon.
Ha, was totally with you wanting to test my ride ASAP. I used rubber bands and painterās tape. It was pretty jankyā¦
Well, I regret not posting here for a while, but Iāve been so busy lately with work! Thought I might just show you guys a teaser video of the board. I apologize for the portrait video, itās the only one I have of it! It was a snapchatā¦
Unfortunately, I donāt have any other videos of the boardā¦ was too busy riding it to and from work! Now that school has started, I should have some more weekend time to actually work on the thing, especially since I need to repair the CANBUS chips on the FOCBOXs. ESC wonāt boot without them.
I also need to redesign the motor mounts, as they are wearing on the sleeve bearing, causing the motor to scrape the truck! Ooofā¦ Time to use dual ball bearings. That should fix the problem.
Iāll be moving to a new deck as well, to avoid the motor rubbing the deck during turns. Hereās a picture of the deck.
Iām also designing a new FOCBOX case that will enable direct mounting of the boards to the enclosure, and replaces the original aluminum cases. Need to add some holes for the motor wires. Hereās a pic.
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Hey guys, I feel like I owe you a final post on this thread. Unfortunately, I am bringing the 8 wheel project to an end.
Over the summer, I rode the 8 wheel, and things kept breaking on it, and it never felt like a finished product, hence why I never bothered to post pictures of it here. Iāll run through a few of the troubles I had with it.
First, the sleeve bearings I used on the motor mounts didnāt last long, as they wore unevenly due to the torque on them from the wheels being so far out. I moved to bearings, which solved this issue.
Before long, the motors became very scratched up, due to the motor mounts flipping upside down. It was always a pain to set the board on the ground, because they had to be oriented the right way or they would scratch. Oh well, I thought.
However, the motors condition soon worsened. They quickly began to rattle whenever I went on a road that wasnāt perfectly smooth. How uncool to be riding down the street on a rattle trap. No thanks!
As if that werenāt enough, the fact that the motor mounts pivot began to prematurely wear out the wiring on the motors! I was rudely awakened to this fact while going 20MPH. I hit a slight bump, one of the phase wires lost connection for a split second, and the FOCBOX freaked out and full braked the motor. I flew off the board and sustained some pretty good scrapes, but nothing serious. Iām glad I was wearing a helmet.
After this episode, I decided to discontinue the project. I didnāt see any way of keeping the motors from getting destroyed from vibration, and the board was way too heavy to be practical, Iād estimate around 30lb.
So, sadly this project must come to an end.
Cheers!
2 Likes
Do u have any final pics for thr build? Thereās a new thread now about tandem trucks / wheels from china - taobao, not sure whenever someone would order but I think for experience it would still be interesting to ride it.
How was the riding compared to normal board? Does the extra wheels add significant rolling resistance? Did it absorb / overcome bumps better?
Quite curious why the motors didnt last long and got banged up, I.suppose there was some movement for the wires but otherwise they are on top of wheels right?
Well, one of the problems was because the motors were on top, they tended to want to turn the assembly upside down, since the center of mass was above the pivot point. Hence, the motors would oftentimes end up on the ground if you just set the board down normally. Even worse, if you accidentally hit the gas while nobody was on the board, they would immediately flip upside down scraping them up.
The important bit to realize about the flaw of this design is that the tandem truck uses pivot motion to absorb shock loads. So, if you drove over a reasonably moderate crack, there would be a large acceleration of the entire arm, along with the motor. This shook the motors to a very poor condition in no time. Now they rattle at the slightest hint of a rough road.
That being said, the board handled beautifully while the motors lasted. It literally more than halved the impact of large bumps on the road. I once drove through a pothole (with reasonably rounded edges) around 3 inches deep and 10 inches in diameter at 18MPH and I barely felt anything, a moderate dip, but nothing to throw me off balance. On the other hand, small bumps, cracks, and roughness of the road were not improved, if not worsened a little.
Steering was about the same, my turning radius was slightly wider than a 4 wheel, but not bad. High speed stability was no issue. The wide wheelbase also made the board feel very locked in and stable. The only downside performance wise was the fact that I was only driving two out of the eight wheels. This is the equivalent of having a single drive, but braking is made even worse, because the driven wheels are all the way back, where there is the least downforce while braking. This resulted in the wheels locking up a fair amount going down hills, though Iād say locking or sliding the wheels is better than skipping teeth on your belts.
Here are a few photos of the build, I thought I didnāt take any photos for some reason, but managed to find some.
Routing out the wire channels! I bought a dremel tool for this purpose. They make a routing adapter for it, so I made a template to fit the router guide, and made these slots, and drilled the holes.
IMO my favorite build in terms of looks. I only had 9" griptape at the time, so I did what I could with the resources I had. I used my schoolās laser cutter to cut the design with all the holes and the arrow. Note that the motors have their paint removed, because they were getting so scratched up from being turned upside down all the time.
The underside is very clean due to the wire routing through the board. I must say, from this point forward, I am mounting as few wires outside the board as possible from now on. Not only does it look better, but it also forces you to think more about cable management, and in the end come up with a better design.
Bonus pic!
My car broke down this summer, here I am going to the auto parts store on my only working vehicle at the time! The board handled the extra load with ease. I was able to tow 50+lb of equipment, not to mention the extra drag of the underinflated tires, without the motors overheating! I did take a longer route home to avoid hills, but it still had to climb up a 15% slope and brake down a 20% slope.
If youāre curious what the board looks like now, head on over to this thread:
5 Likes
Thanks for the long description, anyways I think you still should add your crazy 8 wheel board to the http://esk8builds.com site, as it sure inspires to think out of the box in a way 
Does not matter it is decommisioned now and parts already used for another build
As about the problem with āflipingā trucks/motors, did u think about installing some sort of end stop for the pivot to stop moving further? I can imagine it should have been of rubber or something to minimize the impact but non the less, if there was space for such feature maybe it would have helped
I thought about making some sort of mechanical pivot limiter. It probably would have solved some problems, but the vibration and weight issues would still remain.
Still glad I went out of my way to try something new! Someoneās gotta break some new ground in this field!
1 Like
Hi
I have a verreal v1s board and wonder what I would do to upgrade it to 4wd?
Buy another hub motors + 4wd ESC or 4xvescs + more batteries