Whaddup Everybody!!
I would like to introduce you to Mr Freehand Willy. A nice photo album here so you dont have to click every single link i list. buuuttt… Where I stand.
Where the brains are at. Since my nickname is Sharkface most things I name have some sort of aquatic theme to them, in this case free willy. I had to add in “hand” since there was 0 measurements actually done on this board. I relied 100% on measurements done by other people and thusly any time where measurements wouldve kept things straight… things are crooked.Everything was done freehand on freehand willy. Especially those times I had to drill… Moving on. Freehand Willy started life as some random board that I had found on Amazon. this crappy thing right here to be exact. And from that he grew into the board you see now. Obviously I had to get ride of the wheels, trucks, and I did keep the bearings for some stupid reason. Those will need replacing now that everything is actually built. They had no grease on them, and the grease I had on hand was meant for air soft guns… not longboards.
The first challenge that I faced was the fact that I was moving states and thusly was losing any contacts I had to get some parts machined, unless I wanted to pay them to do it rather than get it done myself. Thats when I found out about endless-sphere, which lead me here. Glad to see that we have this forum set up just for us, its really great to be here with yall. From this mass of info I was hooked and down the same path yall headed down. I got my bits and pieces together from all of our typical favorite places (diyelectricskateboards.com hobbyking etc) and started putthing them together. A complete list of parts is here:
Caliber 50s Abec 11 Flywheels 83mm Got this and used the board and bearings TB’s 12S ESC TB’s Bolt on Motor Mount TB;s 14S cutoff switch. Battery and ESC enclosures from Alien Drive Systems Ye old faithful GT2B Turnigy 6374 149kv A handful of lipo batteries
Of course I also got things like nuts, bolts, super glue and lock tite and etc. Back to talking about building it. Here is where I realized I forgot my ruler back in AZ Thats where the free hand started. I was sizing up the battery and ESC enclosure on the board and couldn’t figure out a lot of things. How much space am i losing in the battery enclosure due to the curve of the board? Are the ESC and Battery enclosure lined up with the trucks? The list went on so I prepared myself for the typical crap show that comes from free-handing things.
I started by getting some holes drilled through the board to put some bolts into. These bolts would hold the enclosures into place and hold everything to the board. Here is the holes from the top view of the board. holes for the battery enclosure Holes for the ESC enclosure
After getting those holes all drilled into place I was getting slapped in the face with more of the “O I just moved states…” problems. This time around it was that my outdoor workspace was right next to the road, and there are people that could easily grab my stuff if I have to run inside really quick. Here is a picture of me standing on the sidewalk looking at my workspace, you can see why I was worried about stuff getting stolen. enter link description here It was dark outside and the board was just within an arms length of the sidewalk. Suddenly I missed the porch of my apartment back home in Arizona.
Obviously I had to go inside to finish everything up, so here are a couple shots of me getting the bolts into place. The bolts where the battery enclosure goes I used plastic epoxy to keep the bolts in place. Since I had just put some plastic epoxy into place it was high time to wait on that to dry. Thusly I went to sleep in hopes that my last remaining parts would arrive the next day. And they did, right while I was in a meeting for work
Since I had to sit in that online meeting I had plenty of time to play around with the parts and get a feel for where everything was going to go. I forgot how much space all this stuff takes up… The ESC made it look like i wasnt going to have enough space… screw it, lets go back outside and start drilling holes again
I started by going ahead and getting a hole for my power switch made. That was super easy as the ABS plastic was super easy to work with. The real problem arose when I found that the power switch was taller than the ESC enclosure… Lets just free hand it and hope this aint a problem… Cuz it just looks so darn good!!!
With that out of the way I was messing around with my motor pulley to see what kind of way I would like to mount it. I wanted it as low profile as possible so it seemed like I should create a key hole on the motor shaft for the nut to screw down into some. My dremel made easy work of that Again you will notice that it took a few cuts for me to get it just right. Member that whole thing I mentioned about free handing it???
I already had the motor mounted on up to the motor mount, but I still needed to get the wheel pulley mounted. Since I was again worried about stuff getting snagged I went back inside and got to work on the wheel pulley Getting all 6 bolts to be properly aligned was such a pain but I finally managed to get it into place!! The motor on and in place as well. You will notice that as I was putting the motor on I went ahead and put the less damaged side of the motor mount facing down. I really like this motor mount, but boy o boy does it take damage quick. I think I remember seeing a thread with Torqueboards talking about his crumbling to pieces over time. I get the feeling this will happen to me eventually here… but for now its good times.
Time to get the soldering station ready Soldered it all up, grabbed some more work space and gave it a test Everything worked perfect so I programmed the card a bit and put the enclosure onto the board. Did i mention I drilled some holes for the ESC to breathe? Now I gotta get the batteries to mount properly here…
The problem was that those bolts I had put into place to hold the battery enclosure werent going to be long enough to actually get a nut on them to bolt everything into place. Me and my freehanding hadnt taken enough space into account for the curve of the board… it was 2AM so screw it, lets get a test ride in
Went to sleep and woke up early in the morning to get it built before work. I will have to get some more pictures of this… but in my sleep I came up with a pretty great way to mount everything up. first it required more bolts velcro going around those bolts… getting squished down by a washer and nut. and the velcro can now hold the batteries in place seperate of the enclosure. On that bolt you can also see another nut. this is where I need to get some more pictures. that nut acts as a stopper so that when i put the washer and wing nut on it, it holds the washer nice and flat against the enclosure. I thought it was really clever and it works great with the foam I had put on the battery enclosure. Again, will have to get more pictures.
one last angle showing off some of my swag stamps
and thats about it ladies and gentlemen. With a board now in hand I am able to ride that to and from the train that takes me to work. Its really great getting to work faster and having more fun doing it. Would love to create a little youtube channel talking about some of this stuff… hmmmmmmmmmm…