So, a year or so ago, I built my first esk8. It was a hackjob start to finish; oversized motors and battery, janky wiring, ugly DIY fiberglass enclosure, all on a cheap crappy Amazon longboard deck. The 6374 motors meant I had to go dual diagonal, and thus came all the issues with that. Despite all that, I greatly enjoyed the build (when I wasn’t tearing my hair out over it ) and I had a lot of fun riding it.
Then it was stolen. I never got it back.
Fast forward 8 months or so, and I just had to get back on the horse, which leads to this build log. I tried to address all the issues I had with the first build, and I think I did pretty well overall.
Feature list:
6" pneumatic wheels, because the roads around here are crap. Caliber 50 degree 184mm trucks with custom axle extensions to fit the big wheels Custom CNC’d and welded motor mounts Dual sealed sensored 6355 motors from @JLabs 10s4p INR18650-25R battery pack with 80A BMS Custom LED headlight, soon to be taillight as well A cheap drop-through bamboo/ply combo deck, nice and rigid, with good wheel clearance (Still had to remove some extra to get decent clearance) Initially I had dual DIYES Vesc-alikes v4.12, but I ended up blowing the DRV8302s on the maiden ride. I then managed to shoehorn in dual VESC6s, which are gorgeous by the way.
Some photos showing parts as they arrived:
Motors, lens for the headlight, bullet connectors and a big sheet of Kydex:
The LEDs. The long skinny ones are for the tail llight (and possible underglow, we shall see) and the hexagon ones are the high power white for the headlight:
Voltmeter, LED drivers, A RC relay (remote light switch using GT2B 3rd channel), a button (installed but currently unused, planned to be used to enable/disable underglow), and lots of screws and nuts:
Deck!
Thread inserts:
The wheels took some machining to get something that wasn’t monstrously too wide and unwieldy, as well as some custom adapters to allow the standard 8mm(5/16") truck axles fit the 1/2" bearings.
Two-piece hubs as they arrived, with spare batteries to for scale:
After machining:
Front hanger with wheels:
Here you can see the axle extensions I came up with:
Custom LED headlight: Single Cree XHP50 running at 12v and 700mA, with elliptical beam pattern lens. Pro tip: Blue Permatex threadlocker causes polycarbonate to crack:
Designed to mount under the front truck:I decided to mount the motors behind the trucks because I was a little tight on space underneath:
Many batteries, much danger:
Add one BMS:Much careful soldering later:
Quick mock-up to see what size cover I’d need:
Thermoformed Kydex enclosure, very nearly too tight to fit everything:
Grip tape:
Near-final assembly (I have since routed a channel for the LED wires and embedded them with hot glue):
It’s not DONE done, but it’s rideable. I still need to figure out some kind of handle, it’s heavy to lug around at around 22 pounds (10 kilos), as well as finishing the tail lights and possible underglow.
Any questions, comments, suggestions or recommendations are welcome!