Help a noob: going to spice up a factory board and need advice. *also, troubleshoot*

ESK8 Builds
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Hey guys,

Total noob here…

-not to the world of electric longboards, but definitely to the world of building and modifying them. currently, i have two boards, a WOWGo S2 and a Chinese special offroad board that i bought off of Alibaba (hindsight being 2020, maybe not the best pick).

-board details: 6354 motor of unknown make. 18650 10S4P LiPo battery, dual belt drive, 72:16 teeth, 200mm wheels

I’ve ran into trouble with the offroad board. I got at and used it for approximately 3 weeks with great results… then the issue appeared: it began going into limp mode randomly. At first, it seemed that bumps on the ride seemed to trigger this phenomenon, but it progressed to doing this even without being jostled (it seemed).

Then my suspicion went to overheating. -but this did not make sense. i got the board at the end of august, beginning of September when it was incredibly hot outside. since i never had overheating issues in 105 F heat, it makes no sense to me that i would experience them at this point on 50 F days, on much shorter rides.

I have just enough knowledge about electronics in general to be dangerous, so i tore into the board with the plan of checking out the ESC for obvious shorts (thought process stemmed from the limp mode being triggered by bumps.) well… I have the ESC stack out now and see nothing glaringly obvious. In the end, I think i’d be better off just beginning to upgrade the board as i’d like more performance, reliability, and customizability. thinking about swapping out this ESC stack for a VESC, but i know very little about them. Also, I do have a budget. I’m looking for quality, but also budget-friendly suggestions.

If you have any info that may help me, please provide it. Also, please do talk down to my level of expertise, explaining suggestions to simplicity.

-pics below

Thanks all! -HuskerMed

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(tried removing the motor from the mount so that i could better visualize it, but i could not remove the bolts without possibly stripping the Allen head… might have to go through drastic measures to do so if necessary.

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this literally could be anything…

This is what i would do, would firstly check every single connector/connection/solder joint from the battery all the way through to the motors. It could simply be a loose wire, connection, or cold solder joint.

Next, if you have a multimeter, you can do some checks on each component.

  1. check battery voltage with multimeter.
  2. check that the motors are not shorted out internally, measuring resistance. https://youtu.be/ZNhKqlbrQkY
  3. check that it is not a radio interference issue. maybe the antenna is not placed well in the assembly, so try running the system whilst its on the bench unassembled. Then you can put remote very near to the main circuit which has the Receiver.

If you need more help i offer a paid tech support service.

If you need a new motor controlller and you are keen on somthing a bit better than what you have, i recommend this:

It will work with any battery & motor combination.

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just noticed this, if these connectors are touching each other the board wont work. It will feel like the brakes are coming on, then probably cause a fault

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@onloop thanks for the input! I’ve just moved several months ago to start med school and left all my tools (basically) in my garage back home. I plan on checking everything out with a multimeter, but it’ll either be December when I go back home, or I’ll have to buy the multimeter (which I’m more motivated to do ATM).

as per the connectors, I damaged that when cutting the shrink wrap off. When I put it back together, I plan on replacing the shrink tubing, so it’ll be a non-issue.

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I’d be willing to bet the battery has a loose connection that is causing the BMS to enter a protection mode and cutting power. You can either fix the current battery or buy a new one, if this seems to be the issue and you would like to get a high end replacement battery that will not rattle appart please PM me here or Instagram.com/BlackFoxBoards, I would he happy to get you a quote for a replacement or an upgraded pack)

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