Motor Broke?

So the other day, the absolute worst thing that can happen to me, happened. A nightmare for any electric skateboard owner. And yes, I’m exaggerating a great deal here.

I was skating home from work. My complex has many speed bumps that you really can’t skate around. After living here for a few months, I’ve really refined my technique for clearing those speed bumps. Although my Boosted Board can simply roll right over them, I don’t like the way it *feels* to do that. Instead, I prefer to step off the board just before it hits the bump, and then hop back on.

So I was going up a hill, doing just that. When I hopped back on the board and gave it some throttle, something didn’t feel right. The board was accelerating a bit slower than I had expected it to. What was that all about?

When I began to hit the brake to walk the board over the next speed bump, I heard a sound that absolutely *terrified* me. It was a clicking sound. Which always reminds me of the dreaded ‘click of death’ that computers will suffer from time to time.

I looked at the bottom of the board, to see if maybe I had got a small stick, or some debris in any of the mechanics. But at a cursory glance, everything looked fine. Luckily, I was already at the top of the hill, and my house was on the bottom of the other side of the hill. So I was able to roll back home without much difficult. But I do rely on the brakes to slow me for the speed bump at the bottom of the hill. With this new clicking shit going on, I wasn’t going slow enough to walk the board over the bump. Instead I rolled over it, a little faster than I would have wanted to. But it was no biggie.

When I got inside my home, I stood my board up by the chargers and gave the motor some juice. What I saw shocked me. Only *one* of the two motors was spinning. Holy shit. My Boosted Board was broken. I was crushed.

I mean, on the one hand, I have a bicycle, and my Evolve Boards, so it’s not like it’s the end of the world. But I really love my Boosted Board, and it is definitely the best and safest of all the boards I own. So yeah, I was sad.

Not knowing what else to do, I plugged the board in for a charge, and figured I’d let time take a crack at the problem.

The next day looked kinda wet, and I decided it would be a fine day to bike to work. I’d just got my bike back in working order – precisely because we’ve been having so much rain lately. But before I rode out on the bike, I turned on the Boosted Board and gave it some motor.

Lo and behold, *both* of the wheels started spinning. I was so happy to see that whatever problem had plagued me the previous day, had disappeared just as quickly as it had come. But I still didn’t want to ride the Boosted to work. What if the problem returned? I certainly didn’t want to be halfway to work, just to find that the board really was broken.

So I biked to work. Which really turned out to be a good experience. For the first time, I got an appreciation of the various grades of hills that the sidewalks I use have. On an electric board, it can be very tough to feel if you’re going slightly uphill or not.

But when I got back home yesterday, I knew I’d have to take the Boosted out for a test run. Just to make sure that she really was back to working order. I took her up a hill. Then back down again. I skated to the nearby complex, going around and around a place that is filled mostly with college students.

It was actually one of the best joy rides I’ve had in a really long time. But the best part of all was that, as far as I could tell, the Boosted Board works.

The major difference now, is that I’ve really changed how I walk my board over those nasty speed bumps. Before, I would almost race. As if the goal were to see how quickly I could get the board over the bump, and then jump back on it again.

In doing so, I definitely felt something that the board didn’t like. Something about going from braking to neutral to accelerate in the space of a second or two. During that test run, and probably from here on out, I’ve been taking things a lot slower.

No more of this quick direction change on the motors. Now I ease up to the speed bumps. I make sure that the board doesn’t get any bumps that are *too* big when trying to go over. I jump onto the board with a bit more finesse, and even give it an extra little kick start to help the motors along.

But I am happy to say that I rode my Boosted to work today, and I can’t wait for the ride home.