I was in same boat, this is the short version of what i did. If you want long range its going to cost.
£40 secondhand RKB All Terrain Mountain off ebay.
RS components have flange clamps 373-7626 that fit the trucks for adding whatever motor mount i designed.
RS components for loads of other bits and bobs, timing belts, pulleys, retaining compound, caps.
£130 2 x hobbyking vescs
£130 2 x hobbeyking sk3s
£65 2 x 6S1P 5000mah 30C (sale)
£20 gt2b
Gear ration 5.33, 12s, max speed 35mph. Acceleration (Hard to stay on) range 8 miles
I have a 3d printer, so printed both enclosures, 80 teeth pulleys, even the motor mounts. I later enhanced everything, heatsinks, active cooling, added caps, sensored the motors, battery meter, light bluetooth etc.
Next mod is to extend range to well past 30 miles, 84 samsung 30q batteries. £256, ouch.
Total £1016 plus shipping vescs and safety gear. Maybe cheaper if you cherry pick the bargains and wait for more.
Careful learning and a good bit of effort required. But you’ll not have any shit parts and will have a board that will last. And you’d get half your money back if you took care of it and chose to sell.
Thanks I’ll take a look through that though I think you might have missed out on the motors haha. (Edit: I see you added in some motors! Same ones as I have bookmarked in fact. You think I’d want lower than 170kv?)
The MTB option seems to be good for more use cases, but also is turning out a lot more expensive. Though I haven’t fully priced up the longboard setup yet either, so it’s going to come down to how much of a difference there actually is.
Yeah I forgot the motors lol you wouldnt get very far. I would say it’s the other way round think what you want to do with the board and if poss (maybe with a bit of saving) get the right board for what you want to do with it. GL though😀
Yeh I hear what you’re saying, and the beach is very local, but at the end of the day if I’m going to be on roads/parks/dirt for 95% of the time and only rarely near any sand, then the mountainboad setup would likely be massively overkill! So yeh I have to think about how much I’d actually want to go on the sand, and if it’s not very often then I can rethink my plans.
The attraction of the mountain board build though is that I can pretty much go anywhere. With the right wheels choice (even gummies are an option) it wouldn’t even be an issue to stick to roads with it.
Edit: I don’t think I’ve seen any sealed decent motors lower than 170kv, those maytecs were the best I’d seen (so far)
So I may have an alternative option in progress, though it involves some testing and research so for the moment I’m going to move on to figuring out the bits that neither of our lists covered haha.
So I’ve been playing around with calc.esk8.it. I do love me some maths
So at this point my motor will either be a 170kv or a 190kv. (These are what I’m using for my plans for a couple reasons, I may recalculate in future if I do find a different option).
For a VESC, the current (haha electricity puns) option is the Focbox Unity. It’s an expensive option, but it’s also dual-motor ready and comes decently protected which saves some headaches. It’s one of those areas where cutting corners might cause big problems, so not sure it’s worth doing (though I’m looking for used ones on the off-chance).
Batteries… probably li-ion, depending on whether I can find a decent lipo package. Currently looking at either a 10s2p or a 7s3p layout. Was going to be 8s2p/8s3p, but I found somewhere where I can get a deal on a pre-packaged set, but they go from 7s to 10s. I could maybe jump up to a 10s3p, but it’s a lot of extra weight for range I probably wont use.
On the plus side, this will give me a BMS, charging socket and charger, power switch and an LCD screen.
EDIT: Dammit. Prices were without VAT. Might have to find another option. AlienPowerSystems has some I may look at. Job for another day.
Is there any major issues I’m going to have going with a 7s3p over a 10s2p? I know it’ll have a lower top speed (not a problem), will there be other issues with a dual motor setup?
Nothing bad with 7s, but better go with 10s.
Also chose the 170kV version for your motor.
You can have a look for this lipos
Those are 6s, but they also have 4s etc so that you can build up your 10s config.
I run this lipos in a 1P only and so far very happy with them. Range will be around 10km so you might need one more set to get the range you want.
I may have to, as the rebuilds I had found with bms/charging/lcd/switch all wired in ended up over £300 for a 10s2p. Looking into the diy option with Lipos. Will need a good enclosure though to keep it safe and tidy.
If you go top mount battery that is all no problem.
You can just use a lunch box or print you something nice. Get a good balance charger and just take the lipos out of the box for charging.
If you speak about 10s2p i hope you speak about lipos as well. A 10s2p with LiIon wouldn’t give you the discharge current you will need.
Oh, no, I was talking lion. Samsung 30Q. It was a battery pack that’s been used by a lot of people, I didn’t realise it would be an issue. People were using 6s setups so I didn’t know there were issues. More reading to do I guess. Though that 10s2p pack is sold for electric longboards specifically.
You can get the 10s2p pack from that cheep site I wouldn’t recommend to buy anyway.
10s2p 30q would give you 40a max discharge or 20a per motor. That might be ok for a hub street board or something with a single drive but definitely not for a all terrain.
Sure it will work somehow but the voltage sag will be that big that you can’t climp any mountain as soon as you come below 85% of your battery.
If you want to go low p than use high C (40-60c) rated lipos. With LiIon 18650 cells don’t go below 4p.
Good night
i would say a 2 p is only good for flat roads on a comutet street board have a look at some of the videos out there with telemetry pulling 45a+ from the battery is normal on a hill (if less than a 10s this will increase the amps used even more). A Q30 3p is rated to 45a by Samsung but in real world testing we happily run it at 60a. That makes 3p 18650 your bare minimum in my opinion.
The main problem you have is brakes. Q30 are rated to 4a charge rating so a dule motor set up on a 2p and you will have 4a battry regen per motor to stop. You brakes will most likely cut out after a few seconds and free wheel on a AT board. You can set higher settings to batt recharge but your exseeding manufactures max ratings at your own risk.
The people who build AT boards and use 18650 seem to normally use 5p-8p and that will eat up your entire budget for just the battery pack alone.
Lipos have better discharge and charge ratings if you pick the right ones and at a cheaper price. Down side is the battery life cycle is shooter and the chemistry is a bit more flammable (all battery’s are dangerous and flammable some more so than otheres)
Ones you do the research I’m purity sure you go down the LiPo rout. it’s some thing you can easily upgrade later down the line ones you built up exsperiance and fined out what you think limits your build the most and what to change if it’s more voltage speed or more amps/WH for range or other parts.
My advise is take a serous look at lipos for your build and make a chose on your requirements of what your think is most important.
Ps when looking at other builds also consider the total price of there build and were thay spent there monny just because there using unity’s, 4p10s Q30 and maytech motors I bet most of them builds are over £1000 double your budget. Unity are the new thing and advatised 2nd hand for more than new because people want them now. so I can’t see you getting one cheeped any time soon. Look at the flipsky good budget esc people will be upgrading from them to unity’s so I’d exspect some good bargains to be had second hand there to consider.
Printing pulleys in petg could save some money short term. Also you could print angled risers and avoid using an ATB deck, light sand use you could definitely go without bindings which saves some more
There is zero doubt that you’re looking at a lipo battery
As darkie02 says, If you doing MTB you will need a lot of 18650s in parallel or it will be very underwhelming, they will run hotter and their lifespan will be shorter. for example im building 7p. Stick to lipo if you are on a budget.
Also you dont need a BMS with 18650s, you could just make 2 x 6s packs, and charge them with a hobby balance charger. As i plan to do, i like to keep an eye on my batteries.
A 3D printer makes everything easier, something like a CR10. You might want to consider buying one first and stretching out your build time and finances over more time. I printed motor mounts, pulleys, controller, enclosures, quick swappable lipo housings, might even print some new wheels, foot holders are on my list too.
The weird issue I found myself in yesterday was that LiPo batteries were far more expensive, and everywhere I found them in bundles would only ever do 8s1p / 10s1p / 12s1p etc for huge amounts. I realise today that I’m just an idiot. The reason they’re expensive is cos they have much higher C and mah ratings! So they’re not direct comparisons to the liIon setups. In my defence, I was very tired when I was researching lol.
On the bright side this means the AlienPowerSystems packs are much more reasonably priced than I thought. Unfortunately the option is to either go with a 10s4p setup with 10C per cell (which I think means 40C?) with LiIon batteries, or their LiPo packs seem to be 10s1p 10000mah, but only 35C (which you guys are saying isn’t enough). I guess APS mainly tailors for normal usage.
Trying to find a source for the Turnigy packs, but they seem out of stock / discontinued. Would a 6s and a 4s together to make a 10s1p 60C be enough? (in power, i mean, not speed). Or would I need to get 4 packs for 10s2p?
C-rating is connected to your capacity.
The higher the capacity the lower the c-rating can be for the same theoretical discharge…
But well…c rating is bullshit as there is no real norm how to measure that.
For LiIon have a look on the data sheet of the cell you want to use better. 30q - 15-20a discharge. Forget about c rating.
With lipos it’s similar. You can just hope that the higher c-rating gives you better packs, buuuut in this case better use what other people recommend you out of good experience.
I linked you some good and cheap lipo cells.
You can get them on hobbyking.
And yes you can use one 6s and one 4s. Just take care they have the same capacity and the same c-rating.
If you want better lipos than that, go with the graphen lipos from hobbyking as well.
though I think you might have missed out on the motors haha. (Edit: I see you added in some motors! Same ones as I have bookmarked in fact. You think I’d want lower than 170kv?)
If you do DIY this forum is great and has all the information you will need available to search through.