DIY: Electric Scooter Conversion With Hoverboard Parts

This time I’ll show you how to make an Electric Scooter With Hoverboard Parts

How I did it - you can check by looking DIY video or you can follow up instructions bellow. For this project you will need:

Materials:

Regular kick scooter (I used D-max 230 adult scooter)

Parts from hoverboard: motor + mounting plate, battery, charger

36V 350W Brushless Motor Speed Controller + LCD Meter: https://goo.gl/dg1AGH

Thumb Throttle Handle: https://goo.gl/eWv2jB

0.15 x 8mm Nickel Plated Steel Strip: https://goo.gl/22c2of

10S 36V 16A BMS Board: https://goo.gl/22c2of

High-temperature Resistant Tape: https://goo.gl/22c2of

XT60 connectors

4 by 4 cm wood piece

4 by 4 square steel pipe

Some wires, zip ties, machine screws, spray paint, and other bits and bobs

Tools:

Drill and bits

Angle grinder

Welder

Screw driver

Soldering iron

Cutters

Hot glue gun + hot glue

Some marking and measuring tools

And some regular workshop tools

Step 1: Materials and Parts for Build

As a base for this project I bought this foldable kick scooter in local shop for 90 euros. It have 23cm in front and 20cm in back PU wheels, front and rear shock absorbers and could hold up to 100Kg of load. Plus it weights only 5 kilograms.
I found this broken hoverboard for 30 euros on ebay. I already took it apart to check what’s wrong with it and found that motherboard was dead. Despite that, battery, both motors and charger is totally fine. I’m very happy with this find, because exactly those parts are needed for my build.

Step 2: First Steps..

Removed rear wheel with all suspension, because I won’t use it anymore.
This hub motor is rated for 350W and is 20cm of diameter (same, as current kick scooter rear wheel).

The idea is to make some kind of bracket witch could hold hub motor somewhere about here.

Step 3: Hub Motor Mounting Bracket

I took 4 by 4 cm square wood pieces and made this temporarily rear wheel bracket. To make template I used wood, because it’s very easy and fast to work with it. This wood dimension was chosen because later on I’ll replicate this bracket from 4 by 4 cm square steel tube.
Later on I asked my friend to help me with metal works, because I don’t have a welder at home. After a lot of measuring, cutting, drilling, welding and sanding I got this steel bracket ready to mount in place. Primed and painted in matte black.

Step 4: Again on Two Wheels

Bracket was designed to use old fixing holes in scooter rear end so, no additional drilling was needed. Wheel was attached with same hoverboard bolts and mounting plate.
Great - scooter again on its wheels.

Step 5: Main Electronis..

Now lets move on to the electric part.
From banggood.com I got this thumb throttle, LED meter display and 350W 36V brushless motor speed controller.

To fit ebike controller to my need I have to replace two connectors. This hall sensors connector must be replaced with this one from hoverboard, because hub motor have this type of connector too. And next - it’s need to replace those two power connectors to one XT60 connector. Cut and soldered XT60 in place. With hall sensors connector I choose another approach. I took speed controller case off, desoldered old wires directly from the board, and soldered connector witch was cut from hoverboard.

Step 6: Throttle and LCD Display

Drilled four holes in scooter handles fixing mechanism to make mounting points for LCD display. Installed thumb throttle then moved on to the LCD meter. It had a mount dedicated to round handle, but in my case - there’s no place for it. So I took mount off and screwed directly to the meter body.

Step 7: Charging Point and Some Wiring Harness

Made one hole for wiring and another for charging connector.
From two XT60 connectors, piece of wire and hoverboard charging connector - made this wiring harness. Later on, one XT60 end will be connected to the battery and another one, to the controller. To install charging connector, was needed to desolder wires, install locking nut, insert wires thru the hole and solder them back.

Step 8: LCD and Throttle Wiring

Wires from throttle and LCD display was attached with zip ties and later on hided in scooter body. Thru the hole and inside steel tube bracket, wires reached its final destination.

Step 9: Speed Controller

I’ll use three phase, power, LCD display, throttle, hall sensors, and self learning wires. Those wires I managed thru the hole in bottom bracket part. All other wires will be hidden in upper bracket part. Connected all connectors and hided inside steel bracket.

Step 10: Battery

This hoverboard battery is 10s2p configuration. Removed shrink wrap and insulating paper witch will be reused later. Battery is totally fine and is fully charged.

Each hoverboard battery have BMS (battery management system) - witch is responsible of proper battery charge, cells balance and protecting from over charge or over discharge.

Despite this BMS is quite small and could be reused in my project, I found all most twice smaller one on ebay. Why this important? The idea is, to take this hoverboard battery and change its shape to make it fit in this groove. Here very nicely sits 5 groups in series of 4 by 4 18650 cells. So I wanted that BMS will hided inside too.

Step 11: Reshaping Battery

Talking about reshaping battery, there’s nothing special. Disconnected BMS, desoldered all power and balance wires, and rearranged cells to my need shape. Because I had to cut tabs in few places to make reshaping possible - I used 0.15mm nickel strip, and spot welded them back, to get same 10s2p configuration.

If you don’t have a spot welder - you could use soldering iron. Not the best option - but it will work. Just try do not overheat cells while soldering tabs. A small nickel tab, will be used to solder balance wire later on.

When all cells was connected again - reused insulation paper and high temperature electric tape to keep isolated each 18650 cells groups from each other.

Step 12: Finishing Battery - BMS, Wiring

Soldered BMS balance wires that was in new BMS package.
More insulation, placed BMS in place and soldered power wires regarding wiring diagram provided by BMS seller. Negative terminal goes to BMS B terminal, then from C terminal, thru the fuse housing was soldered to negative XT60 terminal. Positive XT60 terminal connected directly to the battery positive side.

Final check - does everything was made correctly. Time to mount battery inside the scooter body. As you could see - battery sits almost flush with scooter bottom. I’m very happy with that.

Step 13: Self Learning Procedure

Connected self learning connector, turned LCD display on and the wheel started spinning, but not in need direction. By pressing and releasing throttle we changed that and now motor spins to needed direction. To save it in controller memory turned off the system and disconnected self learning connector.

Step 14: Battery Cover

Now left to make some kind of battery cover.

From card board made this ruff cover template, took 2mm of thickness aluminum sheet, cut, bend ed, hammered it until I got this battery cover. To fix cover in place drilled bunch of holes on it, regarding that drilled and tapped holes in scooter body and secured with machine screws. Of course, painted in matt black to keep it almost invisible under the scooter.

Step 15: Final Touches

With hot glue and small plastic pieces, covered steel tube ends, to get clean look. And scooter is finished.

Step 16: Finished Scooter and Test Ride

At the moment scooter have few issues - don’t have brakes, kick stand and have very small clearance to the ground. It’s around 4 cm. It’s enough to ride in smooth roads, but in a bumpy road the battery cover potentially could get some impacts.
Despite those small issues - scooter runs awesome! It could reach 24km/h at small downhill, and 20km/h at same road running up hill. On flat road top speed is around 22km/h. Keeping in mind that my weight is 90kg - that’s really not bad result. Range per charge is between 15 and 18 km, depends how fast I’m going. One more great thing - that this scooter is still foldable, portable and weights only 12kg.

I don’t tried to make the best scooter in the world. The main goal was to check does it’s possible to use hoverboard parts, some cheap electronics and fit them nicely inside regular kick scooter. And I think I did it quite well.

I made a math and calculated that this build cost is under 200 euros. Does it worth? Yes, because I love DIY projects and learned a lot along this build about electric motors, controllers and etc. Lets say this is my first, but definitely not the last electric vehicle build.