Short version: great promise, and I hope SkullBoards replaces our hubs so I can revise this review - because there are moments of awesome when riding the Skull Boards Evo, AKA the SKEEVO… that are followed by hours of fatigue and pain, from hub vibration.
This is so much vibration, that it’s going from the hubs, through new Ollin Popocas, into the hardwood floor, up a Gorilla Pod and distorting the camera on an iPhone X.
What’s inside:
- SkullBoardVIP.com hubs with airless rubber tires, ESC and controller
- 10S3P 30Q
- Landyachtz Evo Falcon
- eBoosted Evo Falcon enclosure by our bud Alan
- Avenue RKP truck (front)
- Zealous Ceramic Bearings
- Blood Orange 86a bushings (front, double barrel)
- Orangatang Nipples (rear, purple)
- Riptide Tunnel riser (rear, red)
The designers of these hubs have a terrific vision that, in my experience and @donta42’s post confirms, fails due only to low manufacturing tolerances. Hopeful this is a bad batch.
Simply put, we cannot find any way to balance these wheels and both hubs wobble, at all speeds, making the board unsafe. The vibrations are coming from both ends of the board (all four wheels), so it presents an oscillation effect.
Here’s the good: when the oscillation stops, the SkullBoard drivetrain runs beautifully. The hubs get very hot going full-tilt (about 20MPH), and exactly as predicted, the rear rubber gets very sticky giving this Evo a kart-like feel. It’s awesome and I look forward to the “precision” version of this in the future:
I believe I discovered the optimal way to balance these wheels without altering the hub; I slid bits in the little side holes, that go across the tire - which helped balance the tire, but nothing I can do will fix the hub.You eagle-eyed readers may spot some missing screws; at the start, all M4 screws were in nice and snug with blue Loc-Tite.
/that’s/ how much the rear hubs vibrate, creating what I can only describe as, the most uncomfortable ESK8 I have ever built or owned.
The feeling is best described as riding one of these:
(or riding both of these, as is often the case for my fellow Raptor owners )
The look and geometry is actually very good; I can turn easily within the street and the board feels wonderfully stable at speed when it’s not vibrating.
Yes, I even tried to shape the tires but it doesn’t help because the cans themselves are not perfectly round and aligned.
I’m going to ask SkullBoard to replace the motors, see if they want to give this build another shot and we will update it here and on Reddit.
Two of my friends bought SkullBoards and both have the same vibration issue. It’s not unlike the Backfire2 vibration issue; it’s just way more exaggerated.
For the record, it didn’t feel any faster on 12S, so we’ve set aside the TorqueBoards 10S3P battery as it’s safe to say the SkullBoards kit performed the best with that battery.
The good:
When our Skull Boards Evo, or “Skeevo”, rides smoothly for a few seconds at a time - it feels /amazing/. Hard to argue against car rubber for asphalt.
The bad:
imagine driving a car with four tires that are out of balance.
to give you an idea of how worse that is on a rigid downhill legend like the Evo, at 18 MPH, I backed off because I thought the /Avenue/ in the front couldn’t handle it (I have sorbothane between the battery and electronics and the deck, they were fine).
Screws with Loc-Tite jumped ship tho.
The Skeevo is a failure in that, as it stands, it has the worst boardfeel of any esk8 I have ever owned or built.
Ask my brother @donta42 how his stock SkullBoard rides, and his is understandably worse (no avenue truck, shock pads, tire shaping, etc.).
This could be a bad supplier shipment for SkullBoards, and to be fair, even my new Boosted Mini X arrived with a bent axle. It happens.
I’ll update this review as I have time, but for now, we’re pulling the @SKULLBOARD drivetrain out of our Evo test mule.
At certain speeds, for a little while, the vibration from both trucks will cancel each other out and seriously - incredible boardfeel, love it. You can tell these are going to be awesome in the future.