Hey guys,
I´ve been lurking around here for about a year or so now and I recently decided to join I bought a Turnigy K-Force 120A out of ignorance and had it lying around for almost a year. I Finally reached the point where my second build was “road ready” and all was fine and dandy for a week or two. Until my ESC (or so I think) died. I can´t confirm it yet but regardless - I´m here to share my thoughts on the ESC´s performance on the road.
The K-Force combined with an SK3 236KV 5065 was´nt too bad from a performance perspective. I never had cogging or unpleasant whining sounds from the motor. Accelerating from a stand still was possible with a 72kg rider, 6kg board, 3:1 gear ratio with 83mm Trampa Stickies and 8S Lipo. Bombing uphill was a blast. I´ve yet to find a hill that would stop me. Never got too hot either but then again - I never had the chance to push it to it´s max since something died on my setup and I´m not yet sure what.
Here´s the scary part.
Brakes You can choose between “soft” “hard” and “very hard” - soft was not enough for me so I had it on “hard” and it was scary! Coasting is not really possible with this ESC when drag brakes are on. So if you want to brake - you have to actively decrease you speed - meaning slowly let go of the throttle and wait for the drag brake to kick in and pray to god you don´t plant your face to the ground. This means that you as a rider need to be extra careful since just letting go of the throttle at higher speeds definately mean trouble.
Inconsistent throttle respond
How do I describe this best? I think “squishy” does it? I experienced some kind of lag sometimes when I was riding. I had to let go of the throttle a bit and squeeze again to get a respond. It´s annoying at least and dangerous at most - I almost fell off a few times when the torque kicked in and I was´nt ready for it.
Runaway board This is one of my biggest fears - a runaway board. I simulated a signal loss to see how my setup would react. I flipped my board around and turned it on and turned off my remote. What happened next scared me. The ESC went full throttle! Luckily I did´nt have to find this out the hard way. If you never experienced this before then flip your board and do a controlled test. This might keep you and others from finding out the hard way.
With all that said, I´d say stay away from this ESC. It´s not safe for you and everybody else around you. Even though I never had an accident with this setup and I was actually having fun with it, I´m not sure yet if the ESC, Motor or SBEC etc. died I´m glad that something died before anything serious happened. This gave me some time to think about my health, my family and everybody else in my surrounding while I´m on my board.
Moving on So now, I´m waiting for my Turnigy SK8 (V)ESC HW 4.12 to arrive. Should be arriving any day now. I downloaded the VESC TOOL already and had a peak. Hmmmm…I´m sure I´ll be dropping by with a question or two about the VESC and VESC Tool. @squishy654 I read it´s reputation sounds worse than it actually is. So I decided to grab one and I hope that the damn thing lasts. It also sounds like it´s reliable so…
see you around! thanks for sharing!
ps. I don´t want to post my second build yet but here´s my first build form 2016
blog https://www.christianmendez.at/2016/08/11/life-on-a-longboard/
youtube