"Freehand Willy" TB's 12S ESC / TB's Bolt on Motor Mount / ABEC Flywheels 83mm / sk3 6374 149kv /12S Lipo

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…

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Looks awesome! Hope to see some Vids too.

Hey! Cool Build lots of detail info!. & lots of photos too!

Just so you know this forum handles images really easily… In fact you can drag-drop an image from a local folder on your computer into the body of your post and it will automatically get uploaded to the forum server. Personally I prefer to see the images set into the post so i can read text & view images without any clicks.

Maybe do a quick edit and put a few of the key images into the body.

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Hey I have that board too! My advice, replace the bearings. The stock ones kind of suck, and you can get a set of Reds or Zealous for ~$10.

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Reds are my favorites.

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Had the first bit of damage. I was worried that the abs plastic holders might just drop the batteries on the ground… hence why i added the velcro which was attached to the board itself. Well the velcro broke… lllaammmmmeeee.

Got lucky and when it broke the abs plastic covers slid on the ground. This kept me from hitting batteries with the trucks and getting thrown forward. So that was great, but that bit of broken velcro is a problem considering the washer holding it in place has that lock toted bolt above it… fun times yalllllll

UPDATE:

Here you can see I made the all to common mistake of trying to get the motor as close to the board as possible. Got it fixed now and im on my way into the city for some bubbly with a bunch of hackers lol

Wait, that is a common thing right? Lol

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So i have been beatng the heck outta this board and that was the first thing to break break. The abs covers were only 2mm thick and in all honesty they didnt fail me… i failed them. The original plan was to use a lot of nuts and bolts to even the pressure out and since the compromise plan didnt do that, they cracked.

Also one of the bolts stripped and i blame the locktight. Didn’t have a way to easily remove it and there was an early morning rush after stripping a belt. Did i mention i stripped a belt? O yeah i stripped that bad boy well and good. Had to swap out for a new one early morning hahahahaha

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Almost forgot to include my charging setup! Its highly overpowered lol

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So as I mentioned above I am running a single 149kv 6374. its at 12s and the gearing gives me a 15mph top speed. the 12t motor pulley I have should not be in existence, im trying to replace it with a wider belt setup anyway so that will help. However, and the reason I am posting this update, is so yall are aware that a single motor can really climb hills if geared and powered to hell. I have so much torque, and not enough teeth on the motor pulley so I tear through belts faster than you can imagine. The motor keeps spinning and the belt slips until it strips. This is what riding up a hill with a single motor is like for me. And by hill I mean 10-15% incline easily. Its not a large incline… but trust me, it climbs it with vigor!!!

the single motor not being able to climb hills statement comes not necessarily from the motors torque but from the lack of surface on the belt. two motors has twice the torque AND twice the belt area. which really makes hill climbing easy.

singles can still climb hills, but the belts will slip sooner than duals. I am actually working on some kind of belt tensioning system at the moment to allow better hill climbing on single drive.

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saweet, thanks for the education!!!

I was just gonna get a fatter belt lol

fatter belt will also help.

but when you innovate and make a belt tensioner, ill buy it, ill try it, ill play with it, and ill break it lololol

Ugh so much belt slip. So mad about it right now lol

cant you chuck a 15t motor pulley on…? 12T seems way to small to run on a single 9mm belt

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O it was the smallest pulley I could find, so its more than too small. I wanted to trial and error with it a bit, really get to know the limits and what it feels like when you break them. Its taught me soooo much no less. I like the torque and feeling of acceleration than I do the top speed, wouldnt have guessed that out of myself. I will probably never run a 9mm belt again, just because i love to dump the acceleration. Sadly due to circumstances beyond my control my time tables got thrown off by a month or more. So what was supposed to be a couple of weeks doing stuff I shouldnt have been doing, turned into relying on doing stuff I shouldnt be doing lol

It is OK though. I know that eventually here @onloop will finish Christmas and be right back into doing enertion things wwwwaaaayyyyyy too much. Once that happens I plan to take advantage of the fact hes going to carry larger belt sizes and the parts to accompany them. At least thats the rumor that I am choosing to believe lol

EDIT: just found a post that states he probs wont be back until February which is pretty awesome for him since hes chillan with family. Def gonna let him enjoy and will probs get down on a whole new motor mount from a seller I have yet to try out. Obv will have to rock a 15t-36t setup lololololol

I had a 20T motor pulley from @torqueboards that I threw on the motor, kept the wheels at 36T. The larger wheel pulley I had from torqueboards isnt working properly as it keeps hitting the trucks. I dont know what the top speed is at cuz I dont have the balls to hit it. I know that I hit 20mph on the way to work today, the calculator says my top should be somewhere around 28.

No more belt stripping but I lost the feel of acceleration that I wanted lol

good stuff :+1:

order a 15T pulley from here…

http://www.beltingonline.com/15-tooth-htd5-pulley-15-5m-09f-7754

and you’ll have the best of both worlds :grinning:

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same here bruh. But I need me some more parts for an entire board or two, so they will just get stored for the next handful of weeks. Especially since Freehand Willy has this unquenchable thirst for belts right now… I shit-tinkered too much trying to get the shit-pulleys perfectly shit-straight and now im waiting for @onloop to get off his well deserved shit-rest and get back at me about some 12mm (or 15mm if im really really blessed) shit-belt action

[lahey shitisms][1]

edit: how do i embed that youtube video? lol

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What width and tooth count are you looking for exactly? are they HTD-5 or HTD-3?