2WD Semi-Recumbent Recycled-Parts Cargo eBike: "CrazyBike2"

[amberwolf]

I can imagine it would be cheaper than a month or two of celphones. But still more than I can afford (unless I ditch internet first for a few months to get the money.

Besides, if I can make this work with salvaged parts, it's more fun and better for my general goals of recycling/repurposing/reusing.


It's been ages (two decades?) since I worked with my ham radio skillzorz and made antennae, so this should be interesting to try. Possibly frustrating, but interesting.


I found one of the antenna mounting poles someone gave me a while back; somewhere here I also have a motor and contorl that goes with it that is supposed to be able to rotate a typical old TV roof antenna on it, from a dial in the house. If I can make that work again, I could use that to tweak the aim of the thing from inside the house for stuff that's purely horizontal aiming. So if I can find mulitple points along the same "horizon" for the antenna, I can simply rotate it on a vertical axis. To do *htat*, I would have to redo it's mounting so that it mounts on a post that sticks out from a vertical post at an angle equivalent to whatever is needed to point the antenna down below the horizon rather than upward at the sky.



It is now thundering and raining again; Loki woke my by crawling up on my bed in terror at the noise. Poor doggie is almost as bad as Bonnie was about that sort of thing; at least he doedsn't usually wet himself over it now. (and he doesn' bark or howl at such things like she sometimes would).

Now I can't sleep again because the window ac keeps freezing up from the high humidity and I keep having to turn it off for a few minutes to thaw. I thought my sensor mod fixed that but apparently not while it's actually raining. I also fixed some of the drainiage problems by peeling down the metal edging at the bottom of the "tray" of the unit, at the rear outisde edge, so the water can drain at that low point--before that it could be as much as a centimeter of water inside. I also tilted it more so it runs off faster to the outside, but this has caused the styrofaom inside it around the fan to shift, so the fan ticks on the foam and the water pools at the back edge of the foam in the fan cutout, so I will hvave to take the unit apart to fix that by punching a little hole at the base of the foam for drainage, and maybe "file" some of it off to prevent rubbing.

In the meantime it is very annoying as I can hear it over the boxfan and whitenoise generators, and it si very hard to sleep with it distracting me. I might be able to sleep thru it if it started after I slept, but not get to sleep with it going, so far. Once I'm tired enough I'm sure I can...


Anyway...I'm ramblingg...too tired. At lewast my teeth aren't bugging me right now.

 

[Solcar]

If you haven't tried it yet, pack flouride toothpaste onto the tooth because there is a chance that it will harden the surface of the dentin still left there enough to toughen it up some and shield it some, too. I have had very good results with the flouride doing that in my toothaches. Dunno, though!

 

[amberwolf]

I guess it's wortha shot. can't hurt much worse tahn antyhign else I've tried so far.

Tonight I beat the rain home; I was here about an hour before it finally came sprinkling and then pouring down. Of course, the dogs that like the rain least were outside at the moment the real pouring began...if Loki wore pants they'd need to be changed, after the first thunderbooms. :lol:

glad it is raining, but is kind of annoying, as I wanted to start cutting and grinding some metal for the Looooooooongbike
http://www.endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=43328
extreeeeeeeme cargo bike idea, which I decided I really want to build and see if it works or not.

 

[Solcar]

Wow, Loki.

Yeah, for my incidents of tooth pain, getting the fluoride toothpaste to stay on the spot as long as possible before coming off due to saliva or eating worked the best.

It seems like the rainy season there is earlier than I would expect. For some reason I would think it would be in more like mid to late fall.

I hope that you can do more with the new cargo bike soon.

 

[amberwolf]

Loki is a sad case sometimes--I am glad I never met his original owners, becuase one of us wouldn't have survived the encounter. He's much better now than 3-4 years ago when I got him, and he did not even know how to be a dog (or anythign, really), and was terrified of everyone and everything. I have never had a rescue that bad off before.


Today I was recharging bike batteries and stuff, and recharged the lighting pack (Ultrabatery) that I use on the Fusin Test Bike, for a possible trip to pick up a lawnmower off Freecycle (trip didnt' happen due to other thijngs). I used the Turnigy charger from Bikefanatic on it, meaning to keep an eye on it to stop it at 16.5V like it says on teh pack, but I got distracted trying to get the airless tube out of an old tire/wheel without damaging any of them, and it got up to 16.8V.

So I immediately hooked it up to my CB2 headlight and turned it on, and the headlight burned out. Ooops. I had flipped it onto the lowbeam, and meant to do the highbeam (whcih I have wired for both filaments in parallel) for higher load to bring the voltage down quick, as that's 6A+. So I still ahve highbeam, which worked when I flipped the switch to it, and drained it down over a couple of minutes to 16.3V. But I like having high and lowbeams, it's been useful a number of times, and it give sme a backup in case one burns out on the road (never happene4d yet, but if I only have one it will, of course). So I spent another hour or more finding the other headlight and replacing it.


I never could get the airless tube out---this process was relatively easy on the one I used on DGA, but this tire is better seated on it's bead on the rim; I will probably have to cut the tire off--I don't want to because it is still good, if knobby, and might be needed later for something--or I could give it to someone else that needs one, perhaps. Is a waste to ruin it. So I did not get the airless tube into CB2's rear tire yet, and I really want to do this so I don't have to deal with flats anymore on it at really bad times.


i also spent another hour digging thru my stuff to find some brake arm studs to weld onto the Suntour fork so I can use a 24" wheel on it and still use rim brakes (since the crappy disc brakes don't seem to be fixable; I dunno what happened to them but they just don't grab right anymore, maybe it's the rotor; have to modfy another one to fit it). I also still need to locktite the threads on the rotary-adjustable inner pad on the caliper so it doesnt' spin in and squeal/try to grab. For now i still have that inner pad off entirely. I keep forgetting to do this and retry adjusting the caliper to retest the disc brakes.

I want to use the 24" wheel because I can put another airless tube in that (don't have another for the 26"), and because it should give more stability to the bike steering by changing the trail and rake closer to the way I orgiginally built CB2 with. it is less stable with it as it is now--a slightly longer/taller front fork/wheel setup caused deathwobbles that crashed me on the track last year and injured me. But mostly it's for the airless tube thing to no longer have to deal with any kind of flats on this bike, even though i really don't lke airless tubes at all.


On a side note, when I took the bike out front to ensure I had adjusted the headligth alignment correctly, I found that even at only 8pm-ish the streetlight on the corner by my house was already off for the night. It has been turning off earlier and earlier over the last year or two, and more streetlights around the area are either never coming on or are also turning off earlier. i suppose the city is trying to save money by cutting power costs, but this is decreasing safety on the streets, both for visibilty of pedestrians/cyclists/cars that forget their lights (happens an awful lot here) and for crime deterrence.

The one advantage of them being off so early is that it's a lot darker in teh sky over the city by 10pm to 11pm, and stargazing is really easy with hundreds of stars visible with the lesser light pollution, especially on less humid days with no cloud or ice cover at night. A couple of nights ago I ended up wasting at least an hour or two starig thru the telescope when i couldn't sleep, actually able to see Orion nebula clearly (usually I can't see it for the light pollution0, and seeing the whole beautiful mess of stars in the Pilieades, Jupiter and 3 of the 4 Gallileans, details on the earltlit almsot-new-moon (nrmally you can't even see anything but the sunlit sliver because of the light pollution and glowing sky). I was so covered in mosquito bites that I REALLY couldn't sleep afterwards, even with a coating of aloe vera (whcih usually drives off mosquitoes but not this time).


yesterday (thursday) I got some good deals at Goodwill and American Discount Foods, but I spent more total than i intended, and so my budget is blown for this month. I am hoping for a few extra hours in the next week to make up for it, at work. I did get two cordless drills (one B&D 4.8V, one Harbor Freght 18V) for $1 each, along with a few nice cold-weatehr and rain gear stuff for only $26, and both drills work and batreris charge up ok using the Turnigy on NiCd setting. (neither has a charger with it). Tomorrow i hope to go pick up from a Freecycle post a good working electric lawnmower that is just like my favorite one I used to have till the motor came apart inside one day, years back (a few months before I started my ebike quest, actually). It just needs a new blade, and I can either regrind sharpen the one it has or dig out the one off my old mower, which while rusty is probably still perfectly good. Might even know wher eit is but I'm not sure after the disastrous yard cleanup forced by the city last year.

Pics of the goodwill finds are in the most recent cold-weather/rain gear thread:
http://www.endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=638149#p638149

 

[amberwolf]

Another bit of gear found for jjust under $5 at Goodwill, in the halloween costumes:


It's a motorcycle jacket, with open-weave stuff to stay cool, and padding on the back, shoulders, elbows, wrists, etc., incluidng hard plastic skid pads under the surface on the forearms/elbows.


I'm sure it's not the greatest, and it's sunfaded a bit, but it has the reflective stripes (whcih are very dark gray when not lit by the flash), and the armor it has is better than no armor. It is an XL which is too bitg for me, but I can fix that easier than one that is too small. The only "big" issue with the size difference is that the shoulder pads are on the front of my shoulders, not on top of them, so I will probably have to make cinches for the underarms/back area to adjust these down to the right places and keep them there in a slide.


Brand is "Fieldsheer", from 2003. it doesn't ahve the inner liner, whatever that is supposed to look like or do, but I didn't get it for the warmth--just the protection, and actually think I would ratehr NOT have a liner, if its' just for warmth. I can wear another jacket underneath if I have to. I found this pic here:
http://www.goldwingcountry.com/detail.cfm?model_ID=2&Category_ID=72&manufacturer_ID=736&product_ID=56720
of what it would look like if worn:
View attachment 4

It's only issue is that it stinks of old sweat, very strongly. I sprayed it down with the last of the Nature's Miracle pet-odor-remover I had left, and that seems to have greatly reduced this; it can take a whiile to work (enzymes) so it shoudl improve even more overnight. I'm wearing it right now just ot see how warm it is, and while it's warmer than I'd prefer it's not frying me, even just sitting here in the bedroom at a bit under 80F. I'm sure while riding with wind on me thru it's mesh, I'd be fine. Be nicer if it wasnt' black; not sure if I can fix that without degrading the cloth or stitches, though.

I had hoped I'd find the pants that went with it at the same goodwill, but either they werent' donated with it, they went to a different one, or were already bought by someone else (or maybe arent' put out yet). I'll keep looking during halloween season, as it is the most likely time I will find this kind of stuff there. Anyway, for $5 it's good enough for me. I might not need it for everyday riding, but if it's cool enough to wear I will, as it will save me some skin in the event of a skid. I will also be able to use it for any racing events I ever make it to in the future, if anyone ever holds some close enough for me to get to.




Also, last week I went with a friend to pick up a 15-year-old B&D corded electric lawnmower, that still works fine. It's a newer version of the one I liked so much before I got into electric bikes, whose motor blew up when it's magnets came unglued and shreded the windings one day a few months before I went ebike-questing. This one appears to be a better design, and has the mulcher plug (which I had to hack one up for on the old one), as well as the bag. I much prefer to mulch the cuttings back into the ground, so this is good. Only thing "wrong" with it is the blade was rusty, and a quick mow of the backyard cleaned that right off. Might need to sharpen it later, but it works fine for now.






Still working on getting the airless tube out of the tire. I got it started tonight, but had to set it aside for now as my hands/finger joints hurt too much. I guess the weather is changing again.


Also, Nana decided it was time for me to stop working on the yard; sitting on my feet whenever I stopped for a second. I managed to snap this pic just before she plopped down across my feet for a tummy rub, holding hte camera at arms length and pionted as close to at her as I could manage, which almost never works:



And Hachi was very bored, deciding to crush the lantana by the back porch and chew on her rope toy. The lantana is pretty flattnened out now. :/ I'm sure it will survive, though, since they won't eat it, at least. :lol:



.

 

[The fingers]

Great find on the jacket, most of mine I get for free via road kill. I usually have to soak them overnight in Tide just to get the grease out, which would probably ruin the reflective stripes on one like yours (it happened to me before when I soaked one overnight, the stripes looked ok but complelely lost their reflectivity). Fake fur such as on insulated/detatchable hoods also is ruined by machine washing or soaking, unless you like a ratty looking dreadlock effect. :lol:

 

[Solcar]

It's super how you gave Loki a new life.

8) A corded B&D mower. It's newer than mine and I just ordered a new blade because mine got a huge dent in it from a rock this summer. Your blade looks the same as my 18". I stuffed newspaper in the outlet chute, held in place by a piece of wire to enable mulching, so it's interesting you should allude to doing something to block yours, too.

 

[amberwolf]

IIRC my old B&D had a right-side outlet, and IIRC I'd used a piece of plastic sign cut and trapped between the body and the spring-loaded output director. I'd ahve to move some stuff to get to the carcass to see, assuming it's still on there. (the motor isn't; I took it off to try to rewind it and misplaced it after I found the shattered magnets couldn't be replaced with anything I had or could find).

I don't worry about dents from rocks and stuff; I just use the angle grinder to sharpen those areas. Years back, I used to use a file, but since I have it, the grinder is MUCH faster and leaves me more time to do other things, and doesnt' hurt my hands as much to use. I have yet to have to ever buy a new blade for any mower--the mower usually diies first, or starts having plastic wheels fall apart, or whatever.

(that first B&D was the best one I'd ever had, though, with little trouble right up until BANG...the old Chieftain (I think) was next best, but it was a gas mower and I didn't much like that part...eventually something broke inside that needed new parts I couldn't just fix or hack, and I used my Ryobi weedeater for a good while until my dad moved and gave me the old B&D...Iv'e had several others since then, and they were pretty well junk even before I got them used from various people, and I hadn't been able to do a whole lot to fix them up very well).


@the fingers: "from roadkill"? That doesnt' sound very happy....

 

[Solcar]

Good to hear that so much can be ground off a blade without messing with its performance too much. Mine has the side discharge and it has a wooden lever where the plastic on/off switch lever was and has had that ever since I rescued it from the curb many a year ago. When I put new brush assemblies in I disconnected the electric brake because that was causing huge arcs on the brushes.

 

[The fingers]

Road kill, dumpster dive, trash pick up day; it's hard to pass up a good junk pile. :lol: When we were kids, the trash man would take us to the dump where we could scrounge for coins, etc. Then being a surf bum in the 60's and 70's we hitch hiked up and down the California coast for months with no food or money, except for panhandling and working for food, milking the camp sites for a handout, and raiding the avocado and lemon groves. Hippies would pick us up on their way to SF and drop us off wherever the waves were good. Habits of the hobo life are hard to break. :lol:

 

[amberwolf]

Road kill, dumpster dive, trash pick up day; it's hard to pass up a good junk pile. :lol:

^^this^^
equals truth.

 

[Solcar]

Indeed, it seems the best stuff is free, like my electric lawnmowers and bicycles. The free software for computers tends to be better, in my experience, too.

 

[amberwolf]

My dogs were free, too. :lol:

 

[amberwolf]

Thanks to GMUseless, it should be easier to get good pics of things for documenting modifications/troubelshooting/etc; see my camera choice dilemma thread for details:


Thanks to Dogman, I will finally have a(n easy to use) 20" wheel/rotor for the 9C/GM/MXUS stators I have, whcih I have wanted to try out on the bikes for a while to see for myself how the smaller wheel affects power usage vs startup from stops vs heat, etc. I have twice started to figure out how to lace one up in a smaller wheel, but kept screwing up and never got it done usably, plus a 24" was the smallest i'd managed to try so far anyway. It should arrive soon.


Since it is so much smaller than CB2's present 26" rear wheel, then I will only either be able to ride straight, or i will have to take the cargo pods off to be able to turn in anything like a normal radius. :lol: It also might cause the death shimmy again, with the geometry change....


But there is a solution: Make what amount to giant torque plates that extend below the present dropouts, bolting to them, and hold the axle of the wheel so it's abotu 3" lower than where it would be without them. I have to draw them up and see how I'll make them, but I think I have the steel to do it with, and it should be fairly simple to grind them, and bolt them onto the bike and the wheel to them.


Another advantage of this size wheel is that I won't ahve any tire sticking up over the pods, so I can put stuff all the way across them.


But ultimately, the wheel is intended to go onto the Loooooooongbike as it's first drive wheel, until i can verify the frame's design and geometry, at which point I'll build a middrive for it out of most likely the powerchair motor and the NV autoshifting hub.


Anyhow, we'll see how things go once the rotor/wheel arrives.

 

[amberwolf]

Ok, I went back into the simulator with what I think are the right characteristics; it doesn't seem right though; I may be doing something different than I did before. I didn't do a screenshot or write it down, though, at the time, so here's what i comesup with now.

System A is the way it should work with the smaller wheel, System B is how it should be working with the present wheel.

But it does explain why the motor gets so hot on my work commute, with repeated complete stops and starts.

I'm still confused, though: Peak power (assuming htis is what actually is output by the motor to the ground, not power consumed by the battery) presently is around 1900W, at just above 18MPH, whcih is about where I feel the ability of the bike to very quickly accelerate start to happen (what I have previously called the "powerband" but is probably not really that). One issue is that it shows also that I get a lot less acceleration by that point, but that is definitely not how it reacts.

However that is at an efficiency of only about 60%, so that means it's about 3200W pulled from the battery at that point, and almost 1300W is being used to roast the motor with heat.

The thing is, I'm not seeing high power consumption at that point, only about 400-450W or so, so either I am totally misunderstanding the simulator (again) or the simulator is (or I am) doing something wrong.

It reports overheat in a couple of minutes, but I cruise at that speed easily without melting things. It is the startups where it gets really really hot (AFAICT), and it is definitely the startups where I have high (4.5KW+) peaks of power usage, just for a moment until I get past a few MPH.

Predicted Wh/mile is also way way off, by a factor of more than five! It says I'd get something like 160Wh/mile at 18.3MPH. Not even close to what I get.

Other issues, too. Anyway, I figure I have got to be doing something wrong, so if anyone's got an idea, lemme know.

Cuz I R Confuzed.


I had to chop up the screenshot to fit it in the width allowed.

 

[Alan B]

The graph shows full throttle. If you read the 18mph point that's what happens as it accelerates through 18 mph. To see what happens at 18mph you would adjust the throttle to find equilibrium at that speed, then look at the data.

 

[amberwolf]

maybe that's it. Although, I think even if i hold full throttle thru 18mph it doesn't pull that much power.... I guess I"ll have to play with it some more and then compare to actual ride tests, figure out all of what I amd oing wrong.

the 20" wheel/rotor arrived today, so hopefully experiments will commence soon. have another project i have to do too, for someone else, but not allth e parts are here yet.

 

[amberwolf]

First day of week's vacation: Decided to do a kind of a range test on the 16s 20Ah main ammocan pack (which I keep accidentally referring to as 15s) and a nice Sunday drive. Grocery shopping was needed, too, so set my destination as Winco at 59Th & Bell. But I realized I'd forgotten the coupons by the time I got about 2.5 miles in, where I had to drop off some keys I'd forgotten to leave at work , so I stopped at the dollar store and then over to Fry's at 35th & Peoria before heading back home for the coupons.

Since by the time I got home I'd used up about 7 miles of range, i figured I'd better either recharge or add on my other ammocan pack (14s 10Ah), and since it was a lot faster to just add on the other pack, well.... here's pics from the Winco parkking lot of the bike with the pack strapped in the middle of that black V-reinforcement added when I'd broken the frame a little while back. Groceries are all loaded up in the pods, not visible since I didn't get enough to do more than just fill them up.
View attachment 1



I still havent' fixed the buttons on the CA (part of the plan this week) so I don't know all the other trip statistics, but I cruised at 17-20MPH wherever possbile, which was most of the trip once past Metrocenter area. There were some detours along the way, such as riding by a friend's house that was on the way, in case he happened to be home, just to say hi (but he wasn't), so total was something like 27-28 miles. (no exact figure because I forgot to note the starting mileage, so I approximated it via google maps tracing my route including detours).

Total Ah used will have to be filled in after I recharge it, because I can't remember my starting point and the CA hasn't been reset in a while(about 250 miles since the buttons failed), so various tests and other things have created a 30-something Ah offset. Will be quite a while, since the charger presently in use is only 2A.

At 56.2V under 400W load, it was getting pretty close to the LVC of 56V (3.5v/cell) on the last 3/4 mile to home, so I switched over to the smaller ammocan pack from there to home. Oddly enough, probably because of the voltage sag of the smaller (10Ah vs 20Ah) pack, and the two less series cells (14s vs 16s), WOT from a complete stop didn't feel any different between the two, nor acceleration speed up to cruising. Probably is a difference, but not really noticeable. Is definitely noticeable when the 20Ah pack is full, though. :lol: But I sort of expected the full 10Ah pack to beat the mostly-empty 20Ah pack noticeably, if not hands-down, yet it didn't.

Before charging, I checked balance on the cells of the big pack, and they were all fine at 3.52V each, for a total resting pack voltage of 56.3V. I've been watching the balance during charge, too, and they are all within 0.01V(flickering) of each other, same as the whole time I've been running it.

Anyway, there werent' any problmes on the trip, though I got a number of really-slow-passing cars while the passengers (and sometimes drivers) took pics or stared, and had a few people gawkking at it while it was parked at Winco, but nobody wanted to talk or ask about it, just stare from a distance as if they thought it might explode. :lol:


As expected, for the ride home from Winco, with mostly just slowly accelerating up to 20 and cruising there for half a mile to a mile depending on traffic lights/etc.), the motor did not get that hot; was extremely warm, sometimes rather hot, each time I stopped and I had a chance to reach back and touch the case or the coils thru the vents, but nowhere near the usual too-hot-to-touch with the smell of melting plastic I usually get on my work commutes because of the frequent stopping/starting in traffic. Once I reaached the metrocenter area and all the frequent stops, the motor began to smell and was too hot to touch pretty much every chance i got to check it.

By the time I got home I decided I'd feel better if I ran the water from the garden hose thru it while spinning it off-ground for a couple of minutes, until it was just pretty dang warm instead of too hot to touch at all and really smelly. I just let it spin at WOT until all the water I could see was spun off of it.


I have plans to do something about testing that 20" wheel above, but it looks like that won't happen tonight. I'm a lot more tired than I thougth I would be, between the yard work and dog play earlier, and the trip. (I dozed off once typing this up already).



Oh, one note about the bike rack at Winco. As you can see in the pics, it is just past the line where carts can't go, their wheels lock up there. So is about 1/4 to perhaps 1/3 of the parking lot for cars (whcih is all just for Winco). That's pretty stupid--I give an F to whoever planned that one out. Normally i park the cart right next to the bike and unload into the boxes, but this time I had to DRAG the cart there because the wheels locked up a few feet before I could reach the bike (about where you see the other cart sitting in one of the pics). Next time I think I will just park under the shaded area, where one other bike was locked up on a newspaper stand, and take advantage of the shade as well as actually be able to get my groceries to the bike itself without damaging their cart and marking up their sidewalk with it''s wheel rubber.

 

[amberwolf]

It took 17.61Ah to recharge the pack, which is about what I should get out of the 3.5V to 4.15V voltage range--about 88% of the total Ah capacity. If I discharge further down to 3.4V (or less) and up to 4.2V, I could get more out of the pack, but at the cost of lifespan. This is good enough for now.


OH, and it's a 3A charger, not 2A (the 14s charger is a 4A). I need to work up that Artesyn PSU so I can series it with the big Sorenson, so I can charge this pack in a more reasonable time when I have to discharge it this far. This took more than 8 hours to recharge, maybe 9 or 10 (I forget when i started and I had dozed off several times before it finished).

 

[texaspyro]

but nobody wanted to talk or ask about it, just stare from a distance as if they thought it might explode. :lol:

You mean it didn't? Will wonders never cease? A day without AmberDisaster is like a day without sunshine... :wink:

 

[amberwolf]

Well, today might make up for it, htough it would still ahve to be partly cloudy cuz it isnt' a real disaster (yet).


I forgot to get beef on sale at Fry's yesterday so I went back for it today, and the rear end of the bike felt different after a while, almost at destination. I poked and prodded since I didnt[' see anything obvious, and foudn the spokes are getting loose. That's a bad sign, since I don'tthink the nipples are turning.

It is more likely that either the spokes are stretching (more) or the cracks in some of the nipple holes in the rim are spreadiing and allowing the rim to buckle inwards, releasing tension on some of the spokes. I couldn't see exactly which it might be while I was there, and have been busy since I got back until now (sitting down to eat another few bites and rest a bit), so havent' beena ble to get in there and take a really good look.

I'm afraid that when I retension it, the nipples will come thru the rim. I'm tempted to see if I can find some washers first, and feed them into the inner wall of the doublewall rim thru the valve hole, workign them around to each spoke hole in turn and getting them between the nipple and the rim, but this will be a LOT of work and at least several hours' time. I'd be better off relacing it into a different rim, assuming I have spokes that will fit (or see if I can get Karma's method to work, unlike the first time).

So if the rim does have problems liek I expect, I will probably spend the time to make those extension plates for the 20" wheel, and get that installed on the bike, sooner than planned.


Oh, and there was something else, but i forgot it as soon as I started typing this edit.

 

[amberwolf]

I didnt' feel all that well yesterday, so I didn't get much done. Today, I got the controller for Miguerillart setup and tested on CrazyBike2:
http://www.endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=44226

In the process, I discovered that I should be able to turn down the current on the Methods 18FET quite a bit and still get about the same startup torque. Presently it's over 80A peaks, but the other controller is only about 56A peak and still has nearly as good a startup torque.

So I may be able to take out one of the shunts in the Methods controller and still easily get enough power out of it, *and* reduce the heating of the motor, which may be caused not so much by just the current but by saturation of the iron and resultant heating. At least, thats' my present theory. Don't know how I can test if it is or is not saturation yet.

 

[amberwolf]

Swapped 9C 2807 stator out of the 26" into the 20' wheel, and installed the tire and tube (fortunately a really thick type as I can't find my one "spare" slime protector strip) off one of those baby jogger stroller wheels that someday will be part of a trike. Someday.

There's a little rust on the stator, probably from the times I've cooled the stator off with water after tests here at home that get it really really hot. Magnets have some oxidation as well, though it is white presumably from the nickel coating. Not a big deal yet. The windings still look pristine and original.









I forgot to look at the 26" rim for cracks whiel I was taking pics; I'll have to go back and check that.


Installed, it has as expected so little clearance between ground and bottom of cargo pods that I can barely make a turn in the same radius as a car, as I can't hardly tilt it at all:


Looks kinda funny, too:
View attachment 1

Both rides below are just around the neighborhood, lots of complete stops and starts.

Then I took it out and tested it using the still-mounted VP1000 controller for Miguerillart, and it definitely has faster takeoff/more startup torque than with the 26", althoguh I haven't any test equpiment ot quantify it. It takes about 4 seconds to accelerate to 20MPH from a complete stop, which is about 2 seconds faster than with the Methods controller on the 26" wheel. Stats below:
66Vstart
65.7Vrest
62.8Vmin
0.257Ah
16.6Wh
48.3Amax
38.6Wh/mile
0.473miles
21.6MPHmax
12.6MPHavg
2m35s
The motor was a little warm after the ride, but not hot, though the controller was still very warm, almost hot. I waited a little while for the motor to cool back down before the next stage.

Then I swapped teh Methods 18FET back in, and retested. Accleration was noticeably better, and on dirt or my sidewalk I could *almsot* get the rear wheel to break traction, but it kept re-grabbing immediately after breaking loose. 0-20MPh in just a hair over 3 seconds, which is twice as good as with a 26" wheel, all else the same.
65.7Vstart
65.0Vrest
59.1Vmin
0.742Ah
46.5Wh
115.5Amax
43.7Wh/mile
1.006miles
24.3MPHmax
13.4MPHavg
4m45s
The motor was very hot, but not too hot to touch the windings ro case, and the cotnroller was very warm, almost hot.

Max off ground speed with a 20" wheel on 16s is ~35MPH.

Most surprisingly there were no shimmies or any other problems due to geometry, other than not being able to tilt far enough over to turn easily, and lots of scraping of the pods on the ground. :lol:

So, now I guess I just need to make those plates to put the wheel about 2-3" lower, to allow turning with the pods still on there.


And I should go ahead and open up the Methods controller and clip a shunt, since I don't need 110A+ battery current and goodness knows what phase currents. I think that the VP1000 is sufficiently powerful to do what I want, at <60A battery, if only it were not a soft-start (ramping up acceleration) rather than immediate hard acceleration, so clipping a shunt in the Methods controller will help with heat and efficiency and still let me get the acceleration I'm after.

 

[amberwolf]

I clipped one of the three shunts in the Methods 18FET, and it actually can peak MORE current, at 192A. That doesn't make sense to me.

Howeve,r it's definitley less phase current, the controller doesn't get all hot now, and neither does the motor (used to get meltyplasticsmell hot, now it's just a bit on the hot side after a bunch of hard launches), and the motor is WAY quieter at startup now--it used to be incredibly "grindy", probably from phase currents shaking the coils and vibrating the whole motor trying to get it started spinning, now it is nearly as quiet as the 1000W geared fusin on the Fusin Test Bike.


I did a little over 10 mile test drive, to get a handle on the new geometry and handling, and I am getting fairly good at not scraping the pods in turns, but I'll still need to make those extensions to raise the back of the bike up for practicality.


I didn't remember to write down the CA settings, but Wh/mile is about 29, took about 300Wh total, 4.7Ah, about 15MPH average, 23MPH max once getting across a few lanes of traffic to get out of their way to make a left turn.


Accleration is about 4 sec 0-20MPH, and is smooth and noiseless (none of that vibration at various speeds i used to get in the 15MPH and 20MPH speeds on the 26" wheel). The bad part is it's so smooth I have to keep an eye on the speedo because I could overshoot 20 and easily keep going to wahtever my max speed turns out to be. :lol:

Except for making sharp turns this is more fun than it used to be. Once I can make normal turns again it'll be too much fun and I'm going to get myself in trouble.