Not sure, Paper Clip Prius Fixes

by Duf Anything and Everything, Fixing Stuff

So that weird contraption you see to the left is a Leiftech board which is now known as Summerboard.  A person I talk to at the gym had this sitting around not being used and said I was welcome to give it a try since I have so many other PEVs already.  If you look quickly you may think it is just another electric skateboard, which I have had two of already.  Upon closer observation you will see there are actually two more wheels under the board, wtf?

Those hidden wheels are actually the propulsion system for the board and they are able to spin a full 360 degrees.  The normal skateboard trucks/wheels are used for steering and if you are good, braking.  The board is advertised as being the closest thing you can get to snowboarding on dry land and watching videos of skilled riders you can see why.  They appear to slide around turns and can even do crazy shit like a 360 while riding.

I have been checking these boards out for 2-3 years.  I have always thought it would be awesome if I was able to learn to ride that adeptly.  Unfortunately the very high price of the hardware just did not make it feasible to take a chance on buying something I wasn’t sure if I could even ride.  When I was offered up a chance to test out this style of PEV with no strings attached, even if it is an older and rather beat up version of the Summerboard, I was excited.

Last night I tried the board out for the first time in the driveway and it was an eye opener.  The goal is to be able to keep your weight normally balanced on the two center drive wheels, only dipping onto the outside wheels as needed.  I found this difficult.  Hell I found just getting the board started difficult as you are supposed to kick start it before jumping on.  The reason for this is you want the swivel drive wheels to be both pointing in the proper direction before applying power.  My brain and legs were not synched up well and I struggled to do even this basic skill.

I was able to slowly go up and down the driveway in short bursts, lacking anything resembling control.  A few times I “caught an edge” meaning the toe side wheels got leaned onto when they shouldn’t have, immediately sending me running off the board.  I hoped my nearly 5 years of experience with various types of PEVs would have given me a head start on the board but I was clearly at step one.  Right now it feels like a pretty high mountain for me to climb to get comfortable on the board but I will give it a solid try.  The next session will occur in the wide open school parking lot.

Yesterday afternoon Katie dropped off the Prius.  It was driving fine but the ABS, VSC and BRAKE warning lights were all illuminated. On Sunday before she left I quickly threw my code reader on the car but was unable to clear those lights.  I did a quick Google search and found this is another weird Prius thing (there are a lot of them).  It could indicate a real problem but it also could be a phantom code.  The technique used to clear it involves a paper clip.

I had to crawl into the foot well awkwardly and jump together two pins of the ODBII connector.  Once doing that you turn the car on and pump the brake 8 times, doing this combination of things throws the car into some special diagnostic mode.  Once the three brake related lights start to flash you turn the car off, remove the paper clip jumper and turn the car back on.  After following these steps the lights were off and the 10 mile test drive I took afterward went fine.  The Prius has been a hell of a workhorse with 236,000 miles plus on the odometer but man it also is one of the weirdest cars I have ever worked on.

Speaking of fixing stuff, this morning I was relegated to a Pop Tarts breakfast instead of my normal egg/toast/oj deal because I spent 25 minutes in the hobby room fixing a 3D printer problem.  At times my life feels like one big troubleshooting session.