Here are pictures of my first build. Unfortunately, I neglected to take photos of when it was initially running. But my board has evolved quite a bit as I learned more.
I was using an eBay kit that had dual 270k motor 2200W. I bought a dual motor board w/ remote. Its a similar board to whats on the Meepo. I was able to achieve 18mph but realized the control board was horribly inefficient because it was draining the battery like crazy and the motors were capable of more.
My very first board set up had the battery and controller board running through a tether made from 14G primary wire and aviation connectors to the motors so nothing was mounted to the board except the motors. Since im a beginner on a longboard I wanted to ensure if I fell off the tether would unplug and the board would stop dead instead of sending hundreds of dollars down the road.
Here is the eBay board ($80)
Here was my initial setup. I was using a Kobalt 40V 2AH battery. A broken charger was used as a battery dock. Quite convenient considering I bought 3 batteries at $20 each. So total of 40V and 6AH. I was getting about 2 miles per battery. They charged from depleted to full in less than an hour each.
Here is the re-purposed broken charger drilled and mounted using the truck bolts. This was while I was upgrading everything. Before the Caliber II trucks I was using whatever generic trucks came with the chinese made kit. Also, I would like to add that the motor mounts were TERRIBLE on the kit from china. It used a motor mount that bolted onto a locking collar. The locking collar relied on set screws and rotated on braking. Not to mention that you had to lathe the trucks to fit the collar. I bought split axle collars and had one side welded to the mounts and it was a huge improvement. The photo of the old mounts will be at the end of the post.
Here is the old Meepo style control board VS. two new VESC from HobbyKing. Im using a Pelican 1020 case.
This is where I plan to mount the Pelican case using some sort of locking hardware, rather than screwing it in so I can remove it any time. I am building on a Drop Down deck so there is very little clearance under the board. I plan on building a 10S3P battery pack from the Kobalt cells that I am currently harvesting. The battery pack will be the only thing under the board mounted permanently. I also plan to have an auxiliary plug on the board for adding more 10S packs in parallel for extended range. The additional 10S packs would be either inside my book bag with a tether or strapped to the board between my feet. Don’t know the route I’m going yet. I did really like the tether from my initial setup but since the board has batteries mounted there is no point for a tether anymore.
Here are my trucks and motors. I am using mounts from HobbyKing. I had to drill new holes to mount the trucks because in the original position, there was no room for the motors. I wanted the motors to be on the opposite side of where they are now (I like the look of motors in the back) but the HobbyKing mounts were made to only mount in this orientation on Caliber trucks. In the other orientation they would run the motor into the trucks.
Aaaaaand a side profile.
This is my first build and ownership of this kind of transport and I absolutely love it.
Thanks for having me in this community. Hope you guys enjoy my first post.