@nmagz3 buy a good deck from a known skate company. It breaks my heart to see $1000 worth of electronics on a cheap $25 eBay deck. The deck is the heart of your ride; cheap wood and glue have a cheap feeling.
Bolt your enclosure onto your deck. No epoxy is up the task in the long term.
Skip lipos and start with a battery system with a BMS. Charging all the time sucks and once esk8 is integrated into your life you’ll get sick of plugging and unplugging balance chargers.
Learn about bushing shape and durometer and dial them in to your preference. This is a cheap way to get the ride qualities you prefer. The best $25 you’ll ever spend.
Tape or hear shrink your motor leads.
Start riding slowly and be very careful on your first 5-10 rides. Things go wrong, cables come unplugged, you want to learn about those problems at 10-15 mph, not 30 mph. It’s easy to get carried away at first and forget that you are riding a potentially dangerous experiment.
real wheels not clones
vesc
reliable 2.4ghz mini trigger remote
stiff deck
wide trucks
protect batteries and vescs
wasted a huge amount of money till I ended up with these. You can make a better more powerful smoother board than anything commercially available for maybe 700$
simplifying charging with a meanwell bulk charger doing 400 watts with an inline wattmeter and battery medic balancers is the fastest simplest charging to me…unless you go with the bms…but the bms can be a limit if it’s hooked up for discharging.
I have been using the IMAX b6 with @oriol360’s one port adapter for charging and it works quite well. I would still use a BMS if I had thought about t beforehand though, most of my friends use them so that they don’t have to worry about the battery as much.
Thanks for the response brotha! I’m actually hearing that philosophy a lot in this thread. It helps me justify my thoughts. When it came to my drone I always bought cheap and regretted it. Luckily, drone parts are cheap…just adds up. I don’t want the same thing to happen when I buy a $55 ESC. Sure I saved money but then after it breaks I’ll have to shell out the money for the expensive one I intended on buying.
Thanks for the reply! Super helpful perspective. What was it with the wheel clones that you found challenging? Also, what sort of wide trucks are you referring too?
Man, @mmaner you’ve been super helpful, I can’t thank you enough. I’ll check it out now. LOL, you seem to be on your computer at the same time as I am. Hahaha
LOL, just trying to help the community. I figure find something fun and be passionate about it, that’s what life is all about. BTW, I’m at work milking the clock :).
Yeah, I’m a huge advocate for a helmet. I bombed a pretty nasty hill once with out it…alone. Yeah, that time I feel hard and between the road and my body was my head. You know what, I’ve been looking at lipos and charging systems and it’s been such a pain in the ass. I have this internal voice that tells me if I go with a battery system and a BMS it’s less DIY. But, this lipo search has been a pain. Hey…I really appreciate your advice. It was real thorough and helpful!
HAHAHAHA same, I’m “working”. Dude, this community seems to be so small. But, I’ve never seen such an enthusiastic group. Even on YouTube, dudes will take apart their Boosted board and put on off road wheels for the sake of the community. I’ve only joined the community and it’s awesome to see this type of passion.
It really is, there’s so many people out there that want to have an electric skateboard but the info is pretty much limited to youtube, endless sphere and here. I think the best quality info is here and that’s because the best quality people are here.
From what I’ve gathered the growth in eSk8 DIY products and companies has grown over the last couple years. It seems today it’s a bit easier which I’m grateful for. However, a community that’s less than 5-10 years old is still a baby. I recently watched a video from Enertion where the dude talks about the growth of the esc to the vesc; I can only imagine that kind of frustration. With the growth though, I can see how noobs asking uneducated questions could jade the older guys. Anyhow, I hope you thought this post was useful. Instead of asking, “what kind of board, motor, etc is the best” I wanted to see and hear from ya’ll and what’d you’d do differently on your first build. I’m psyched, cause this felt like an awesome introduction.
People get jaded, fact of life. They can leave if they dont like it :). I thought this was a great question, made me look at the last 3 builds I did a it differently.
I’ve only been doing this a couple of months, but I’m totally in love with my electric board, I ride everywhere…work, church, grocery store, in-laws. I get a lot of looks but who cares, Im having fun. That;s the thing, when you take away all the BS and really drill down to what makes you passionate about something the people who wanna complain, the funny looks, all that looses importance, just have fun brudda :).
Great advice! I’m 35 an still in love with skating (aggressive bladed and skateboarded as a kid). But, now a days I have kids and house that needs work. This hobby kinda mixes the 2 as I can tinker and problem solve like an adult and still thrash it up in the streets. As soon as I get all my parts I’ll update the community and say thank you for the help from everyone.
On the BMS… IN the long term I was looking to build a battery pack that was removable, contained a Volt meter and BMS to control charge and discharge. I incorrectly thought the BMS would control the discharge of each cell, it does not do that. SInce then I have gone with the MEB Simple Charging Port Adapter. It makes it so I don’t have to take my board apart to charge.
I haven’t given up on the removable pack or the BMS, I’m am going in a different direction however by separating the BMS and volt meter from the pack and using lion cells, still in the research phase though.
Ahh, I get it. I’m sure I’ll feel the annoyance of taking off the cover and charging and then putting the cover back on soon. That simple charging port is so clean looking, just bookmarked.
