Gilera dna to electric

[Mozart]

Conversion of Gilera dna moped to electric.

Firstly I'd like to say hello to everyone on the forum,
I'm going to convert my old moped to electric and I would really need some help(this is my first conversion)...
So this is some of the parts I was thinking to use:
1. Turnigy Fatboy 300A ESC 5~15S - (OPTO)
2. A200-8 Hacker Brushless 15,000W 110k/V Outrunner or Turnigy CA120-70 Brushless Outrunner
3. LiFePO4 Battery Pack 24V/20AH x2 for 48volts

The specs are:
Turnigy Fatboy:
Voltage: 18.5V-55.5V (5s-15s Lipo)
Current: 300A (380A surge within 10 seconds)
BEC: No BEC (Opto)
Size: 19cm x 12cm x 4.9cm
Weight: 850g

A200-8 Hacker Brushless:
Peak Watts: 15000
kV(RPM/V):110
Diameter: 4.30 in
Length: 4.96in
Weight:91.20 oz
Shaft Diameter: 0.00mm
Shaft Diameter W/ GB mm
Idle Current: 3.30
Operating Current: 185A
Peak Current:300A
Resistance: 0.0150ohms
Poles: 20
Orientation: Out

LiFePO4 Battery Pack 24V/20AH:
Around 40Amp continuous
and 70Amp peek

[Mozart]

Plus as an alternative solution of a motor, could somebody know if the on board alternator of the bike can become easily into a motor???
That would be awesome!!!

[gwhy!]

Hi Mozart,
You might want to have a look through this thread viewtopic.php?f=12&t=17576 , a lot of the pictures got corrupt in the tread quite a while ago but all the info is still there.

[Mozart]

Hi gwhy! ! I'm glad you answered, and I already checked your build but can't see what is your throttle interface in the ESC box...

[gwhy!]

Hi gwhy! ! I'm glad you answered, and I already checked your build but can't see what is your throttle interface in the ESC box...

The first controller I was using was a RC ESC and I used a servo tester as a throttle interface, but I swapped this out for a normal E-bike sensored controller and fitted external hall sensors to the motor.

[Bluefang]

Whatever you do, make sure the motors going to be running at 10k rpm or geared to input that rpm level into the bikes CVT assuming your going to drive the cvt. Don't use the Fatboy as its over rated on the hobbyking website and your much better off using a Castle creations HV160, a Fightercat ESC(this can run up to 24S making the Hacker motor much more usable for you) or like Gwhy used a modified Ebike controller ie a Lyen 12 or 18fet controller.

I built a CVT geared bike and i am currently finishing a build using a clutch system and i am finding that it needs the higher rpm to work properly, 180kv at 12s is just barely enough for the clutchs not to slip a ton.

I personally would use one, or a pair of C80100 180kv motor, you can get them from Ebay. and a Castle creations controllers if your keeping the CVT and clutch. And build the battery pack your self from Lipo bricks from HK. Lighter, smaller, cheaper and more energy dense

[Mozart]

Thanks a lot for the info!

Well I started buying the pieces! So I just got:
1. controller -
ESC Jeti Spin 300 Opto
Manufacturer - Jeti
Applications - Heli/Airplanes/Sailplanes
Special Features - Data Logger w/Spin BOX
Cont/Max Amp - 300/330A
Cells NiMH/NiCD - 24-40 cells
Cells Li-poly - 6-14 cells
Voltage - 18-59V
Programming - Fully Programmable
Type/Max BEC (A) -
Max #Servos/V -
Dimensions - 120mm x 63mm x 27mm
Weight - 350g

2. batteries -LiFePO4 - 24V20AH x2 = 48volt-20ah
(will buy more later to add amp-hours)

3. Castle Creations CapPack (to add before the controller-not sure if I need it though...)

I will be running it on 48v, and also I'm not sure about the motor yet. I will see how many watts I can get from the alternator of the moped first!
OK I'm still not sure how to connect the throttle instead of a servo tester. I wonder,can I connect the throttle to the tester and use it like that?

[gwhy!]

I will backup what Bluefang has said about the speed of the motor, I had to do a lot of messing around with the roller weights, torque spring, and clutch to get mine to work properly and this was with 180kv motor running on 12s but if the rpm was much higher into the cvt it would have been much easier , I would still remove the clutch springs completely from the clutch no matter what the rpm is.

Edit:
To match the performance ( maybe even a little better ) of the 50cc engine you could get away with a small 3000w motor, there are a couple around that run about 220kv and output around 3kw.
Yes the servo tester pot is just replaced with a throttle hardwired onto the tester.

[Mozart]

Here are some crappy(unfortunately) photos of the motor striped down.

http://cameroid.com/g/a78c3ba25738fad07173c8a0104f53f6

I'm waiting for my parts to arrive...very impatiently...and I'm still searching how to connect the six wires from the alternator...

Yes! I'm finally getting somewhere now...
http://s675.photobucket.com/albums/vv11 ... NA50gp.jpg

...well,at least I now know what each cable stands for...hmmm...

[Bluefang]

The alternator as a motor wont work.......maybe 500W of power from that before it burns out if you can even get it to run without blowing up your controller.

With that controller you have bought i would be pming Arlo to try and get the motor he has been working on for a while, only problem is i don't think he has them for sale at this time. Or the hacker is your other expensive option, but you should be trying to get one that is at least 200KV if your only running 48V, 250KV would be a better range if you can get it.

With the batteries your using the LiFePO4, your going to need like 100AH to even come close to been able to use the controller/motor at full potential so i hope you have alot of room and weight free on the bike to pack all that on there Castle Creations cap pack is going to be useful, probably not essential but it with sure help the controller survive longer if you start to hammer it with alot of power

[Mozart]

Well...there are some videos on youtube with conversions and some topics on RC forums of people that have run an alternator as a motor since 2007! and also this new scooter from Honda http://world.honda.com/motorcycle-techn ... op/p3.html
But I can't find anything on the alternator of my scooter motor unfortunatly...also I don't wanna mess it up and burn anything...
so, that makes it more difficult for me...
I'll try to find another model with less wires, like the gilera runner vxr180 or dna 180,they have just the three wires for the motor plus one from the external sensor.

[Bluefang]

Mate, I would read more into using the alternator as a "starter" motor. Having a look at that link you gave the "motor" is tiny and would be only able to handle the 500W i was talking about maybe 1kw.

Think of it this way, the alternator on your scooter or any other will be maybe 1" thick and a diameter of say 3" with only the outer rim having copper windings on it and will probably weigh 500g.
Your controller is designed for 15kw, a motor to match that will be ~4kg even using light weight RC plane motors and physically about 5x larger with as much copper as possible in the slots. Sorry mate i dont think your build is going to be as easy as you think, i dont doubt that you can use the alternator as a motor but i doubt it will be able to do more then push your bike at walking pace.

[zEEz]

Sorry mate i dont think your build is going to be as easy as you think, i dont doubt that you can use the alternator as a motor but i doubt it will be able to do more then push your bike at walking pace.

I pop here just to say that it is a very promising build if you start with a Gilera DNA,
but it is sure that if you start building with proper components it will be more
likely that your build will see an ending ....

I would discard altogether the alternator, that it is really not up to the task ...
and I would back up the suggestions from other forumers ....:
if you use a modified Lyen controller with irfb3077 and 18 mosfets
a C80100 motor with kV of 180 and external hall sensors... this will smooth things out
As a projection of what you could get in term of performace... if you plan to run the
c80100 at 48v and 70A ... this will give you around 3.5kW ...
putting them into the CVT could give you a very profitable edge
on the original 50cc motor performance and probably you will
approach 80kmph if everything is made really smooth ...

good luck!

[Mozart]

Still waiting for the parts to arrive...boring

I'd like to clear a few things also, my scooter was slow for my taste with the 72cc 2t Malossi kit so I changed the whole motor with a 180cc 2t from a runner fxr ! So from around 14-16hp I went to about 21-22hp! Then I was really pleased with great acceleration and top speed!

But on the downside...the gasoline consumption was ridiculously high! I was filling the 10lt tank almost every two days.

So,I'm not expecting to have the same performance with the converted electric one,that would be too expensive to achieve...
But I'm a bit confused with the motors out there.Am I supposed to take a high kv/v one with less watts for more rpm,
or more watts and less kv/v ? Considering that I will be using the cvt of course.

[gwhy!]

Still waiting for the parts to arrive...boring

I'd like to clear a few things also, my scooter was slow for my taste with the 72cc 2t Malossi kit so I changed the whole motor with a 180cc 2t from a runner fxr ! So from around 14-16hp I went to about 21-22hp! Then I was really pleased with great acceleration and top speed!

But on the downside...the gasoline consumption was ridiculously high! I was filling the 10lt tank almost every two days.

So,I'm not expecting to have the same performance with the converted electric one,that would be too expensive to achieve...
But I'm a bit confused with the motors out there.Am I supposed to take a high kv/v one with less watts for more rpm,
or more watts and less kv/v ? Considering that I will be using the cvt of course.

If you read through my thread viewtopic.php?f=12&t=17576 this will have the info that you are after, my project came to a halt due to uk licencing laws but when I left the project it was doing around 45mph and pulled like a train ( upto 30 ) this was with a 180kv motor ( on 48v 8500rpm and this was not enough to make things easy) @ 3.2kw, if you get a motor that is around 200kv and capable of running at 3kw+ then this is what you need to make things a little easier . I was guestimating if I re-geared the secondary gearing and upped the power of the motor to around 6kw I could have possibly been looking at a top speed of around 70-80mph and have it still pulling like a train upto around 50mph. the performance with just 3kw of motor power into the variator was comparable to a tunned 100cc scoot ( but not the top speed due to rpm of the motor)

[Bluefang]

Both Gwhy and myself are just saying you will have a much easier time if you have the CVT input spinning at 10,000rpm or higher so it can easily be modified with parts for normal scooter engines. Both of our builds that we have done we too low for normal clutch parts etc so it was a pain to get everything working properly, do able but a pain. Smaller motors spin faster easily, large motors are more common with lower KV.

If your after the amount of power you listed you are going to have to gear up from the motor to the input shaft of the CVT, Hacker or Turnigy dont handle the higher rpms ie >10k without losses as far as i know. If you want to use you $500 controller to the max then the hacker A200 or a Turnigy RotoMax 100cc are a few of your options. The way i would mount it all into your scooter would be to have a machinist remove the large sections on your crank shaft and put a sleeve that is ~22mm diameter over the 2 ends of the crank shaft between where the bearings mount on, then you will need to grind out some extra room in the area the old shaft used to spin inside the CVT case to install a pulley, mount the motor out side the CVT case with a larger pulley 1.5-1 or 2-1 ratio, a suggestion would be to mount the tension pully next to the entrance into the CVT case so u can cause the belt to kind bend into the case allowing u to use larger pulleys.

I ll try and get some photos of my scooter if you want them, unfortunately i made the mistake of converting a 50cc scooter where in Australia you dont need a motorbike licence to ride them but after conversion i was told i needed to get it speed certified and that would have ended up costing me $1k ontop of my project so i kinda scraped it so its sitting in pieces. but it worked well enough to throw me off the back a number of times while testing and that was only with 7kw.

[Mozart]

Thanks to all for their advice.

I'm trying to post a few pics from photobucket but I can't, and I didn't find any info on how to make it work on the rest of the forum.
So I will post them as attachments.

[Mozart]

Plus, here are photos of the ESC

esc to battery

DSC01002.JPG

No rx?

(236.57 KiB) Downloaded 3 times

esc to motor

DSC01004.JPG

throttle with battery power LED

(241.01 KiB) Downloaded 3 times

throttle cables...Blue-Red is for -minus,+plus and Green for hall(which I don't have),Yellow for the LEDs I think...

This is the Astro Servo Tester from the top side,

And this is the down side it's a bit different from the one on the guide on how to hard-wire the throttle on it (http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=12196)
But ok

[Mozart]

OK, back on the track!
Now that I have all the components -except for the motor that it's not ready yet...
http://www.partsforscooters.com/180-99-stator_magneto_250cc?sc=9&category=73529#
http://www.partsforscooters.com/180-98-Rotor-250cc?sc=9&category=73529#
I'm making two adapters,one for the stator and one for the rotor to fit them on the quite smaller (-50cc-) stator-rotor alternators place!And that needs a lot of work and big machinery! to make it nice-precise-durable...SO...I use a lathe to make them and that will take me a few more days.

So, I received my batteries from http://www.goldenmotor.com/
24v 20ah (well now each reads 27volts...) and I was thinking I wont be able to use the cccappack cause it says until 50.4volts 12s...Is that right?
If anyone knows something about that,please tell me.I don't wanna burn the capacitors, or even maybe the controller!(660$ )

Also,after some searching I found that the throttle cables correspond to: Blue is - ,Yellow is + for the battery LEDs,Red is +5.2v,Green is +0 to 5.2v for the controller.

And for the initial current draw,I was thinking to use these: http://gr.digikey.com/1/1/496747-current-limiter-inrsh-5-ohm-50a-ms35-0r550.html one is enough right?

Now for a good main switch I got this: http://www.bepmarine.com/home-mainmenu-8/product-325/721-heavy-duty-selector-switch
It's a bit big (as much or more than the controller!), but it will be well placed under a fairing so no problem .

For a fuse I will use one automatic 220v AC - 63A and if it's no good I'll put some car ones: http://www.connection.eu/index.php?category=6&family=12&tipo=29&prodotto=290&submit=Go&link=accessories.

I'm really looking forward for your comments-answers!

[Mozart]

So I've connected everything, but it doesn't seem to work, except as a generator...

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M10e3xhRorA[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScWkTaQNYSM&feature=channel&list=UL[/youtube]

Any ideas...?

[Bluefang]

I just had a quick look at your youtube video. You say the batteries are reading 2v when everything is connected? Where is that tested from, if its from the outputs from the batteries then your batteries are duds? Looking at the BEC your using are you sure that its rated for 50V+ as it looks like a tiny turnigy one which will only do up to 40V. Those fuses look like AC house hold ones, I doubt that they will help and might even cause problems. With the Throttle been a hall effect one it will not give you a full range of control as it has a different voltage range then a Pot throttle.

You say that a modified Gilera DNA was not fast enough for you....why did you not read more and listen to suggestions. Your current setup will maybe.....maybe be able to push out 4kw. Your batteries are very basic low power E-bike batteries with almost no ability to supply power fast, the "Motor", while it may work and it would be great for converting average <30mph scooters it is no way its going to be able to produce any more power then your batteries are going to be able to push out. So your building a bike with 4kw of power and using a controller with a 20kw potential.

But back to trying to get the motor to spin, as this will be good for a runabout vehicle. Check the voltage on the batteries, remove the breakers(they will not trip before shit blows up and you can pull the plugs from the batteries easily). Check that your precharge switch actually works. Check your BEC is rated for 50V operation(looks way to small in the vid) Use a un-modified servo tester to trail everything.

[Mozart]

You say the batteries are reading 2v when everything is connected? Where is that tested from, if its from the outputs from the batteries then your batteries are duds? Looking at the BEC your using are you sure that its rated for 50V+ as it looks like a tiny turnigy one which will only do up to 40V. Those fuses look like AC house hold ones, I doubt that they will help and might even cause problems. With the Throttle been a hall effect one it will not give you a full range of control as it has a different voltage range than a Pot throttle.

Hi Bluefang, yes if the batteries are DOA it will cost too much to send them back,so it's a difficult decision there.Maybe I'll open them test each cell separately and save some of them.Maybe also I just need to trickle charge them because they are lower than what they are supposed to be. I also was thinking if that didn't work out to buy Turnigy nano-tech batteries but I see many dead cells being send from Turnigy, and after what I already got I'm very skeptic with Lipos...

The BEC is the VHVBEC from Dimension Engineering 9-60V almost like the ESC (18-59V),the fuses could work or not but for now they are good as switches as well if somehow something goes bad...I'll test the servo tester alone first this time and add the throttle later.

One problem that I have it's about the motors wattage, fact is I'm not definitely sure about its power. I was thinking it was around 2000W, at ~48v with ~40amp draw.
So that's no problem for the Jetispin300 controller,it has a sustained current of 220amps so even if I was to draw this current it's ~10.5kw at 48v.

So, in the end I think I should get some nano-tech(cross fingers they work),buy a charger for them as well and test it...

[Bluefang]

Dont bother getting nano techs unless your just planing on buying a pair to test everything. the higher C rating is a waste compared to the cost. If you want a usable vehicle then your going to need a couple of KWh worth of batteries and i would highly sugest Zippy 20C 6S5AH. I have not had a single dud battery and i have seen many projects without seeing a single dud in the Zippy range of 20-25C batteries

Its sad to hear about the batteries been DOA. With the motor/alternator/starter you have atm are you able to weigh it? That should give you some idea of the power it can produce, I would think about 1kw continues per kg would be fairly high in the ball park seeing as it will not have the greatest cooling.

[marcexec]

Hi Mozart,

looks like a nice project you have going on there.
I thought about this myself and actually tested a DNA 50, but it is just too small (I am 193cm/6"4').

For testing / getting the motor to spin, just get some used 12v lead acid that is lying around somewhere and wire that up.
I second the motion for HK packs but would go LiFePo myself.

[Mozart]

I thought about this myself and actually tested a DNA 50, but it is just too small (I am 193cm/6"4').

Hahaha, yes I guess it is (I'm probably at the limit 180cm) and feels like riding a toy bike, but that makes it light and easy to handle too.And even at speeds of ~140kph it stays solid enough.

For testing / getting the motor to spin, just get some used 12v lead acid that is lying around somewhere and wire that up.
I second the motion for HK packs but would go LiFePo myself.

I was thinking if can use two 12v lead acid that I have spares for 24v but they're of different amp-hours...

Also an update on the batteries: I was very happy to find out that the LiFePo4 cells In the GM batteries were all giving 3.3 volts
and it seems like the BMS are faulty, so I'll be wiring them up without it.
The controller has low voltage protection any way and the new charger I bought (HobbyKing ECO8 150W 7A 8S ) will do also the balancing.
And to be able to use both the Capacitor Packs from Castle Creations(50V) I was thinking to make a pack of 8s-2p 20amph and one 5s-2p 20amph. And series connect them 13s-2p for fully charged at 3.6v each cell is: 46,8V 20amph and I'll be charging both packs separately(might need one more charger...).