I’m not sure your table is statistically relevant. You have only used 5 riders cherry picked out of 1-13 rank over two years. That could be as many as 26 skaters in your supplied ranking ? I would be more correct in stating (If your ranking and details supplied are correct) that 9 out of 26 skaters used a average wheel size of 74.2mm. Thane duro of 79 and a contact patch of 64.3mm… Kind of leaves you thinking about the other 17 skaters? You might be correct. What you state might be a fact but from what you have shared you have only proven your narrow view on the topic.
Actually planned to do top 10, but too much work…so figured 5 was a good amount… so I picked the top 4 from IDF official rankings from 2016 and only added Mitch Thompson because he is Aussie and uses Australian made wheels, go Aussie!.. & he is having a cracking 2017 so deserves a mention, he might just win it this year, currently 2nd.
If you have time feel free to keep adding to this list to get a better snapshot. The more data the better.
That wouldn’t make for a very entertaining bait, duck, and comeback would it?
I’m talking to somebody about getting some 75a 85mm kegels made. I’m all about stickyness and comfort on an attractive looking wheel.
I rode on evolve’s wheels and i think they got it right on those for general purpose eskating. By general purpose i mean everything from casual cruising and commuting to stock street racing. Literally the only thing that sucks about Evolve’s boards is their battery packs. And some people don’t like the remote but i’m strictly speaking of the board. The smaller motors are perfect for the application and i totally get why @chaka went with similar ones.
I’ve ridden several ABECs and i prefer the softer ones but not the larger ones, i like my wheels in the 80-90mm range as any larger and i feel like too much leverage is being put on the motor. Any smaller and i start to loose wheel pulley options. I’m running 80mm kegels on my daily right now with a 16/32 pulley ratio and its goddamned perfect. I think on 85s with a softer durometer and a slight adjustment to the ratio and it would float like a caddilac and still sting like a beamer, to continue the car comparisons.
But then what do i like on my truck? https://www.instagram.com/p/PDRd3UBBv3/?taken-by=longhairedboy ASA AR1s and sumitomos.
Yeah, it is amazing how much power those little motors can lay down when they have enough cells to power them. I have been telling you all for years, power starts at the battery pack. At least Jason is humble enough to follow our lead and use a few extra cells. Still, 40 cells will never out perform a 60 cell pack. At 60 cells we have 50% more power than a competing board with only 40 cells. It is also the reason why we can climb a 15% grade at 30 mph.
Another aspect we have not discussed is weight distribution and why I think dual rear drives and hub motors are purely an aesthetic choice. We need our boards to be balanced if we want them to be predictable while going through a high speed turn. Hypothetically speaking, take a group of downhill racers and tell them they need to add 4 lbs of weight to their board. Do think they would strap all the weight to the tail end of the board?
7 Likes
What you described right therrrrr is the seizmic speedvent. Have you tried them? I had a board set up with them and it was a great ride before the wheels started to chunk. (thump,thump.thump.thump, thump)
I second that. pack placement and weight distribution is critical. The pack is the heaviest single component in the board so being able to position it to offset the weight of the motors is also critical. You should be able to balance the entire board over your forearm at the center point length wise.
i prefer rwd over ddd because if the feel of it, not aesthetics. On smaller motors the startup is probably a lot smoother which means the difference in handling is a non-issue during hard acceleration but with the larger motors it makes a noticeable difference. I ran dual diag SK3 6374s on one of my boards… actually two of my boards. and while it wasn’t an issue of rideability, it was definitely a different feel that i found slightly annoying. The flavor difference there is so minor though. I’m just picky, really.
This is a common misconception, it really depends on foot placement and riding style. In a car you cant shift 95% of the vehicle weight forward during acceleration. This is basically what happens when we accelerate on a board, we lean forward. The rear wheels actually have a greater tendency to break free when we do this.
@longhairedboy The only real way to explain this would be to show you two boards on the same turn and you would see the difference in predictability. Dual rear drives “ice out”. I think any undesirable handling you encountered was due to your bushings moving on those calibers, the bushing seat can be a little sloppy on them. If you want to know what I mean check out what Zak Maytum had to say about bushing slop. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAjB1Xhzc6o
2 Likes
Everything you guys are saying points back to my boards for some reason…
Wide contact patch: check (67mm)
Even distribution of weight while riding: check (4wd)
We have to wait 2 more weeks since our machining factory didn’t follow our drawings and made a crucial mistake on the cans. So they are redoing the first batch of cans again. 2 weeks and we should so the most power and comfortable to ride hub motor, with the widest contact patch of any hub motor for the most stable and comfortable ride at high speed.
Same here. How can you have 19-20mm of thane with out using a 50mm can, which means the stator size would be like, 40mm, even narrower than our stator.
2 Likes
Oh trust me, I’ll be there when we have an official event setup. With these motors, in 2wd, it will be similar in the performance of 4wd with the old motors, except quite a few other things have been optimized. So it will be even better than my 4wd was, and that 4wd… That thing could climb almost anything with speeds above 20 mph.
1 Like
This thread is quite humorous.
I think everyone is arguing different points, sometimes even within their own argument. There is obviously a distinct difference between what type of wheel will provide the smoothest/most comfortable ride vs what is optimized for speed. These are two completely different things, albeit having some small overlaps of course (you can only go so fast if your bouncing all over the place).
Then we have an argument that the wheels that the fastest downhill riders (going 60-70mph) use have “x” amount of urethane and are "x"mm in size, and are therefore ideal for a e-sk8 which goes half the speed (30-35mph tops). Not sure what point is trying to made there.
I’m the odd man out in that I don’t really care that much about having the smoothest ride, and have been fine with the ride quality on a variety of thin urethane hubs I’ve ridden. I’m just a street skater who got turned onto e-boards, and like that “feedback” and vibration where i can really feel the road, slide easily, etc, but that’s not what we’re arguing here. It seems like the vast majority of users want the smoothest ride, and to achieve that, it is pretty obvious that using a full urethane wheel, built specifically for skateboarding, is the best option. That doesn’t mean that the Raptor hubs are crap and ride horribly. I’m sure they’re fine, and 95% of people would be more than content with the ride quality.
14 Likes
You mean that bit where i plant my front foot over the front truck, lean forward slightly and use my back foot’s pad and toe to push both down and over while leaning into a right turn (heel and arch on the leaning backwards left turns) to get the back wheels to drift and then re-lock to the pavement as i hit the throttle again?
yeah they do that. ABECs slide out of control for me but the kegels are juuuust sticky enough to control…
I also have a front wheel drive bustin meastro on older hummies with the deck backwards. You want to get pulled out of a slide in a hard turn? i got you bro.
ITs all about flavor. I love all the flavor around here. fucking baskin robbins up in this bitch.
I like trying different bushing tricks. I’m checking that out now.
2 Likes
Agreed.
What exactly is the relationship between comparing skateboard wheels being pulled down windy mountain roads by gravity, and skateboard wheels being powered by motors in a straight line???
Answer for at least one ESK8 manufacturer: Trumpian Strategies & Antics
Classic!
everything you just said is true.
1 Like
No offense to everyone, but the whole NVG core and rubber separating was a result of poor design and not hub motor wheels in general. The problem is big companies like ABEC aren’t making hub motor wheels for hub motor manufacturers. As a result, we have make our own. There’s a learning curve to that though. The ABEC core has “hooks” that essentially, make it very difficult (nearly impossible under normal circumstances) to slip. I think as long as we use cores, with some sort of hooking design like ABEC, hub motor wheels will be much safer, and that’ll be a thing of the past.
They also attach the core to the thane. Not quite sure their method, but that’s another important factor. Good core design, and get the core and thane to bond, and I think what happened to NVG will never happen again.
1 Like
New Consumer Data released today reveals the following:
ESK8 Market Analysis
Consumers who want an ESK8 today – 10,000,000
Number of consumers that mainly want an ESK8 to look good on social media = 9,000,000
Number of consumers who mainly care about how an ESK8 rides & performs = 1,000,000
Of the 1M that care about ride quality – Number of people who want to race ESK8s for the win at Pikes Peak, or around a race track = 100 People
Of those 100 people – Builders that will build their own race ESK8 = 99
Actual consumer market for race EK8s = 1 person
Number of people building ESK8s for that person = 99
Not that anyone here doesn’t already know this.
9 Likes
How many of us want a Ford GT40 and drive a Focus. 
5 Likes
Shit. That’s me! Get away big brother. Quit watching me. Gotta put some tape on this laptop camera. Damn eskate builders always watching me. Where’s my tin foil hat?
5 Likes
I’ll share some stats on my own customer base. These aren’t precise, but based on what i’ve observed:
43% wanted the fastest board possible for reasons of insanity, and cited adrenaline dependency as the root cause of this condition. Some of them also openly admitted to the use of cocaine, alcohol, and other drugs that have been known to turn people into wild fucking animals.
15% wanted a more expensive board than the guy in the other cubicle who was riding theirs to work and had an average of 72 things they didn’t like about the other guy and his board combined. 27% of the time i agreed that the other guy was a jerk and asked whoTF he thought he was, that jerk.
22% simply wanted to destroy their friend’s evolve because they were sick of hearing about it and wanted something “that would leave it in the dust but not all the time because i have to ride to work too haha i’ll leave it to you.” so they left it to me and left their friends in the dust.
9% don’t want to bother with anything else, i’m simply the fastest and most expensive board that can be had by the typical joe for cash as found on google and “besides he’ll put a transformers logo on there too if I want because fuck yeah i love that guy” which is basically true, i’ll put just about anything on your deck if you want.
7% are investment brokers that have enough cash to troll me with bizarre combinations of features that i’m pretty sure were meant to conflict with each other and thwart me hilariously but somehow i always pull it off. TRY HARDER.
4% are teenagers with supportive parents encouraging them to get into a fun, rewarding, and often dangerous sport and they know i’ll take care of their kid’s board and won’t give them shit about it when something happens.
Lots of people are out there with money to spend. Lots of them are skeptical, cautious people who don’t want a crap board. You just have to appeal to them.
13 Likes
Out of those 43% how many of them have no idea what they’re asking for? Reminds me of that guy that wanted to throw a motor on his rip stick to do 50mph 
2 Likes
I’d say… about all of them. LOL
But to be fair, most people haven’t a clue what they’re getting from me. There’s no basis of comparison. I’m still the only one that does what i does, cuz.
1 Like