Hub Motor & Urethane Riding Qualities

but look at the videos. In the video from the hill climb on instagram the board was at walking speed and would have stopped eventually with the stock wheels. If you mount that much larger wheels on it the gearing will get even worse and it wont be able to handle hills…

Nicely said and thanks for the wheels. Been riding Abec 11’s for years and they’re the best f*cking thing I’ve put on my longboard.

I agree that with more thane, you get better traction and a smoother ride, but I feel like I’m able to get up to speed faster with my 72mm Freerides vs. my 77mm with less work. Once up to speed, my 77mm go farther and have a smoother ride, but it seems to take more work to get there. Why so?

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If I were to put my best guess forward here, the minimum wheel size for a 63mm hub motor would be about 111mm. In order for a fair amount of urethane to work efficiently, you have to bond it to a core of sorts - let’s call that a “sleeve”. The sleeve is structural, like the cardboard tube at the center of a roll of paper towels or TP. You don’t want urethane that can be pried up and away from that structural sleeve or core. A “mechanical lock” is that ring with the holes in it that goes around the hub’s (or sleeve’s) OD. It allows urethane to flow through it when the wheel is poured to provide an extra measure of protection should the chemical bond fail under a load. All of my wheels have cores (even the shortboard/street) wheels. All my cores are made in a material that provides and excellent chemical bond. All of my cores have one type of mechanical lock or another. Call these my “core values” :open_mouth: )

So, assuming that the wall thickness of the sleeve is 2mm (and that’s on the thin side), we’re essentially adding 4mm to the hub diameter making a 63mm hub motor into a 67mm hub. With an 111mm wheel as a starting point, you’d yield 22mm of urethane depth. That’s a little less than a 90mm wheel on a 45mm core (22.5mm depth), less than the 97mm wheel (26.0mm depth), and way less than the 107mm wheel (31mm depth).

But here’s the thing. You’ve heard me talk about the wheel-to-hub RATIO or the urethane-to-hub RATIO . Even though the depth of urethane may be a relatively big number, how does it relate to the size of the hub? Maybe 22mm of urethane depth feels nice on a 45mm hub but it may feel horrible on 90mm hub. When so much of wheel/hub combo is hub, it rides rough. Period. If it looks like you’re riding on the rims, it’s because you’re riding on the rims. I added a Kegel and a 111mm wheel on 67mm hub motor/sleeve so you can see some numbers. My experience is that the higher the number is in the rightmost column, the smoother the ride. I’d be interested in hearing if anyone else’s experience is different than mine. And last but not least, when I made my hubs narrower and allowed some unsupported urethane to deform and adapt to the road, life got better still. The hub in the first Flywheels went edge to edge. This is only desirable when we do 127mph and the urethane wants to pull away from the hub (seriously). We’re not there yet.

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Yes, the BMW Street Carver is a “direct to museum” board that is never seen carving the streets for a good reason. It sucks.

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I suggest an objective test. You need to actually time yourself getting up to speed. When I’m on the freeway in a 1667 VW bus doing 65mph with the widows open (no A/C), I feel as if I’m doing 100mph. Vibration, wind, suspension woes, motor noise … it’s scary. When I’m in the back of a limo doing 100mph, I don’t even realize that we’re over the speed limit unless I look outside tinted windows and see us passing everyone. And I’m trying to focus on my supermodel and her twin sister. And when guys on street decks try to bomb a hill, they SOUND like they’re going fast and they do LOOK terrified, but speed-wise they’re crawling by comparison.

One test I’ve done in the past was to take a board with four (4) 77mm Centrax in Lime 80a Reflex and compared it to another board with six (6) 83mm Centrax in 80a Lime Reflex. One guy puts a foot atop one board and I put a foot on the other. While holding onto each other add the other foot, start to roll, and let go. We’d get up some speed, then foot brake and stop. We’d change boards, and do it again. Whoever was riding the 6-wheeler with the bigger wheels would always pull away from the guy on 4 smaller wheels. And you have to set up the 6-wheeler so that the front four wheels are perfectly parallel or you’ll build drag into the system. I heard a lot of people worried about the weight of big wheels. It is SO WORTH IT. Go on a diet if you want to lose a pound or two. High rebound urethane on the pavement is a GOOD thing, and you almost can’t have too much of THAT good thing.

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In the end my main push decks have 77mm and 83mm wheels, so that pretty much says it all there in terms of what I ended up with. With the 72’s I had to push constantly which in the end took more work. Perhaps it felt like more work for each push because I had an extra 5mm more before my foot hit the ground? My main test was always the bikers on my route. Off the starting line, I did better with the 72’s, but the 77’s allow me to keep up. If there’s any downhill slope, there’s no competition. The bigger wheels with more thane blow the smaller wheels with less any day.

One of my friends told me once, “It’s a lot more fun to go fast in a slow car than fast in a fast car.”

I have to give you a HUGE high five for pointing something out that many/most people miss. When trying to perform a “scientific” experiment, you often want to “change only ONE thing” to better understand what caused the change in the results (if any). So someone might think that “only changing the wheels” is changing only one thing. Nope. You nailed it. You are also changing the ride height. And where the difference would be negligible let’s say “aerodynamically”, if you have to push that board around like a flamingo for long periods of time, you’re going burn your quads faster on that tall board sooner.

One thing that drives me nuts about skaters, okay, human beings in general, is that they tend to like to do something the way that it’s been done for years as if “there must be a really good reason for us always doing it that way”. So many times we do the things we do purely because of the cost, the convenience, the availability, or because you’re “safe” from ridicule if you do what everybody else is doing. For example, I think that we can all agree that electric skateboards and most all race boards are directional. There is a front and a back. They are different. Why do we put the same truck on the back as we do on the front? Does it really “not matter”? I think the answer is somewhere between “it’s easier” and “it’s cheaper” and “we don’t know any better” and “everyone else is doing it”. Argh.

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Every little detail makes a difference.

Having said that, when exactly can we expect more 107s on the market? Ive been looking for one for a year and they’re never available or out of stocks.

Hell, I’ve even considered buying used 107s but no one seems to want to bite. I offered $250 for a USED set from this skater and he scoffed at me! As if I was I was a peasant!

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We recently got our production sample 107mm SuperFly’s and they came out just as expected. We’ve put in our initial order and that can take as long as 6 weeks to get them in our hot little hands.

Right now we’re planning on only making the 107mm SuperFly but if there is a demand for the 76mm monster wide version, we can always put in a special order. We just can’t afford to have a bunch of big, expensive wheels sitting on the shelf when we want to develop new and exciting products, such as the 83mm, 90mm, and 97mm SuperFly’s!

Trust me, when they are available I won’t be shy about letting everyone know.

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You must be new around here ( :wink: ) but I’ll have you know that I’ve got a bunch of eskaters in the NYC region clamoring for those sweet, sweet 107s. Not to mention the boys and gals in this forum. I can most certainly guarantee you that once it becomes available in the NYC area it’ll be scoop up faster than Trump’s drop in approval ratings.

On a side note, I’m a huge fan of your brand. I wont ride any other urethane wheels unless they’re Abecs11 approved. So big ups to you man. Whoever shaman you paid to imbue magics onto your wheels needs a pay raise.

When i was looking for a longboard to start -and not have a clue about electric boards- i read some downhill riders use different angled trucks for their board, like 40 front 15 back, to turn from front and not lose back that easily.

flywheels and superflys are awesome but is there any chance in the future they will come in colors other than bright green? Its really hard color to match to your average build unless your a green lover. I know its the signature color and all but its so harsh. :confounded: A lot of DIY builders like to take pride in the look of there boards and wheel color is a big part of that. Out of your past colors the transparent red bigzigs are really nice.

Sorry for going off topic. :flushed: and I agree more urethane is better than less.

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This is one reason i bought some of the new evolve wheels. It’s just really hard to match bright green to my board aesthetic. Also the new evolve wheels have a 55cm contact patch which is much appreciated.

Chris, is this new Superfly’s offset? That is a big problem for some dual builds, an offset wheel leaves more space for the drivetrain

Yes they are.

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I think you have that backwards. The Classic centerset version of the 107mm Flywheel is 76mm wide making it 38mm from the center of the hub to the inside edge of the wheel. The offset version is 26mm from the center of the hub to the inside edge of the wheel which is identical to the 83mm, 90mm, and 97mm Flywheels.

So ironically even though we called the 107mm wheel the “Electric Flywheel” is the one wheel that almost no one used for electric skateboards. It is too wide to the inside for most people to be able to use dual motors. Since most everyone wants/uses dual motors, we made it the same as the other Flywheels so that all existing wheel pulleys fit perfectly. Here’s a 97mm Flywheel and a 107mm SuperFly “inside” the original 107mm Flywheel.

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Long term we could make some in different colors, but for now I think that there will be a number of different color ABEC 11 Flywheels that are from our co-branding partners. Metro Board will have red, Carvon blue, Ollin black, Evolve charcoal …

For now I’d just dye them black using Rit …

That is why I make 5°, 10°, 1°5, 20°, 25°, 30°, 35°, 40°, 45°, 50°, 55°, 60° baseplates. We slalom geeks never use the same truck in the back as we use in the front. After that the street lugers and downhillers use splits, and the rest of the world has been slower to catch on.

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So Ollin will have black wheels ? :heart_eyes:

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