Recently had my girlfriend's uncle approach me about a hoverboard he got from a pawn shop that wouldn't work. Turn it on, LED's would come on but no movement on the wheels at all, plus one of the wheels looked like it was swiveling... hoverboards don't have turn assist. Opened it up and saw two obvious faults. In the 3rd picture you can see at the bottom of the image there's a connector that's come undone, these Chinese manufacturers don't like to waste wire! Connected that guy back up and decided to take apart the wonky wheel only to discover the bracket holding it down was super loosy goosey. Fitted it back right and torqued down on the four bolts. Turned it on and it all works good as new! (a couple LED's wouldn't turn back on but who cares, its a hoverboard!) | |
Before I dug into this I read up on some of the engineering that goes into these guys. iFixit has a great tear-down you guys should check out. I was afraid of the whole "catching fire" thing but as you can see, the battery pack has LG18650 LiPo cells which are ubiquitous so they're pretty safe, didn't tear the pack apart to study the charging/protection circuitry but figured its good enough. Anyways, fun couple hours.