Kuickwheel Serpent C... SUCKS... have an idea to use trucks for a DIY project

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So my 170$ kuickwheel serpent C came in the mail today…

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FOR ME… my ideal e-board is one that is SMALL and still performs well… and the “Serpent C” is officially the smallest electric skateboard available… length wise… shorter than the spectra… shorter than those generic mini e-boards on aliexpress.com from china… wayyy smaller than penny boards… another thing is that… the spectra and other mini boards… still use the standard truck width… the end result is that its still pretty much a nightmare to get into a backpack… everyone knows that the spectra looks goofy AF with the tiny deck but with the standard width trucks… it defeats the purpose of a small board and stops it from fitting in most bags and places… I also personally have no problems balancing on small boards at high speeds…

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the “Kuickwheel Serpent C” board turned out to be a complete waste of money and doesnt go above 7mph… even though theres plenty of room in the battery compartment to fit better specs more power/battery … ESPECIALLY ANGRY since the company promised 11mph top speed… I waited like 6 months to get this thing from Kickstarter campaign… (but thats a story for another time)

but the thing is kuickwheel serpent C uses extremely narrow trucks with its hub motor (square insert style)… and as a DIYer… the purchase was almost worth it just to buy this thing for these super narrow trucks with the square insert for a hub motor… … which i have an idea to use for a DIY project…

IN MY OPINION… one of my favorite electric skateboards was the ACTON BLINK board… feel free to disagree with me on this (even though id probably win)… the main benefits were

  • relatively small and portable (for its time… now we’ve got all these “mini” e boards comming out that are way smaller)
  • goes as fast as id ever want to go… (15mph top speed… 12mph was TERRIFYING id only ever go around 10 and 12 if i was feeling impatient to get somewhere and i damn sure better bend those knees and stay focused on the road lol… )
  • great torque and zippy jolt on take off
  • small remote fit in pocket
  • decent distance range
  • light weight
  • decent weight limit
  • water resistant
  • able to easily unbolt everything from acton deck and put it on a much smaller deck (i had the battery compartment almost touching the outrunner motor… still wasnt small enough for me which is why I bought the kuickwheel)
  • Store bought board which means has a simple AC charging cable for the wall outlet instead of some overly complex Imax smart charger nonsense… ( correct me if im wrong, but Ive never seen any DIY boards that plug directly into the wall??)

cons:

  • not small enough for my needs even after changing the deck (hence why i bought the kuickwheel)
  • even if i changed the deck to a smaller one it still wasnt small enough for me because the belt driven motor bracket you could only cramp everything together so much…
  • even on the V2 the hub motor version you could cramp everything even further on a smaller deck but still not as tiny as the kuickwheel…
  • even if you did successfully cramp everything together on the ACTON BLINK V2 hub motor version… to be the length of the kuickwheel… THE TRUCKS are so damn WIDE… and couldnt be replaced with smaller ones due to the hub motor design of the

I’m thinking… would it be possible to buy a hub motor (square insert style) and match the same specs as the Acton blink board… hook it up to the acton blink board battery… and use the extremely narrow trucks with the hub motor square insert instead of the super wide trucks…

also… i have hooked a standard outrunner motor from hobbyking up to the acton blink board instead of the acton blink motor… AND IT RAN?! does that mean that the motors were the same specs… or is it possible that two different spec motors would be able to run on the same electronics setup… such as one being faster but draining battery quicker etc… or is that impossible… and only specifically spec-ed motors would work on a certain battery and ESC setup…

furthermore… would it even be possible to take the battery and electronics setup for the Acton blink belt version… and buy a hub motor with the right specs… and hook them together… is there some sort of 4th cable involved with hub motors… or something that makes them inherently different from outrunner belt drive style motors… do they require an extra cable or a different type of ESC or something??

what about using the hub motor that came with the kuickwheel serpent C and hooking it up to the Acton Blink Board battery compartment… is it possible that even though the Serpent C is WEAK… the motor could possibly have much higher capabilities when paired with higher spec-ed electronics…

unfortunately this is the lengths one has to go through when the type of board you are after… just simply isnt available for sale… and even when building a DIY board… you typically cant find such small narrow trucks for hub motors outside of ripping them off the store bought Serpent C board that actually got that one thing right but everything else about it sucks…

how can I find out the specs for a motor etc… and can a hub motor and an outrunner motor be interchanged if they have the same specs? can different spec motors be used with the same electronics setup and still work?? such as slower but longer battery… faster but shorter battery life…

is it possible for an incorrectly spec-ed motor to explode or something when the throttle is triggered… what would be the first to explode… motor or battery…

is it possible that a mismatched motor might seem like its working fine at slow speeds… but then when pushed to higher speeds explodes

could an overly powerful motor somehow cause the batteries to malfunction… or is it only a weak motor that is in danger of being shredded up by high voltage… WHAT IS THE WORSER of the situations of using parts with the wrong specs?

thanks! and hopefully someone actually responds to this thread

  • Joe
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It’s possible to use acton parts with that deck, but you’ll be limited with what you can do with such a small wheelbase. Any BLDC esc will work, but you might blow something if you use wrong/out of spec parts. BLDC motors have 3 phase wires. Some may have a 4th for sensors. Do you have the specs? I couldn’t find them for your board. Without knowing the specs I can’t say for sure how it’ll work with other parts.

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Turnigy Aerodrive SK3 - 5055-280KV Brushless Outrunner Motor 18175

  1. I once hooked up this motor to my ACTON BLINK BOARD v1 using the 3 cables… to see what would happen… IT WORKED I never actually pushed it to full speed… i only jolted the throttle a few times and it went… could it be that the motor could explode at full power as ive seen in eboard motor explosion porn youtube videos… or could it be the opposite where the motor is stronger (laymens terms) than the Acton motor and would simply drain the battery faster but still work… How exactly does it work… in what situations would the motor just not work all together (what spec is at play… voltage… kv… etc… and an explaination of what these even are)

  2. basically you’re saying that i can hook a hub motor up to the BELT DRIVE version of the ACTON BLINK BOARD??.. if done correctly with the correct specs as addressed above…

  3. Where would i see the 4th wire… only on hub motors? can i just ignore it and not use it? ive never seen one on an outrunner… what if there’s a port for it on the acton electronics setup (or any other store bought board tear down) but not on the motor i want to use… or vice versa… if the motor has the 4th cable… does it have to be used or can it just be tied down and ignored?

  4. is it true that diy boards cant have a simple wall charger without the imax thing… or at least very hard to build… (this is my rationale for using the electronics of a brand name board and simply finding a motor for it because hub motors would allow me to tighten the wheel base…

the irony of this whole situation is that acton blink actually makes a hub motor version and i would happily just jig saw a custom deck from plywood and mount everything to that… where the battery compartment is basically touching the inner part of both trucks without having to worry about a belt motor bracket and friction from the motors etc)

BUT their hub motor uses a flange style mount instead of a square insert… and therefore i would be stuck with their proprietary wide trucks instead of these uber narrow trucks i can get off of my kuickwheel serpent C… which use the square insert style hub motor mount…

i dont actually plan to use the deck off the kuickwheel… but something tells me the acton battery would easily fit between its wheelbase… ESPECIALLY if i moved the front truck up to almost hang off the deck and move the rear truck back farther encroaching into the kicktail… i could live without a kicktail… if it means ultra portability…

the major innovation here are the narrow trucks that require a square insert thingy mount that acton’s hub motor doesnt have… otherwise I would just buy the acton blink v2 hub version and move everything to a smaller deck… whether custom made or the one from the quickwheel…

I will try to find out the specs of the hub motor on the kuickwheel it would be awesome if I could just use that one with the Acton electronics… plus we already know it fits the narrow trucks perfectly while other ones might not have the exact same square hole and apparently have been known to rattle on the truck…

this is what i could find:

Acton battery: 10s1p battery voltage/wattage etc: 72wh @ 41.4V =1739.13mah 1739.13 / 1000 = 1.7 amps41.5V (according to someone on another thread that used a voltmeter at full charge) 350 W Continual Power, 800W Max Power

kuickwheel battery: 24V, 2.9Ah…
peak power: 300W

here is the kuickwheel info from the company for the kuickwheel Serpent C (disregard the Serpent W)…

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I backed the serpent C too :weary:… It was before I found out about this forum and made my own build. I’m gonna sell my serpent C the moment I get it.

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Are you sure you’ve looked through any DIY builds? Because almost everybody uses 18650 cells through a BMS which charges directly to the wall with a computer style charger. The imax B6’s are for Lipos without a charging bms or circuit.

Also, If you consider 12mph TERRIFYING, why not just buy a normal board? It’s lighter, smaller, more reliable, travel-friendly and doesn’t need to be charged. Anybody can take even a penny board up to 10-12mph. The main purpose of an electric board is to go faster. I normally ride mine at 25-28mph

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because i dont want to pedal… uphill…isnt that why anybody uses e-boards?? the builds i have done were with the imax B6… im not sure what you mean by 18650s with a BMS but please note i am uncomfortable soldering or working with individul 18650 cells in any way… so thats ruled out for me… i have had a bad experience with that even though i was being extremely delicate and doing everything right…

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18650 is a lithium ion cell. People normally use around 30 of them in a 10s3p configuration. BMS is a battery management system which manages the amount of juice coming out or coming into each cell. Just pointed out that your argument that DIY builds can’t plug into a wall to charge was completely false. In fact, DIY builds have better charging with 4A chargers and more reliable voltmeters and bms

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inknew that but… i used 2 zippy flightmax in my builds… those arent just 18650s wrapped up in blue plastic? whatever the case if inwere to use them with a BMS for easy wall charging… its gotta be something i can buy already put together and not have to solder myself… kind of off topic though… im just trying to understand the specs and buy a hub motor that works with the blink board battery with the above stated specs… and if the hub motor that came with the kuickwheel would go faster if paired with a different electronics setup because it goes pitifully slow when used with the electronics compartment it came with… im assuming not… and am just trying to understand in general if a motor is upwards compatible or more likely limited to the crappy kuickwheel specs battery… same question if a high end motor is downwards compatible to a weaker electronics setup… is it the motor that determines the draw or the battery and esc that determine whats being pushed to the motor… and therefore what would be the first to fail or explode or something… the motor or the battery???

thanks for clearing up what 10s1p notation means for the battery specs (i had no idea earlier lol)…

so to reiterate the acton specs are above what kind of hub motor would work with that??? and what could go wrong if i used A. a weaker (laymens terms) motor B. a stronger (laymens terms) motor

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If you use the 10s1p acton board battery, you can use almost any hub motor. Your battery and esc works as a system. Think of the battery as a bottle of water, and the esc being the bottle neck of it. The esc controls how much water can exit at a time, while the capacity of the bottle is the capacity of your battery. The more water you pull from it at a time, the less the bottle of water will last. But because of current technology, the bottle neck (esc) is fragile and can’t hold that much water pressure. Too much will cause it to burst (explode). So you have to limit how much water the bottle neck allows to pass through.

A. If the motor is weaker than the original acton hub, it’ll overheat B. If the motor is stronger, it won’t spin as fast and will have terrible efficiency. So get a good balance. With 10s1p, you can go for any hub with a Kv of 80-120

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Everything is explained here:

Yes, but make sure they are compatible.

That would be the sensor wire. If both esc and motor have the cable and port you can use it. You don’t have to.

Most of us use a bms in combination with a 2a/4a laptop style brick charger. It isn’t that hard to build.

Those specs don’t tell me anything other than that the hub motor is quite weak and underpowered in my opinion. We still don’t know the kv of that motor either.

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Well at some point, it just needs some magic, lol.

Powerful = bigger batteries and bigger motors = more weight and larger size.

I’m amazed someone even made a board that small. Small hub motors generate a lot more heat and overheat. This is why I spent 2 and a half years with hummie developing larger hub motors that don’t over heat.

Everyone wants light yet powerful, but the power starts at the battery. I would define powerful as 5000+ watts coming from the battery to the motors. To do that, you would need a 12s5p or larger (which is a lot of weight and an insane amount of space.

Then go to the motors. A motor that can actually do 1250-2500 watts will need thick copper, larger stator and large magnets. Your talking more like 2.5 lb per motor and large in size, so more space.

The reality is everyone seems to want magic these days. Light yet powerful will never exist. It would defy physics. You need more of what adds weight to get powerful.

BTW, not to take shots, but acton is not powerful. They use standard small, low watt hub motors that they didn’t build or do anything to. Last time I checked, they were 150 watt per motor. Simply by watts, they can’t be considered powerful when many of us are building systems 10x as powerful.

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Oh no no no i dont mind heavyness at all… and i dont mind the size of the wheels… i just wanted something compact in length and width… and i wanted to use trucks that are more narrow than the typical hub motor trucks (which i basically bought the kuickwheel just to get… because no one sells narrow hub motor trucks individually or mass produced… still trying to figure out how kuickwheel even got their hands on them… and for such a shitty company i find it hard to believe they commissioned it to be custom made… wouldnt you agree that the Spectra board looks kinda dumb with the wide trucks… and largely defeats the purpose of fitting it in a backpack… )

EPIC RESPONCE… however now all thats left to do is to apply these metaphors to real specs

such as what would motor “strength” mean

what would the “water” in the bottle mean… volts?? amp?? etc…

what is KV… (like seriously what is it and why is lower better??) why is that the only thing relevant here?? is this what is meant by “strength” and therefore the stronger motor having terrible “efficeincy” what is meant by that?

is Kv the same as volts?

what im sensing out of all this is that … the water in the bottle being drawn faster or slower has nothing to do with the “strength” of the motor which is where actual incompatibility problems occur

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KV is the ratio of unloaded max rpm / battery voltage at that time you measure that unloaded rpm. It really tells you about how much energy it will take to get a certain amount of torque.

Simply: lets say you have 500 watts of power. With a lower kv motor, you will get more torque and lower top speed than that of a higher kv motor at the same 500w. Higher the kv, less torque and higher top speed.

There’s a lot of bottle necks, the ESC is just one of them. To continue the water bottle example, lets say we have an esc that can control more water than the battery an give it. In that case, we could destroy the battery by pulling more water from it than it can take. Also, the BMS is a limiter. The BMS’s job is to balance cells during charging, but also, to limit the flow. If you have 50 amps coming from your battery to the bms, but hte bms can only do 30, even though the esc can do 50, there’s a bottle neck in the BMS.

It takes some understanding of how everything works, but read around. I wrote a battery thread that explains a lot of this in detail.

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Water is the electrical current. The water pressure is volts. The amount of water passing through is current. Capacity of the battery is in Ah (amp hours), say you had a 6Ah battery, means you can draw 6 amps from it for an hour before it runs out.

Think of the motor as a water wheel with the size corresponding to the kv. Higher water pressure (higher voltage) will spin it faster while more water (more current) will give it more force (torque). Small water wheel = high motor kv. Smaller the water wheel is, the more it spins from the same amount of water and pressure. So if you have a big water wheel, it’ll take more water and pressure to spin it but it will spin with a lot of force

Voltage in the battery is defined by the series number. Each 18650 cell outputs 3.6volts nominal. 10s1p means 10*3.6=36v.

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I need a video of just how crappy this thing is

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Don’t even open the box, leave the tape sealed. It will be worth more brand new unopened

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ibelieve me when i tell you… it goes as fast as a mobility scooter…

i felt like i was on one of those escalators at the airport…

i was like is this a joke… my first eboard was a heavy ass lead acid childrens toy and it went faster than that…

to make matters worse… it could not handle a slightly 5% inclined segment of the sidewalk… which only lasted about 3 feet… before it crapped out and rolled backwards down it…

i dont get why they didnt just throw a big battery in there and a decent hub motor but i guess theyre laughing all the way to the bank

the acton blink goes faster than i would ever need to go at about 75%… 100% and im literally terrified and getting speed wobbles… i have skated and long boarded all my life… im not saying there isnt more high powered stuff out there… but im just calling a spade a spade… however i absolutely think the range and torque should be optimized… but any higher top speed would be a waste of time in my opinion and also dangerous… its MORE than fast enough for my needs…

why do you say that??? ANY?

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Gotcha, will do

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Most hub motors are within the kv range which will work fine with 10s.

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does anybody have any recommendations for the specs of a well balanced 15mph, 10m + distance, decent torque system if i were to build one from scratch…

only caviat is it must include a hub motor with the square insert style mount… and electronics should be resonably sized… basically should fit in a 13-10 inch space between the trucks… and i dont mind making the compartment fat and closer to the ground if it means less length … this would also mean opting for a more cubic and less rectangular style battery…