When you purchase gear through links on our site, we may earn a small commission. Here’s why you can trust our tests and our affiliate partner.
It’s well documented that Foil Drive integrated masts are obviously brilliant, but command a high price point. Minimizing that frontal area of the FD motor pod and fairing the pod into the rear half of the mast is an obvious efficiency gain, and as we all know when it comes to Foil Drive gains, even what seems a whimsical design alteration can yield a significant change in riding feel and performance. In the homebrew 3D printing age, it’s inevitable that enthusiasts would create their own designs for motor pods, and we saw a few (warranty voiding) third-party versions with varying degrees of reliability come to market. It was up to Foil Drive to react and design something clean and bomb proof, and that’s exactly what they’ve done. From a design perspective, it’s absolutely ingenious and compared to the standard pod, the setup and mast position adjustment to account for cable length is far more straight forward and quick. I even shifted it around whilst in the water.
Initial installation involves bolting the motor to the new pod’s insert with four 16mm bolts which simultaneously secures the modular cable in with a little lube on the connector and the all-important red O ring. Three different sizes of strap are provided (labelled S, M and L) so you need to work out which is most appropriate for your mast’s chord by offering it up. The straps also have an aramid core with an EPDM rubber exterior, so are harder wearing than you’d initially think. It’s far more than a rubber band. Compatibility wise, you’ll need the V2 motor (HP or standard) and it works across Gen2 Max and Fusion platforms.
Finer adjustments are then made by a seven-point ladder system neatly hidden inside the outer casing. The final closure is a lever latch which puts tension into the strap and locks the whole pod on extremely firmly. A rubber insert in the front of the nose cone as well as the fact the mouth of the nose cone has a little give means it will augment well to different mast thicknesses; we tested a 12mm up to 19mm thickness mast and it clamped up solidly.
Once set up, installation on the mast removal is now extremely quick, and most importantly toolless. If you wanted to get your mast off quickly for a non-assisted sport simply pull the latch and it’s free.
The Mini Pod is a decent step towards the riding feeling achieved with an integrated mast, but for a fraction of the price. What you’ll notice most in practice is that there’s less drag on pod strike than the standard universal pod. What can’t be avoided is the motor cable sat in the guide running up the back of the mast, and the tape job, for that you still need to stump up the cash and go integrated. For the minimal cost though, the increase in hydrodynamic efficiency isn’t to be sniffed at, particularly if you’re pushing the limits of the system smaller boards and foils.
My summer care package from Australia also included an uprated Sport High Power battery with all new cell technology in the smaller Sport form factor. This utilizes the smaller ‘B’ nose cone provided in your Gen 2 Max system you perhaps forgot all about. 396Wh of capacity in such a small lump of lithium is a 20% increase on the old Sport battery and we were yielding runtimes of around 45-50 minutes in average surf, providing a perfect lunchbreak session. Lighter riders could easily stretch this to an hour, as my 60kg wife has been showing off about. She also loved the fact that the system was easier to carry around.
Specs aside, what’s most important is the improvement in ride feeling, with the 1.85kg battery liberating a significant 800g of weight from the board compared to a Max Power battery, or full kilo from the Max HP. It also centers that weight further back over the mast which is more significant in physical terms than you’d imagine. You can actively feel the board accelerate more eagerly as there’s less mass to get moving there.
For those well-tuned to the full size batteries on the system it feels incredibly spritely underfoot, far more reactive initiating carves, and pumping between sets was way less of a slog, bringing things much closer in feeling to a non-assisted prone session. For those mixing disciplines and taking this parawinging, downwinding or as a backup propulsion, it’s a lot of energy in a small package and a less obtrusive addition to the board. For application in our local wave conditions with the runtime on the Max HP well over an hour now, we’ll add one of these to the quiver for when it looks absolutely prime to enhance that surf feeling – at 90kgs with a decent takeoff it was doing nearly an hour, and felt positively electric underfoot (sorry).
