Foil Drive | Essential Maintenance Tips to Help Enjoy Your Ride

Ryan from MACkite takes a few minutes to chat with Ben from Foil Drive and pick up some tips on maintaining your Foil Drive gear after a session so it's always ready for the next session. Water, and especially salt water, can be tough on electronics, but fortunately there are some simple things you can do to extend the life of your gear.

1. Remove Your Battery

The first thing to do as soon as you come off the water is to remove your battery. Whenever the battery is plugged in, the electronics are actually powered up, including the Bluetooth module and speed controller. If you leave your battery plugged in once it's already drained from your session, you risk running it flat and damaging its ability to take or hold a charge.

2. Rinse the Externals with Clean, Fresh Water

While the inside of the main box should always be kept dry, be sure to hose down the rest of the system with clean, fresh water.

3. Remove and Rinse Rotor

Pull the rotor straight off the mast pod and rinse it thoroughly with clean water, inside and out. Rinse its mount on the mast pod as well. Make sure there isn't any sand trapped in there and dry them off. Leave them separated until your next session so that everything can dry thoroughly without trapping water anywhere. You can put a little marine grease on the motor shaft to make it easier to slide on and off, especially if you ride in salt water.

4. Grease Plugs

Regularly check the connections on your battery and the motor plug. If the grease is wearing off or has gotten dirty with sand, clean the connections thoroughly and reapply from the tube that came with your Foil Drive.

5. Deep Clean

Depending on how often you ride, once a week to every few weeks you should completely disassemble your Foil Drive setup. Remove all the screws and clean them, as well as where they go. The minerals in water, and especially salt water, can react with the materials in your gear, so it's important to keep them clean.

6. Recharge Battery Halfway

Although these batteries can be recharged, they do have a finite number of charges and are considered a consumable. However, you can improve the longevity of your battery with one simple tip. Lithium batteries are happiest when about halfway charged, so once you come in with a depleted battery, put it on the charger long enough to get it to around 50 percent full. If you know you're going out again in the next day or two, you can go ahead and charge it to full, but ideally you'll do that right before your session. A battery checker is a great tool to have handy to make sure your battery is at that happy medium as much as possible.

7. Keep Your Battery Warm, Not Hot

Batteries also like to be moderately warm. Don't store it somewhere cold over the winter or keep it in a hot car for long. Fast charging and then immediately using it and recharging it again can also make it uncomfortably warm. The more you can keep it at a comfortable temperature, the more slowly it will degrade.

8. Prepare for Storage

If you won't be using your gear for a couple months or more, perhaps over winter, pull it all apart, give it a thorough cleaning, grease the connections, charge your battery to 50 percent, and leave it apart until you're ready for your next session. Then give it some fresh grease and you can put it all back together again. Remember to check your battery periodically while it's in storage to keep it around halfway charged. You can set a reminder on your phone if you think you might forget.

Like everything, if you look after your gear, it'll look after you... and keep you having heaps of fun out there!

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