See that is just not true. I have a meepo with focboxes and it is a great little machine. People all over the forum are doing hub motor upgrades successfully. I told you Brian Yoga.
But wouldn’t it be a lot easier if it wasn’t a hub motor board?
You can also build a house from toothpicks if you want to, but larger lumber makes it much easier and better.
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Yo if you want a board on a hell of a budget, check out this instructable. I found a used scooter on Craigslist for $50. I cut a deck out of plywood. Got some $10 grip tape. The front trucks were $30 and the wheels are $15 a piece. Only thing left is a battery. Plenty of room left in your budget for a decent battery if scooter one is bad.
This was where I started: zero skating experience, decent tech/mech experience.
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Why? I know you don’t like hubs and so does everyone who has ever had a conversation with you lol but thats not to say they don’t serve a purpose in esk8. Take the little meepo ones for example. They have a surprising amount of torque when you can set the motor amps a bit higher. Nothing is as light and easy to manage. They make great little shopping trolleys. Then theres hummies. You know they are good. So to blanket say that hubs are no good for diy is shortsighted at the very least especially as you to the best of my knowledge have ever owned a set. Op’s budget would only allow for very cheap belt drives and then well you know what they are like.
I would ask you what your goal is here?
Do you have a commute you need this for? Do you just want to build something for fun and learning?
As said before, $2500 is really the minimum to build a quality lasting eboard. The stuff we build around here are 5-10 times as powerful as a wowgo or any of these prebuilts and will take you 2-5 times as far on a single charge.
@rusins Your right about the internship. I fucked this up and when I got my CS degree, from a top 100 university in the US at that, and here in the heart of silicon valley, I can’t get an internship or entry level job to save my life. I looked for over a year and ended up just working in another industry, which is frustrating cause I love computer science and I have a lot of talent and personal projects to show my passion/knowledge. Sadly, it’s all about who you know, not what you know.
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Because you can’t change anything, without changing everything. You don’t even have 4 wheels or two trucks you can salvage. You literally might as well just take the deck and battery and start over.
That’s not true
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You are looking at this from a very narrow perspective. I’m saying you don’t have to change the motors. They perform admirably for most people especially when vesc controlled. So for very little money in relation to normal re-purposing they are a cheap option. 2 vesc a switch, meter and a loopkey and you have a board that will out perform the pre-built it was based on in every way and to someone new to this those improvements would seem like night and day. I’ve done it. I know. To turn it into something you would ride would be an expensive exercise but not everyone is you my tunnel visioned friend
I’d say roughly $1000 if I was a betting man and assuming not paying full retail price on all items (waiting for sales or buying new off someone else)
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Well it depends on the power output you want and how you will use it and how many steeps hills you have and your weather ect.
When you look at a worst case scenario, yes, $2500 is around where you can over build a board to last.
If you are 120 lb and ride like a snail and are happy with that and don’t ride in the rain and obly ride flat ground, then yes, $1000 is enough.
That’s also assuming you know what you are doing and make zero mistakes, which is almost impossible for a new builder. You need at least an extra 20% for mistakes, and then also tools like soldering irons, hot glue guns, ect. Individually, these are mostly cheap, but it can add up to a $200-$300 in tools you need to build a proper eskate.
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That’s sad to hear, are you back to CS now at least?
I find it quite ironic that most companies don’t even take 1st, 2nd, or even 3rd year students as interns because they want to train you to hire you as soon as you’re done with your studies, yet won’t take graduates as interns for god knows what reason.
So what you’re saying is that its completely subjective. The figure of 2500 bucks is what you would need to build a board best suited to your needs? Are you and @b264 related? Seperated at birth maybe? His love child?
Love you Brian x
Man, Brian gets picked on even when he’s not in the thread. (Edit: I’m stupid and should head to bed) Cut the man some slack! RMS of the esk8 world lol
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No, I’m in the window covering industry, which I am ridiculously over qualified for. It’s really really frustrating and I’ve given up on it for the time being. Either I’ll go back and get a masters when I pay back my 120k debt, and retry my chance to get an internship (With more experience about the process this time), or just move on.
Companies really don’t want to risk anything anymore, and the market is so over saturated. I applied to over 2000 entry level internships and jobs, without a single onsite interview. Hired a pricey career coach, which helped me get past the phone interviews, but a lot of times, they give difficult coding quizzes before even giving you a phone interview. I applied to start ups and medium/big companies. nothing really seemed to work. And the most annoying part is unlike at least half of techies, I have social and communication skills.
And with so many Indian and Chinese tech workers coming to the bay area from their respective countries, it’s even more competitive (not to say I’m against them having the chance to succeed here, because I am happy that they do),
It’s just a rough market and it;s not the “get your cs degree and you’ll find a job” anymore. Many of my friends are still looking for work and the few that have found anything are doing scut like jobs.
Err, hes in here. Been talking so we have. He’s also one of my closest virtual esk8 buds and he definitely gives as good as he gets trust me.
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Wow that’s tough. You seem to be doing everything right, only advice I could give is moving to a different area, but that won’t help with the 120k debt. (Although the UK might be a good match for high paying jobs + large demand for coders)
lol, we disagree pretty frequently. And he’s not afraid to show it.
Do you buy a car that can only go on flat roads at a slow rate of acceleration? No hills or you’ll stall.
If your constantly pushing your motors and batteries and belts to their limits, things will break and probably quickly. The ideal board is overbuilt for any situation, at least 2-3 times what you really need. You might get caught out in a quick rain shower… Should your board imploded in this case? A small hill, should you push your entire system to 75% of it’s limit every time you go up a small hill? Have you never given your board to someone else to ride? Maybe they are bigger, and now will stress things more… This is beyond the potholes, crashing into curbs, ect. that you try to overbuild your board for. Obviously, you can’t make something that won’t break when a car runs over it, so it’s not 100% bullet proof. But you can deal with a lot of fringe cases that cause failures.
Can you make a board work for most situations for $1000 that will last a year or so? Yes, but it won’t be ready for any of the fringe cases I’ve mentioned so far.
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You can make a nice lasting board for a little above $1000, but not how you think –
https://forum./t/the-blue-one-12s-lifepo4-170kv-6374-caliber-2-30-43-powell-peralta-focbox/75
This needs to be a banner at the top, and it includes the 60V DRV8302 rating.
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I could easily build a dual 6374 with focboxes or unity, 12s 5p battery with a quality deck and surf rodz trucks for under $2000 if I was based in the USA.
Wouldn’t you consider that a quality build?
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So could we all but it won’t be exactly the same as his 4wd so it doesn’t count.
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