Well, the WowGo is a disappointment. It has turn itself into a WowDon'tGo. I got it Friday and was excited to try it out. I charged it up and took it for a short ride to class. It was nice, just needing some dialing in on the tightness to get it to a level of turning that I was comfortable with.
I think about changing the bearings out for Red's bearings like I have on my Boosted Mini. I change one of the front wheels to Reds, see how it is versus stock, and decide that its not worth the change and I'd rather just keep this set of reds around for another thing and install the default bearing back on.
Cool, now let's charge it again for a night ride that night. About 3 miles into the ride I hear a weird noise coming from my back motor. Worried that my motor has suffered a problem, I stopped and take a look. Nothing. I ride for like 2 seconds longer and I hear it again, and this time decide to take the wheel out. And then we see the problem. One of the bearings has gone.
Now this isn't something I've experienced in a board ever so far. The boosted I changed the bearings on because I didn't like the way the old ones were and the Reds were better. But this one was problematic.
As you can see, the bearing was completely gone. I had no hope of fixing it there. I decided to use another board and a car to get back to my apartment to grab the set of Reds to change it out.
Upon coming back, I tried to take the bearing out on the other side the same way as on the boosted. It just didn't work, and after about 15 minutes I decided to give up and head back for the night. I tried to thread the screw back into the board. But it just wouldn't go back in. I tried on the other wheel, and it works just fine.
What. What has happened? Well it turns out they probably didn't harden the axle and so attempting to remove the bearing shifted it a bit. Now this is where WowDon'tGo starts. Bearings failing happens, I understand that. But really WowGo, they cheapned out on the axle by not hardening it. Now if I was the only WowDon'tGo board which failed I could consider it a one time thing. BUT, the night that I ordered mine, one of my friends who I ride with had his WowGo die on him too. He was able to fix it by changing out a wire on his battery. I found multiple instances of this happening on youtube. There's another guy in the group I ride with who has had the same problem with his WowGo as well. I wish I had known that before ordering. We are 3 for 3 WowGos with problems in the group. What a shock.
So should you get a WowGo? No, its a WowDon'tGo situation.
I guess I know what brand not to buy if ever I'm on the market for an electric skateboard.
If you are looking for a reliable brand, I recommend backfire.
thanks for the recommendation.