NimbleStiff - an experiment

Deck - Mov-E from @Lukas

I remember following the development of this deck waaaayyy back in the builders days. To this day, it’s one of the only integrated decks that I just love the look of. When this popped up as a scratch and dent sale well after the rest of them had been sold, I had to have it :green_heart:

I did some obligatory customisation to the deck, because I just can’t help myself. On the bottom i used some green resin as a base coat, used some uni-directional carbon fibre rail tape for style points, and a layer of 200gsm fibreglass cloth over the top. I left the wheel wells clean because the composition of this deck is one of the reasons I love it so.

For the top side, I wanted to try and do the quickest and dirtiest skin and frit that I could. It worked surprisingly well.

I did a base coat of white, let it tack, stuck the cloth down on that, cut out the lid with surgical scalpel courtesy of @CLUNT, then one coat of epoxy, fine frit and done.






This was by far the easiest skin I’ve done :grin:

Battery - reclaimed and rebuilt 10s4p 30q

Once upon a time, like many of us, I had a Raptor 2. It was a fun board, although I hated the deck and swapped it out to a Bustin EQ 36 and that was a huge improvement. I didn’t have all too many issues with it, I must have had the good thane. But when I did the deck swap, I dropped a metr pro in there as well.

The logs alerted me to the fact that something was up with the battery. I can’t remember exactly what it was, but I gutted the raptor, tore down the battery and rebuilt it, and then decided to bin the rest of the raptor and just keep the battery and the focboxes.

I’ve put an LLT smart bms on this pack now so I can monitor it’s performance. I’m not hopeful, but if it’s shit, it’ll be a great excuse to swap it out for a brand new P26A pack.

ESCs - reclaimed raptor focboxes

See above. Only thing worth mentioning here is that I needed to extend the phase wires. I stayed true to the OG and used 14awg, but used MT60 rather than bullets.

Trucks and wheels - Surfrodz 149mm TKPs on @IDEA dropdown brackets with Ahmyo Akasha 76mm

Don’t see a hell of a lot of builds on TKP. I wanted to try it. I also have a penchant for small wheels. I bought a complete longboard a while back with the Akashas on it and fell in love with them, they’re a really nice wheel.

I went with the 149mm trucks because, call me crazy, but I don’t fucking like big huge boat like hangers that every bastard likes to put on their esk8s these days. I wanted to keep it as narrow as possible.

As soon as I started assembling the brackets and trucks for the first time, I decided I wanted to keep the front really narrow and give the board somewhat of an LDP look.

This thing just wants to turn. You can almost turn it with the weight of your stare. This will be great, but I really wanna give it more of a surfy feel rather than like a snowboard feel, so I’ll be tinkering with the rear truck setup to try and really kill the rear steer in it.

Mounts - XTLA

These were another scratch and dent buy. Got them for a great price and they seem really nice. I think I wanna add a cross bar to them as they are quite thin.

I did need to attack them with the router to allow for the circlip on the motors. Also there was a bit of slop in the press fit clamp, so I just Brian’d that shit and epoxied them to the hangers.

Motors - Saite 190kv 6355 sensorless

I’ve always liked the look of the Saite motors, so I snagged a set for this build. Probably should have battle hardened them, but I have a phobia of opening motors… i’m not very good at it :sweat_smile:

My only regret with these is that they are a 10mm shaft with no keyway. I ordered some 15t steel pulleys from Dickyho, but they are yet to arrive. I think i’ll just use 638 and hope for the best :grin:

The wheel pulleys were a lucky purchase from @moon :pray:

Other bits

While fishing through the parts box I found a MakerX antispark that i’d forgotten about which should be perfect for this build. I was struggling to think of a way to mount a loopkey nicely, so the switch was a welcome relief.

I designed a shitty mount for the switch with my mad tinkerdick skills and I’m pretty happy with the result. Incorporated a trusty xt30 charge port into it too :grin:





While I was tinkerdicking, i made a little cover/tunnel for the phase wires too. I didn’t want these prints to be ‘structural’ so to speak, so i used longer bolts for the trucks and these housings go over the baseplate nits and then have secondary nuts to hold them on.

I would have loved to have fit a Robogotchi into this build, but there was just zero space in there, so I managed to fit in a metr pro instead.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk

Still waiting on belts and pulleys, but i’m just so goddamned excited about this build, I needed to get it off my chest :sweat_smile:

13 Likes

Damn dude, helluva build and write up, taking notes here.
I didn’t know you did the green and carbon on the bottom, thought it was a factory finish :ok_hand:.
I’m excite to see this on the road

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This looks amazing, Al. The printed switch and charge holders look super clean :flushed::heart_eyes:. I have no tinker cad skills or printer and this stuff makes me question whether I need to change that. One day when I build out my Haya… one day…

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Beautiful build. Love all the custom work you did.

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Cheers dudes! Really happy with how it’s progressed, can’t wait to tinker with it/tune it to get it to ride like i imagine

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Seriously dig the skin. My favourite of all time I think. I have a special place in my heart for green and gold.

Beautifully built board Al!

I made it the photo cover of my “Beautiful Boards” album.

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She’s done.

Some fuckery involved with getting it all happening, but it’s done.

Will give loctite minimum 24hrs to cure, and then figure out a way to get a ride on this thing somewhere dry cos its gonna rain non stop here for the next week :expressionless:

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OMG. This thing is everything I dreamed it would be. And a little more.

The manoeuvrability is off the charts, thing can turn on a dime, even at super slow speeds, and is surprisingly stable at top speed. Not even a sniff of a wobble, but extremely responsive so need to keep those ankles in check.

I was pleasantly surprised at the torque and braking power, i guess the small wheels help greatly there.

Power settings are

Motor max: 50
Motor min: -50
Battery max: 30
Regen: -15

At this point I’m gonna keep riding it as is before tinkering with the rear truck dynamics.

Oh, and I’m officially naming her NimbleStiff

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She is an absolute beauty :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

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Brilliant as ever!

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It would appear that the raptor pack is indeed fukkered :expressionless:

P26A is looking good.

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@Lukas i did some science for you dude…

This deck did not hold up to the forces applied by the extension brackets :sleepy:

I got somewhere between 200-300km out of it, and it failed suddenly over an expansion gap in the footpath.

It failed right on the layer between the truck cutout and the bottom of the deck.

I’m really sorry that this has happened… i had so much fun on this board, i’d go as far to say that this was my favourite build.

I knew deep down that this was going to happen, but I guess I was just living in denial, hoping for the best.

Good news is, after it snapped, i still managed to ride it home, like 6km uphill :sweat_smile:

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:sob: :sob: :sob:
I’m glad that you are ok! I know you knew and I told you that also but still I’m feeling responsible in some way… Can’t promise you anything because I’m swamped with my day job but when I finally will do some esk8 related stuff I’ll remember of you :wink:

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I’m gonna try fix it with fibreglass :grimacing::grimacing::grimacing:

Edit: changed my mind, its proper fucked. Will transplant everything minus the extension brackets to this guy

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I reckon you probably could fix it dude. But prob wouldn’t suggest brackets afterwards.
My Haya was equally fucked and the fix seems to be holding strong after a dodgy repair.

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I’d never be able to trust it again. Happy for it to be a wall piece, not like i’m short on decks to ride

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