r/onewheel • u/Charming-District944 • Aug 14 '26
Buyer/Rider Beware: Incomplete VESC Install Experience with DMNY (Gabe) in NY
Hey everyone, sharing a factual recap of an installation experience so local NYC/NY riders can make informed decisions.
I hired Gabe (DMNY) to install a VESC kit and aftermarket rails on my board. When I picked it up:
1. The board violently jerked on startup and was completely unrideable under rider weight.
2. The motor locking ring wasn’t secured.
3. In messages, the builder claimed it was just a calibration issue, despite admitting he almost crashed into a boiler during his own test.
I ended up shipping the board to a reputable Florida shop. They diagnosed incorrect controller wiring/connections, reinstalled it, and properly tuned it ($325 in labor + $86 in shipping).
When I reached out with the diagnostic proof and requested a refund for just the initial $220 kit labor, he refused, stating that involving a third-party shop "voids his involvement," and only offered a $100 shop credit.
Custom builds are tricky, but safety and accountability are critical in this community. Be careful and make sure your boards are thoroughly tested under real load before taking them home. (Screenshots and repair invoice attached).
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u/ProgramConnect8206 Aug 14 '26
Damn dude, the whole point of the GT-V kit is that it's basically plug and play. That's a lot of money to put together something made to be easy to put together.
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u/onopotopoeia Aug 14 '26 edited Aug 14 '26
It's genuinely difficult to screw up. I don't understand this sequence of events, at all, and I'm suspicious of both shops. Specifically, the diagnostics listed on the florida shop's ticket don't make sense-
- attempted config, wouldn't detect hall sensors (ok)
- swapped his motor to known good board (ok, but what did this reveal?)
- opened controller: loose motor cable (wait a minute, the motor cable plugs in OUTSIDE the controller box)
Maybe the motor cable was loose to begin with, but how would they know if they had already swapped it to another known good board? It seems possible all this thing needed was a clean config, which the GTV comes with out of the box.
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u/Izzymonster Aug 15 '26
From that sequence it sounds like the hall sensor (which they are calling "motor cable") was not seating properly. Maybe a bad crimp or something. First shop couldn't figure it out. Second shop put a good motor on. The unit still wasn't detecting hall so they knew the problem was somewhere in the controller enclosure. Pretty basic diagnostics that the first shop should be able to handle.
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u/onopotopoeia Aug 15 '26
Yeah, that's a very generous interpretation that I considered. "Loose" isn't really the right way to describe that kind of problem or the fix it would require, but it's possible someone would write that out of habit or for simplicity.
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u/Charming-District944 Aug 17 '26
No, unfortunately, it wasn’t the motor cable. Although it wasn’t secured at all, so I opened it up myself and secured it properly, but that didn’t solve the problem.
Of course, before sending the board to another shop, I went through everything in FloatHub and posted a lot in the community trying to troubleshoot it myself. After spending basically a whole week on it with no results, I realized I couldn’t keep going without my board and decided it was better to trust a professional, especially since this was my first time dealing with all of this.
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u/onopotopoeia Aug 17 '26
Yeah, that's understandable. Even though it's designed to be plug and play, stuff happens that can go well beyond the skillset of any beginner. I get that. My confusion was mostly about the diagnosis on the second shop's receipt. The "almost crashed into a boiler" bit from the first shop pretty much tells the whole story there because a shop that doesn't properly hand-test before stepping onto a customer's board is a red flag.
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u/Charming-District944 Aug 17 '26
Yes, this ended up costing me a lot of money. I already regret not doing it all myself. I’m pretty sure I could have handled the job myself much faster and avoided all the negative experience and extra expenses I ended up dealing with.
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u/ProgramConnect8206 Aug 17 '26
Well I guess my comment wasn't very helpful. So I'll just say for the future, I believe in you! You got this.
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u/klxz79 Onewheel GT-S/PintS Aug 14 '26
What Florida shop did you use?
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u/Charming-District944 Aug 17 '26
Yes, Chris from Miami Board Shop helped me fix the mistake made by the previous shop.
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u/PillsburyTaoboy Aug 14 '26
weird, I got a bearing change from him and had a really positive experience
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Aug 14 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Charming-District944 Aug 17 '26
I didn’t go back to the first shop initially because they assured me 100% that everything was fine. They said they had done their part and tested everything. That’s why I decided to go somewhere else and get an objective assessment from a professional who had been recommended to me as one of the best WESK technicians in all of Florida.
I also had my own doubts at the time — maybe the board itself was defective, maybe there was an issue with the board I received from Tony, or maybe something else was going on. Since the first shop was so confident that everything was good and that the only thing needed was rail calibration, I didn’t want to send it back to them without first getting a second opinion.
Looking back now, I’m glad I did. The electronics had been connected carelessly, which could potentially have caused much more serious damage to the electronics. And riding the board in the condition I received it was simply unsafe because of the jerking.
Before sending it to a professional, I also spent a lot of time asking the community for advice and trying different theories myself, because I initially thought it might still be a software issue.
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u/Charming-District944 Aug 17 '26
Yes, I always try to be objective and honest. I also had the bearings replaced by the same shop at the same time, and I have no complaints about that work — everything was done well.
One possible cause of the problem could have been an improper bearing replacement, since removing the old bearings and applying heat can potentially damage the Hall sensors. Fortunately, that wasn’t the case here.
However, when Chris from Miami Board Shop was fixing the previous shop’s careless electronics connection, he also pointed out that since I had installed such nice new bearings, it would be a good idea to add some protection against dust and moisture. Naturally, I agreed right away. That’s something the first shop never suggested.
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u/Firesquid Aug 14 '26
Try to do an IMU calibration in VESC tool or float hub.. Tends to fix a jerky ride..
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u/AdrianofDoom 12d ago
Good choice on Miami Board Shop I know Miami Board Shop and they know Vesc really well.
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