Skate Mac fun!

Thought I'd just throw up the rest of the rolling test shots from spring when I broke my rib. We have sneaked the Mac up to a local skate park, but it's always the middle of the night and when we venture up on a sunny afternoon the park is full of kids on fruitboots and it's just not polite to barge them out of the way and start smashing an old computer down the half-pipe. It might be different without the parents there!

Good news though, as a couple of retired inline skaters we know have taken it up again and they're highly interested in getting on the G4. One of them has been busy over the summer building their own wooden skatepark out back, so stay tuned for some Mac skating sickness finally, provided we can get something filmed before winter sets in. Pff.

How we made the SkateMac

Hmm... Macintosh fun times or active outdoor pursuit? Why not both!

The concept is very simple as you can see, just get the trucks off any old skateboard, drill holes in the bottom of your G4 case and bolt them on. There are a couple of issues along the way though...

The G4 case alone is a hefty old thing, so to keep as much weight off those tiny wheels as possible we got rid of everything we could from the Mac's insides, leaving only the metal frames under the drive-bay and power-supply for total rigidity.

This [above] was the obvious place to mount the trucks in order to keep the base of each truck within the length of the case-bottom. This is the strongest way, but the high centre of gravity is a pain in the ass and with such a short wheelbase the Mac is prone to tipping forwards and backwards. For any sort of stability at speed the trucks-axles need to be extended over the edge of the case-bottom, pictured below.

The two bolts at the back weren't going to be enough, so to keep the trucks as stable as possible with them over the case edge we drilled an extra set of holes in each truck, about an inch along from the original rear holes, pictured below. Bunching the bolts together on the inner half of the truck isn't the strongest method, but it's the best you can hope for if you're after a long enough wheelbase.

Welding the trucks on in this way would be ideal, but there is also the problem of case flex. We initially bolted the trucks straight on to the case-floor, with only the plastic spacers from the skateboard on the inside and we noticed the bottom of the Mac was bending around the bolt holes after just a short test. Spacers under the case is out of the question because the Mac rides a little too high as it is. As a quick-fix solution we added two plywood inserts on the inside of the case-floor to give the bolts some extra depth and provide a little bit of suspension-damping, pictured below. This seems to be holding up superbly to the knocks and bangs for now, but I'm sure there's a far better way to mount the trucks for maximum shock-resistance in future.

Read more in this post - Skate Mac Redesign

Ride responsibly!

iBroke my rib on the Sk8Mac!!

Yes, unsurprisingly some would say, the Skate Mac has claimed its first broken bone! On its first real outing too!

I set off down the hill in my preferred lean-forward, legs-back position (like a superbike) to give myself the lowest possible profile and sluice through the air at top speed. Unfortunately my front wheels hit something (a small twig or a Rizla I think it was lol) and all that weight on the front sent me face first into the concrete so fast I didn't even have time to tense up for impact.

I thought I'd gotten away without injury, but it was so easily done that we decided to drop the lean-forward stance completely - so DO NOT try this one at home! That's what MOTOG4 are here for - to refine this sport and take it on the chin so you don't have to!

It was only after two painful days lifting at work that I decided to get checked medically. Turns out I've fractured a rib! I've been signed off work for 6 days and told to take painkillers, but apart from that I'm to just rest up until it heals enough to get the Mirror-Door rollin' again!

Here's the vid of me epic wipeout. Shame that the cameraman loses attention right at the crucial moment, it should be zoomed in, nevermind.

Getting a feel for the Skate Mac...

As you can see, the iSkate is now starting to earn some battle scars. We spent a few hours trialling it down some downward slopes today to try and get more speed, distance and basically more confidence on the thing. We had intended to take it to a skatepark in nearby Heswall, but it was full of young children with their parents and we figured that two grown men would ruin their Sunday afternoon by barging them out of the way and filming it.

We did find a nice quiet downhill path in a local park though and got rolling. After a horrific face plant however, we have decided that the leaning-forward / legs-back position is a total no go, if the Mac slows suddenly in any way you go straight over. Instead, the leaning-back position is a must to keep upright at any sort of speed.

** I will post the videos as soon as possible!!

Skate Mac 1st Test

Just a quick vid to show the skater in action, but it was dusk so its hard to see anything on the phone camera. Time for some serious downhill practice and big speed before we film some more tests in the daytime and we're scoping out the local skateparks to find a suitable ramp to get some air on the old mirror-door, maybe do a tabletop or something who knows.

Skate Mac Redesign

The iBoard looked the part, but it was a nightmare to ride. I'm no skater, so I put the trucks on to maximize the wheelbase and an informed friend told me I had them on back to front. I'd never have though it would make a difference, but you had to tilt opposite ways to steer. Leaning away from the corner means you just fly off, not that this would matter as the wheelbase was still too short to get any speed up without toppling forward or back anyway.

The real problem, however, was the severe lean to one side. It turns out that the steel-case isn't central to the overall Mac. The plastic sticks out half an inch on oneside for the door mechanism, but naturally when I made the holes for the trucks I measured dead-centre to the metal-case so even if you could get rolling for a moment you just veered to the left. In other words the thing plain didn't work.

To rectify things we had to measure to the centre of the entire case and move the trucks over. They also needed to be mounted the other way round, but this meant the wheels would be even closer together. They were already at the edges of the steel-case, so we were forced to have the trucks overhang at each end and put the four bolts less than an inch apart, making it not the strongest of designs, so we threw in a couple of strips of 5-ply wood on the inside of the caseand bolted the trucks through them. This should take a bit of stress off the case-bottom and may even soften the ride up a bit.

All in all the wheelbase in 2" longer and its a completely different animal to ride now. Much easier to ride straight, no jerky turning and you can steer now, although the centre of gravity is still so high that it'll take a bit of practice to not need a bit of feet down correction, so I'll post some test vids soon.

iBoard / Skat-E-Mac