About 2 months ago, I finally sourced all the parts I needed for what was basically a raptor 3. Best motors on the market, kicktail tesseract, 12s4p at the heart. You can check it out here:
You will also find that it exploded.So here’s the firey rebirth of that build, with burn marks on the hubs and trucks still.
(excuse the terrible gripping job)
After the great fire of Sep 20, I salvaged the motors and trucks and had @Hummie fix them and upgrade the bearings. The motors were filthy from the fire and the extinguisher powder.
images courtesy of @Hummie
But @Hummie is a master of motors and got those fixed no problem. Spoiler alert, they run even better than before thanks to the upgraded bearings.
After figuring out the motors I had to decide if I wanted to do a rebuild of the tesseract, or try something else. I decided on a vanguard build for a couple reasons:
- The complete lack of flex of the tesseract was a nightmare on the roads around my school. I thought it wouldn’t be that bad, but it was bad. I don’t think I would have swapped out the deck if I didn’t have to, but flex was definitely back on the menu.
- Everyone who said the vanguard was good length was right. Having been on my chinese vanguard clone deck for so long, the shortened wheelbase of the tesseract felt unnatural. I’m sure I could have gotten used to it, but the power from the motors also kept causing me to wheelie.
- @Eboosted makes some damn fine enclosures that are designed for the vanguard.
So for those reasons, I picked up a vanguard flex 3 and the 12s4p enclosure from @Eboosted.
The 12s enclosure on the 38" deck is nice and chunky, but I’m liking it.
So for the hot topic of batteries, I decided not to make my own this time. I don’t really have the time(or maybe patience) to do it right, which is partly why I fucked up in the first place. Hyperion had a couple good mentions at the time and so I contacted them about making a 12s battery. @hyperIon2 is a great dude, prompt replies, gave me a great deal on the batteries which came with a bms, charger, and antispark. Would definitely recommend their services. (Also picked up a pair of focboxes from them out of convenience)
But a few caveats. The charger they gave me was a 13s charger. I assume it’s because 13s chargers are cheap, but that’s a pretty dangerous combo of things to send to someone, especially when you offer a warranty/support. Luckily I have a 12s charger, just need to replace the connector. Also the flipsky antispark was of typical chinese quality. Literally fell apart almost immediately.
The other connections broke shortly after that picture, including the ones on the push button switch. Soldered all that shit correctly this time.
But the important part is I finally have all the parts I needed to build.
Cut some holes for the power switch and charge port
And then the first problem. The placement of the charging port and power switch leave little room for the already relatively small D140 charge only bms. The enclosure was not going to fit everything comfortably in this configuration, so I ordered an even smaller bms to replace the D140.
It was a spooky process moving those balance leads around, but look how much space I saved! Everything fits!
Onto modifying the deck. Sanded off the clear grip and figured how to get the power cables routed over the top. I didn’t want to literally route the deck and make it even more flexy, so I got some copper braid to lay on top. Layered some Kapton tape for heat insulation and viola
Doubled up the cables just for comfort, the 1/4" braid should be 12 gauge equivalent, but you can never have too much headroom. Especially for runs this long.
Fixed up the motors and drilled the holes for the cabling.
Didn’t do anything fancy with the cable riser, just routed the cables through them.
At this point the board is pretty much done, so I took out my benchwheel mini mod remote to try and get that working again. The benchwheel pcb was turning off after 5 mins, so I scrapped that and replaced it with adafruit components. Will upload pics after I finish that. It works, but cant see any of the leds
Board is currently up and running, just dialing in settings over the next few days. In the meantime, here’s two pictures documenting some oops moments.
Wire popped off the xt60 connector as I was plugging in the focboxes. Always check your connections kids 
. Good thing it didn’t happen while riding.
Took it out for a test run, forgot the plate that keeps the sleeve on the hub. 
One for in and one for out of the pack fully enclosed
Does this bms have a balance function? If not and I haven’t seen many that look like that , that do.
I actually was just emailing