Well further developments...
I found a used castle creations 160 amp RC motor controller on ebay. I tried it out on several motors including the rewound currie motor and it worked fine under no load, but promptly burned out under a small load on Friday. There's $160 down the drain and my one and only attempt at using RC motor controllers for an EV project ends there! I'm pissed! I know people do it all the time, but lets face it EV grade motor controllers are a better choice. Worst case if you burn out the mosfets, they are replaceable. On an RC controller, they are all surface mount and virtually impossible to replace. As a result, I have purchased a Grinfineon controller which will be here in a few days. It's a basic irf4110 based controller that can run sensored or uncensored, but that's all I need for this scooter. Hopefully it's not a total POS.
Over the weekend further progress was made on this scooter. I want to add a full compliment of lights and a horn to it. My blue scooter more or less evolved into what it is today. I want to actually plan this thing out from the get go, rather than making changes as I go. As a result, I have started with 2 cables made of high temp 22 awg wire. One is 10 conductor and the other is 8 conductor. I have mapped out all the signals I need to control from the handlebars into those two cables. The cables are cut and the ends are tinned and ready for connecting to things.
So that means Batt+, batt-, load -, +12 volts, +5 volts, head/tail lights, side lights, l/r directionals, throttle, tempurature sensor, brakes and a few other things. The only extra cable will be for the speedo sensor at the wheel. Everything else will go into the battery box. I need to buy another handlebar switch cluster. I thought I had what I needed, but when I went to find it yesterday, I couldn't find what I wanted. I probably never ordered it and just thought I did. LOL.
I am waiting for some stainless steel set screws for the shunt so I can wrap that up in electrical tape. I haven't used a contactor before, but they are just a big switch. This ride will have a manual contactor so I can disconnect the battery from the rest of the scooter. The contactor has a 1k 10 watt resistor across its switch terminals to eliminate inrush surges. The only things that will be powered up behind the contactor are the watt meter. On that note, the watt meters I use are two way so I can use it to measure discharge and charge wattage so I have wired it in correctly for that purpose. On my blue scooter, the watt meter is inline with the motor controller and nothing else so total load is an unknown and I can't measure charging amp/hours.
On the subject of watt meters, I recently purchased one of these. It's functionally identical to the other watt meters I have been using for more than a year now, but with a few exceptions. The other watt meters had no setting in them for max and min voltage or max amp hours. This new watt meter does. As a result, the meter "knows" what full and empty should look like with out having to actually charge to full or discharge to empty to "teach it". The one I purchased came with a 50 amp shunt, but I'm replacing it with a 150 amp version for the Currie. It's physically the same size as the older watt meter and comes in a small plastic case that's mostly water tight already.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/122176087798?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT
I have also completed the battery pack. It is made of 3 10,000mah LIPO packs for 12S. I added a couple of pieces of plywood to the sides of the packs so the cells can't swell and then zip tied them together. The whole thing got wrapped in Kapton and then I added a BMS and more kapton tape. THe BMS is wrapped in Kapton separately from the battery pack and then wrapped again as part of the battery pack. I have 4 of these BMS's and originally used them on my blue scooter back when it ran off of 48 volts. They've been collecting dust for a year now. This BMS is a perfect solution for a smaller ride like the Currie. The battery pack terminates in two 6mm bullets that then go into the shunt/contactor. The output side of the shunt/contactor also have 6mm bullets for the motor controller. There is a deans T connector in parallel with the controller wires that will feed power to the lights and horn. I have probably 60 M/F deans connectors and they are not getting used for anything else so I use them for auxiliary power connectors for stuff. 15 amps is plenty for stuff like a bunch of LED lights.
I have also made a 24 position version of the back distribution block. I considered using the front block in the picture since it's already made, but I need 24 positions, not 16. Wiring this thing up will begin soon. I have the old brake levers from my blue scooter. They include brake switches. I have some small DC-DC converters coming. They are good for 60 volts in and whatever I set them to out at 2 amps. I'll use one for 5 volts and 3 in parallel for 12 volts. These converters are really small...1.5" by 3/4" so they hardly take up any space at all.
On other notes...I am probably going to get an 80-100 outrunner for this scooter from Lunacycles after a little while. The Currie motor is fine for now, but with the Grinfineon controller, I can run so much more wattage and passing cars on a tiny ride like this is hilarious.
I've been groaning over the battery box in this thing since I got it, but never came to any consensus on what to do about it. It is open on both ends and wastes about 40% of the space it could be using. I want a battery box that keeps dirt and water out and uses all of the available space it can take up. I haven't built it yet, but the front will be curved and the back square to match the steel frame. I'll make the ends out of wood and then get some diamond plate aluminum sheet for the belly and long sides. Bending and cutting the aluminum will happen on a break and shear I have access to. The two ends will be made of stacks of plywood that are then cut to fit the shape of the frame ends.