Best value? | Loaded deck | 10S4P | Dual Maytech DRV cookers | JLabs 6355 | 97mm bananas 🍌

Thanks for the inspiration Norco! Interesting point about splitting the packs in two. Ideally I’d like to build the battery pack to be travel safe by splitting the cells into five groups of 2S4P cells. This way you’d have 72Whr per group of cells which can be joined and separated by 5.5mm bullet connectors. Of course this is all determined by how much space there is to work with, which inevitably isn’t much with a 10S4P pack and separated enclosures :sweat_smile: Just waiting on the braided wire and I can start soldering!

For charging I’ve got a 42V 2A brick charger that I can travel with when necessary and when faster charging is desired I’ll be using the DPS5015 DC-DC buck converter coupled with a 48V power supply. This way you can precisely set the cutoff voltage to any range you desire 41V, 41.1V, 41.15V etc, additionally one can set the charge current to 2A or 6A or anything in between for fast charging!

It looks kinda flimsy and basic compared to a dedicated bench top PSU, but it’s been well tested on the flashlight forums, with a few members testing it well above 10A and it’s really great value for the price! I’ve used it for a number of months already for other use cases and its held up quite well. Though charging batteries is a slightly more critical task compared to powering LED’s, one which obviously requires better regulation and better CCCV characteristics… We’ll see how it goes.

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Well from here on, it’s basically just a waiting game until everything else gets here. Until then I’ve attempted to take a few glam shots and hopefully I’ll put up a video soon of me riding it.

From the way the mounts are constructed to the way they are screwed onto the trucks they seem very solid and I have nothing bad to say about them after dry fitting them without loctite. Interesting to note that the belts aren’t 9mm but more like 11mm, close to 12mm in width.

They’re so yellow! :banana: :banana: :banana:

Close up of the wheel pulley

Close up of the bamboo layers, not sure what the other middle layers are.

Shot overlooking UNSW village green.

My thoughts after pushing the vanguard clone for a few more weeks is that the general feel with the 97’s make it totally impractical to push due to how high the deck is from the ground. When carving hard I feel the high ground clearance these wheels have in combination with the top mount deck don’t inspire a lot of confidence in terms of stability and overall dynamic connection with the road, the comfort of the large flywheels almost feel like pneumatics, completely disconnected from the road… I’ll most likely be trying out a set of smaller wheels or even switching to a drop-through deck. But for now I’m happy to postpone changes until after I finish this build!

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Nice build and great photos. Can you post a video of deck flex?

Yes I have already taken a video of the flex, just need to take the time to upload it :wink:

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Ordered some 3mm neoprene sheet, upon initial inspection I feel as though 3mm may be a bit too thick, although I’m sure once the enclosures are screwed on the pressure will flatten it out significantly. Also just received my 2.1, 5.5mm DC jacks for charging. I know most people are using Xt60’s for charging ports but I didn’t like the aesthetics of them, others are using 5.5mm bullet connectors but that provides no polarity protection. I like the simplicity of a one port charge system although the laptop style ports are significantly more flimsy than an xt60, we’ll see how it goes.

Also received my 42V 2A brick charger I bought for 10 bucks (AUD). That price begs the question regarding reliability and safety. I cracked it open and took a few photos. What do you guys think?

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Hey @will_manners I’m a huge fan of your build, and am interested in going the TaoBao route as well. I see that you used Superbuy as an agent. How would you rate that experience? I was about to go sign up myself, and saw a slot for a referral code. As your post referred me, I thought I’d ask for your code to give my thanks

Hey man! Thanks for the love :wink: I never want to take away from the quality of local providers and manufacturers of esk8 parts, they all do a fantastic job in providing the community with beautifully crafted products. However Taobao does provide a lot of options. And its always good to have more options!

In terms of the buying experience it was pretty hassle free. You can use paypal and they take photos when the parcel arrives at their warehouse, so I do recommend them. The only thing I am unsure about is the difference in shipping prices. I’m not sure how much of a difference in cost it would make ordering directly from taobao.

How does the referral code work?

absolutely no clue about the benefit. I assume that they would give you some free shipping on future items if you referred someone?

As for shipping, the Mayfair VESC seller said that for international buyers to go through their aliexpres site, which bumps the price to 109 ea w/ free shipping. So I think if I did a larger order from taobao incl most stuff, it would probably be less to do mass shipment from Superbuy

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Well I’ve hit a significant road block, the clone vanguard breathed its last and has been broken in action… :frowning:

I can already hear the premptive cries of “I told you so” :stuck_out_tongue: It is very disappointing since I had high hopes for this board but I guess its a good $75 lesson to not put your trust in cheap chinese decks. The split occured whilst I was testing the flex on flat ground and I hear this sickening crack straight through the middle…

You can see the micro cracks going through 80% of the deck.

The only thing to do now is to move onto bigger and better things :smiley:

The way it’s looking, this build is no longer a budget build since I’d like to splurge on a new Loaded deck to replace the crummy clone which is now in the bin.

I’m currently looking to buy either a flex 3 vanguard or a flex 2 dervish sama. I’m leaning more towards the dervish Sama since it’s cheaper than the vanguard, with a longer wheelbase, larger width for better stance and being a drop-through the center of gravity is lower. On the clone deck I always felt that it was way too high from the ground, especially with the 97’s and that was without risers.

Price is in aud incl. shipping

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Gosh, too sad to hear that, i hope my deck can last longer. anyway, the truck and motor mount look not bad. did you have another view of the mounting?

Have received most of the wiring and solder I’ll need to start the battery pack so I thought I’d get the VESC’s configured using a PSU in the meantime. What do we call them now after the TM fiasco? Maytech drv cooker? Maytech funner outrunner runner? Credit to @longhairedboy :slight_smile: I’ve taken some closeups of the maytech drv cookers on my phone but will post some proper photos as well.

Still undecided on which loaded deck to purchase. The vanguard is the best candidate but also more expensive than most of Loaded’s other offerings. The Icarus, Dervish Sama and Tan tien are all roughly 20 bucks cheaper than a Vanguard flex 2 :frowning:

I’ve also updated the title to more accurately represent this build and the contents of this thread.

Does it have to he Loaded? If not, this thing was trusty back in the day. Quite enjoyed it. Also avaivable in 3 flex levels.

https://www.muirskate.com/longboard/decks/72379/db-longboards-coreflex-compound-longboard-skateboard-deck-w-grip

It doesn’t have to be a Loaded deck :slight_smile: Anything that catches my eye really, practicalities are considered but aesthetics are very important to me as well. That DB coreflex you linked to looks really good! They are cheaper than loaded decks but no one sells them locally, which means shipping alone came to almost $90 when I tried to check out, so it ends up being more expensive. I have looked at other popular offerings from brands like jet, landyachtz, DB, but a lot of them are either out of stock or shipping to Australia is unreasonably expensive. It does severly limit the available alternarives and due to Loaded’s presence and size as a company, they have established a larger market and customer base in Australia compared to others.

Changed the 4mm bullet conectors on the phase wires to 5.5mm connectors with a few layers of extra shrink tube to try and minimise phase wires shorting as much as possible. The stock male bullet connectors seemed a bit inadequate and the maytech drv cookers have 5.5mm female connectors already :slight_smile:

Before, after :wink:

@benwong Here’s more details of the trucks and motor mounts.

Configured both of the Maytech vescs through BLDC-tool and everything went very smoothly. As a complete noob to the VESC it was surprisingly easy, everything’s working fine on the bench so far.

The only thing which is really concerning is when I switch off the mini remote the VESC goes full throttle! When the vesc is on and I turn off the remote the pulsewidth percentage display goes to 70%, hence why the motor starts accelerating when the signal is lost. How do I fix this?

There is also an rpm difference between the two motors when controlling both vescs through ppm splitter. I’ve double and triple checked that all my values are identical across each vesc, especially the ppm pulsewidth settings and even after rectifying 1 or 2 ms in pulsewidth the rpm difference continues. Here’s a video, you can see that one motor always starts before the other, at 100% throttle each motor then reaches the same rpm.

Here are my vesc settings for both vescs, they’re identical across both

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the motor mount look like not bad~~ looking forward your on the road review. for the motor sync issue, did you connect the canbus wire and set them link together?

If your settings are the exact same your fine. You notice the “out of sink’ness” when there is no load, but when you ride it should be almost unnoticeable.

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You have to rebind to reset neutral PPM, at least for the winning controller. I imagine this is similar since the behavior is the same.

btw @JLabs, didn’t realize you had a sealed version of your motors. Are you going to restock anytime?

Soon! I’ll be under a rebrand as well with a new website.

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