Carbon-free cruiser :-) ¦ Hummie Hubz ¦ Dual VESC ¦ 10s

After WPs near-perfect precision carbon build I’m going to report about my more low-tech build.

As smaller cruisers seem to be “en vogue” and I didn’t want to be left behind I couldn’t stop myself when I saw this beauty in a skate shop. A rather stiff fiber and wood deck out of the Fibretec factory with very nice curves and a small kicktail.

Deck is far too nice to hide underneath standard grip so I used clear grip tape.

Did some runs without motors and then slapped on a R-Spec 6374. Wow, this board is great, very turny, with a wide platform big enough for my large feet and the concaves in the right place! Seems to be the perfect board for a light weight city cruiser powerd by hub motors.

Then I had to wait for the motors …

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Sweet looking deck. Years ago I had a 30" double kicktail hemp board, that looked very similar, and that thing was stiff as hell. I think I donated to a neighbor kid who needed it more than I did, but kind of wish I kept it for this very purpose. Can’t wait to see it all completed!

nice looking board. I’m also in the process of building a small, stylish 28" cruiser board. Definitely interested to see what you come up with.

What’s the specs on that board? It looks good!

Thanks guys, the board looks great indeed.

It is not that small though (At 190cm / 6’2 I’m neither - and I have big feet). My spring steel ruler says it’s around 82cm x 22cm / 32’’ x 8,6’’. The board was made here locally in Zurich by Fibretec for a small German skate brand. Looks like it’s made out of horizontally laminated wood and fibreglass. It’s very light weight and pretty stiff but not dead. Love the curves.

After some back and forth and a couple of email exchanges with Hummie my Hubz arrived. “OMG, they are beautyfull!!!” (speak with high pitched voice).

Really like them, they look like a very solid design and build. Phase wires could be a little thicker and more flexible but no biggie.

Mounted them on a pair of Atlas Cast trucks 150mm. Mounting them using Omega 100 is a pain but absolutely doable. The first hummie went on well and even lined up nicely with the wires coming out boardside. I had shimmed them before using speed washers.

For the second one I probably used too much epoxy plus the epoxy had started curing already. So I wasn’t able to screw the axle in all the way. My fault. I’m sure the bonding is strong enough but the wires now come out roadside. No rail-grinding then …

Some Exkate Cherry Bombs that were lying around went onto the front truck, Atlas Cast 180mm.

Now I had a rolling chassis but no VESCS, more waiting …

same boat here :crying_cat_face:

hummies really look great, especially the aluminum ones with purple :heart_eyes:

Looks like I’m a step ahead of WP, what an honor :slight_smile:

When my VESCs arrived it was time to heat up the soldering iron. 5mm bullet connectors for the phase wires, parallel harness for the VESCS, an XT90s anti spark plug as loop switch and a parallel servo cable. Then all was double shrink wrapped. And I used Anderson Power Poles to connect the batteries like in all of my projects. They give so much flexibility and they work! The VESCs were mounted using Velcro in order to dampen some of the vibrations.

Why are the VESCs so far back? Right now I’m using two 5S nano-tech 4000maH 25-50C in series. Small range, light weight, also mounted using the strong velcro stuff. The plan is to spot weld an 10s4p battery back. My cells have been lying around for some time and the parts for my spot welder have arrived.

Remote is the fabulous winning remote from @kaly.

This is where I am with this build right now. Scale says 5.9kg. The only thing left to do is to make a cover in order to protect the electronics and batteries. And then the new battery pack. Then maybe upgrade to steal is real hummies. And the planned voltage display. I suppose an esk8 builders work is never done …

@hummie, if you ever pour blood red wheels, please let me know! I have to change the front or the back wheels.

Ready for the first ride - wish me luck. Unfortunately its raining right now.

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is this a race now?! :cold_sweat:

enjoy the ride :yum:

Love the deck. :yum: Smooth and sleak. :ok_hand:

Managed to do a pretty extensive test ride over the weekend and did a 10km tour in the City.

Biggest plus: my VESCs did not overheat on my way home back up the hill. Biggest bummer: my motors did!

Here the story: Absolutely love the stealth mode in FOC and general responsiveness of the setup. The hummie hubs do have a lot of grunt and torque. With one push and a flick on the trigger you are up and running. Real life torque is absolutely up to the task and I’m not the lightest rider.

The rather thin thane is not an issue, on rough pavement and even some pitched roads the ride was not overly harsh. And that is on my stiff and short board. The wheels are also good for carving.

Can’t really comment on top speed as I did not push it at all on my first ride on the new board. On 10s I was definitely going fast enough. However I did notice that the motors did get quiet hot riding in the flat. Very warm to the touch. And also seem to drain a battery pretty quickly.

Then after a cooling down stop in a café it was time to head home up my dreaded hill. Now my Swiss hill is a completely different beast than the tiny ant hill shown in @onloop’s video! :slight_smile: It’s not overly steep but inclines continuously. Over a distance of around 2,6km I cover an elevation of around 120m.

I’m not able to ride all the way up in one go on my single drive satellite setup because my VESC overheats and limits amps. Then I have to stop and let my VESC cool down before I continue. Eventually I make it to the top and it takes me around 15 minutes with all of the stop and go.

On my hummies I had to walk home. The motors got really really hot after some minutes of riding up. Unfortunately the motors only cooled down very slowly when taking a break. So around halfway up the hill I gave up and walked home. The motors were so hot I couldn’t touch them and even the trucks were almost too hot to touch. Think I could have used my board to boil water for spaghetti for all of the goofy riders here.

So my big summary regarding the aluminum version of the @hummie hubz: they are very well suited for a small cruiser or any other board, they look great, they feel great (especially on FOC), the wheels are good for cruising, they are fast enough and they have enough torque to climb steep hills. So all good riding in the flat.

Heat is their biggest problem. Once they start heating up e.g. when riding up a hill trouble starts. The heat just builds up more and more.

Now I’m curious if the new “steel is real” version solves the heat problem. Would be interesting to see if they make it up my hill.

steel could potentially make things worse - aluminum has a much better thermal conductivity! :scream:

sure, fully aware. Not sure if you have been following the hummie hub thread. He mentions that his new steel version have less of a heat issue.

I personally believe that the alu hubs do not run very efficiently for some reason and that they PRODUCE a lot more heat than they should. It’s not so much a matter of dissipating the heat (as with the VESCs). The new steel hubs might be more efficient and produce less. So even though they dissipate less heat the run cooler. Maybe.

But that’s just guessing and would need some effort to prove. Would be interesting to measure the watts and accumulated watts going into the VESCs and motors while riding up my dreaded hill. Then measure this using the various setups.

Just realised that I should update this thread with some final pictures before I start my next build. Next build will be the “Raptor hunter”.

Have done some really nice runs on my @Hummie hubz cruiser. Love the board and the hubz in FOC mode. Way fast enough for the small board and loose trucks - and very nice carving! Rubber is holding up nicely so far and grippy.

Everybody who’s had a go on the board loves it.

Only drawback is that I can’t make it home back up the hill. The motors just get way too hot!

Here some pictures of the final thermoplastic cover. As mentioned in the original post, no carbon.

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I missed your thread pb1 thanks for writing and the criticism. (Suspicious if I’m being blocked from seeing it as I know three people were blocked from writing on my thread). hate to have you not be satisfied with the motors. Im not. if u want a pair of the bigger I’m getting made I’ll get them done for u for 450$ mounted with 2 trucks with tires.

The steel do seem to run cooler. Why who knows as there were other changes with the airgap and blah blah But the thermometer tells what it reads. And the 80kv run about 25f cooler than the 90kv! So I’ve been told by evohyax testing. I never bothered testing much as didn’t feel much need at 155lbs There is obviously more copper in the 80kv and can be seen. Things are getting better and hope u can keep moving forward with me. And keep giving feedback.

If ur getting them hot the rubber u have will die soon even though it’s the 90duro. Hold on for the 80 nitrile rubber

I’m not surprised the 80kv run cooler than the 90kv.

That’s exactly my theory as explained in my BLDC motor thread.

Assuming the same setup, the 80kv will have less amps going through the motors at the same speed (and thus the same watts). So less loss due to internal resistance.

As mentioned, your hubs are very nice to ride and work well - in the flats.

As I understand it lower kv has greater resistance as the windings will necesarilly be thinner with the more turns, but the low kv needs less amps to create the same inductance, so it all balances out and a high kv or low kv can perform identically as long as they have the same amount of copper. The 90kv have less copper than the 80kv motors and that’s why they’re hotter You can run a 2000kv motor and get the same performance as an 80kv if everything else is the same. Ud want to change the battery to likely be 1s or something really low so the battery was all amps, which will be needed, and being the no-load speed down too

The motors need to be bigger if ur interested in going up those hills. Up to you of course