Electric Skateboards

Urbansufer,

I don't know if there are any other electric surfers on the site and at age 55 I break when I fall, but I would still like to see how it's done, so welcome to VisforVoltage. We will be looking forward to some pics and technobable about your project.

To see a home brew e-trike checkout My Bicycle Pages.

Surfs up,
Chas S.
My Bicycle Pages

Sounds fun to make one, as long as I don't have to ride it ... 0-18mph in 4 seconds 400w motor ...
... sends chills down my spine even thinking about it!

I hope you have some good protection gear and insurance coverage ... ;)

Welcome to the V-is-for-Voltage Forums Urbansurfer!
Keep us posted on your project - we're interested!!

Regards,
VT-01
Moderator

Moderators are volunteer members of our community who help keep V is for Voltage Forums running smoothly, and answer support questions.

`urbansurfer ,
Welcome again to our V is for Voltage Community, glad to see a new Skate Boarder, we should be able to learn a lot from you.
Seems we also need to start a Electric Skateboard Collaborative Hand Book in our EV Collaborative Hand Books

Stleride
Moderator Team Captain

Moderators are community volunteers who help keep V is for Voltage Forums running smoothly, and provide forum support.

Surfer,

I'm in Dallas, am a welder. Draw what you want as accurately as you can on paper. Bring it to any local welding shop, most shops would'nt have much trouble welding up a bracket, they would just use scrap they had laying around. If you drill the holes they probably would'nt charge much. Cut patterns out of cardboard to make sure everything dimensions and this will also help the welder "see" what you intend to build. Also, bring any and all parts that are to be mounted to the bracket. I get a lot of people dropping buy wanting this or that, it wastes a lot of my time, a picture is worth a million words, don't describe it to the welder, show the welder what you want.

Good luck

chuck

I'm interested to see where you're going to put that 1000 Watt motor, that's a huge motor for a skateboard!

You definately won't have any problems going up hills. Let's see, approx. 3000 rpm for the motor / 4 = 750 rpm
The wheels are what, probably about 2" in diameter so that 2 x 3.14 = 6.28" or 0.52 feet per revolution x 750 rpm = 390 fpm x 60 min = 23400 fph / 5280 feet = 4.43 mph

I think you will need about a 1:1 ratio to get that speed.
That would be 3000 rpm x .52 feet = 1560 fpm x 60 min. = 93600 fph / 5280 ft = 17.73 mph

This, of course, assumes that the motor is 3000 rpm and that the wheels are 2" diameter ... you can plug in your own numbers.

... or I may be completely off my rocker ... it's been a long day ;) :)
If I am, I would imagine some will correct me.

Best of luck in your build!

Dave

MB-1-E
Electric - Bridgestone MB-1 Mountain Bike
Icon Photo of lighning striking Eiffel Tower Jun 3, 1902, taken by MG Loppe'

` :)
Thanks, we're glad your glad your here, Welcome.

Best Regards,
George J. Jones, Jr.
Domain Registrant
georgejjonesjr [at] visforvoltage.org

I'm so glad to see that people are actually reading the posts.

I guarantee there are a few people around here that read pretty much everything. We call them moderators. :-)

I'll be interested to hear about your experiences riding it. I tried an electric skateboard for a while and I was an interesting device. Mine had typical plastic wheels which made it too uncomfortable for my 3 mile commute. There was also an interesting quirk. The hand-held throttle could both accelerate and decelerate the board. This was nice because stopping a 15lb skateboard is a non-trivial task. If the controller received no signal from the throttle it would automatically go into deceleration mode. This was also good so in case you dropped the controller or fell off the board it would stop on its own. The downside was (did I mention that riding it was a really bone-shaking experience?) that the throttle connection would vibrate loose and the board would automatically decelerate when I least expected it. I had vivid dreams about being tossed off the board into traffic.

--
Full time ebiker
BionX and Wilderness Energy

hehe. only breaking one wheel, that would provide some amusing breaking as you would turn alot. my dads car lost one break out of four and was very difficult to keep straight even with a stearing wheel, whats it going to be like on a board?
good luck and take picture, its funny to watch people falling over

It works a little different on skateboards. Quite a number only have one drive wheel, too. I'd still wan't more than one brake, though.

Also: This thread is almost a year old, y'know.

well i still think its going to be a bit hairy at times.
im presently in the process of planning my home made electric skateboard.
to combat the problmes of drive and brake only being on one wheel, instead of adding another drive and brake i shall take away the wheels. i know that sounds a little mad but hay. going to build it on one of those "dirtsurfer" boards that only have two wheels, but are more like bicycle wheels. this should make it faster too having big wheels. they have a break disk already on them, but i will need to take it of to add a gear for the drive, but should be able to break it by powereing the motor backwords a little. managed to pilfer a powerfull 24V motor from the company i work for. not mentioning any names. and with 5 years electrinic engineering education should be able to build my own controls for it. this should be fun, just hope i get some money together soon enough to get to building it.

that's interesting, because the last two cars i owned both had failures in one of the brakes and i just blocked the brakeline and they worked just fine for a long time with only three brakes. in fact, i couldn't tell the difference. but then these were rear brakes so it *shouldn't* make any difference.

mike

Hi,

New here.

I have had an electric skateboard, G1 , that I bought of Ebay for $42.00

I like it a lot, but it's stopped working well,
so probably the reason it was so cheap.

It has no torque now, so not sure if the battery or motor is the cause.

While it worked it was great, I had a lot of fun on it.

I guess I will need to take it apart now, and figure out what is wrong.

I have had an Urbanmover Usurfer UM70 for nearly three years... unfortunately - it died nearly 6 months back - and I have not been able to make it work since. I am actually going to send it in to an electric motor shop in town to get looked at - hopefully it wont cost more than a few hundred to make - I miss riding on it...

Does anyone have any experience having electric motors / devices looked at? How much should it cost (not including actual repair cost - just labor)?

Hi,
I took a G1 electric skateboard, And cut it in half, through away the board added 10", 3 12v 12ah and a 36v speed controller,but kept the 200w motor, and I am getting 16 to 19 mph, so I don't think you will have any problems getting the speed you are looking for.. I know it is not a from scratch build, but very inexpensive $40 for a non running G1 on Ebay, $70 for the batteries, $20 for the speed controller, $20 for the charger, The brakes and rear wheel and throttle were spare parts I had from a bunch of electric scooter I have picked up on Craigslist, for $5 or $10 So for under $200 I have a cool board that will go about 15 miles on a charge...

Hello everyone,

I have just ordered an electric skateboard from a company in the United Kingdom (Rokit Science). It uses a 600 watt, 36 volt motor with Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries. 0 to 25 miles an hour in 4 seconds and about a 20 mile range. Should smoke the Exkate X-24 Powerboard that I currently have. I will keep all of you informed about performance numbers when I receive it. Do you know where I can purchase a battery capacity meter for Lithium batteries. I installed one from ETA Engineering in Arizona for my lead acid batteries on my Exkate and it works great. Does anyone know if this could be used for Lithium batteries also.

Cool,
Do you have a link for the website? I would like to check it out...
I am currently bidding on a Exkate X-24, with bad batteries, If I get it I wold like to covert to 36v maybe LiFePO4 if I can afford it, using lead acid now in my modified G1, and it will go about 12 to 15 mile on a charge, Would like to get a little more distance and speed...
Thank-you

P.S. I would like to see more electric skateboard posts...

Hi again,

I found the website, it is http://www.rokitscience.co.uk/ .
I guess the one your getting is Boom Borda 2 Chainsaw, Very cool board!!!!
I have a G1 electric skateboard that I modified to 36v, I took off the board and added 10" put in 3 12v 12ah led acid batteries, a 36v 500w speed controller, but left in the 24v 200w motor, It works fine,goes 16 to 19 mph, My question is if I change the motor to a 600w 36v will I gain any speed? Or will I just gain torque, without changing gear ratio...

Hello,

I'm getting the Advanced Pro board. I like the street board compared to the offroad style. I have looked into modifying my Exkate (36 volt with lithium batteries) but haven't been able to find any information on motors and controllers that can be adapted to this board. Let me know if you find out anything, I would love to make those modifications.

Ok,
I don't have the board yet, But most 24v controllers that I have come across will handle 36v as will the motors, I ran a 24v Razor scooter controller in my G1 board for a while with 36v going through it with no problem, I changed it to a 36v 500w controller because I wanted to change the motor to a 36v 600w and felt the bigger controller would be better, but still haven't made the motor change yet, And still have the 24v 200w motor running on 36v... My biggest concern would be the rc unit, I would take the controller apart and test the voltage going to the rc unit and make sure it is limited output, So no matter what the input voltage to the controller, the output to the rc unit would remain the same, I haven't had to deal with this yet because all my projects have had manual throttle and brakes, Which work fine, but you always have that wire, wireless would be much cooler...

P.S. I don't recommend running the wrong voltage through anything, Have had lots of smoke in the kitchen where I work on my projects, And my wife always smells the smoke, and says (HOW MUCH IS THAT GOING TO COST ME) But the numbers on controllers are in the middle of there working range

When does a motorized skateboard become a small 4-wheel "car"?
When one adds a seat?

With e-power, does it then qualify for a Federal tax credit?

The problem I'm having with the Exkate is that is has a 750 watt motor. I'm being told that the lithium batteries that would be required to run that high of a wattage would be too large to fit in a battery pack that would work on the Exkate. Also, I'm being told that the battery management system would cut out at full throttle. I am far from being an expert on this subject, maybe someone on this forum can clarify.

I am as far from an expert as you can get, But I wish someone would answer that, everything I have read says that I can't get 18mph out of a 200w motor but I run around 18 with know problem, So if anyone knows please let us know, so I can keep the smoke out of the kitchen....
Would like to run Lithium, but I have got all the performance that I need from Lead Acid and they are cheap, I just like the range that Lithium provides, Lead Acid can't compete with that...
Added a few pics of the board, and my 9 month old Granddaughter Ava, who love's to ride with me on the board..

Hey,
I didn't win the Exkate auction, Was in Georgia at my dad's (no internet, sucks)But just bought a Rincon R-600, Not running, but looks to be in good shape, so when I get it will have to see, My plan is to go lithium and 36v, and try to get close to the 25mph range, If my wife will free up a little money, If anyone has played with the Rincon R-600 please give me some pointers, Thank-You

Never heard of the Rincon board, what voltage, motor wattage and battery type does it currently use? Still waiting for my Rokit Science board, thankfully I have my Exkate to play on till arrival.

It is 24v lead acid battery, haven't got it yet, looks like a busted circuit board in the picture, Will have to wait and see, it's off Ebay, paid $148.00 total with shipping, So what the hell, you never know, It has a 600w motor, if I read the specs right, So for now I will ride the old one, till I get the new one..

P.S. It looks like lithium batteries are coming down in price on Ebay...

Hey,
Just a quick update, I will get the board on 5-28, And looking at the pics they had posted on Ebay, It may be 36v looks like 3 lead acids in battery box, when I zoom in with picture viewer, That would be sweet, then all I have to do is fix what ever is wrong with it, and change to Lithium, when I changed my other board from 24v to 36v not only did it go faster, it went a lot further....

Anyone reading these posts has got to check out this site, They have some very light boards, CHECK IT OUT http://www.metro-board.com/