k2orbust
10 W
- Joined
- Mar 27, 2011
- Messages
- 76
Long time lurker, first time poster. Here I will track progress on electrifying, and eventually solar-izing, a new Nazca Pioneer recumbent bike.
Background
My first ebike (2009) was a Stokemonkey kit on an Xtracycle longtail bike. It's still a good grocery getter and airport shuttle with insane climbing torque, but it's showing its age and gets appalling mileage--32 Wh/mile for a top speed around 21 mph.
My f̶i̶r̶s̶t̶ second recumbent (2010) was this Easy Racers Tour Easy I got for a coast-to-coast bike tour. The trip was cut short due to injury, but it's still my workout bike and I take it on occasional weekend trips.
Inspiration
Early this year I stumbled across the documentary of the 2018 Sun Trip race from France to China
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1LB0jPh7QQ) Studying the entrants, I was most taken by the twin 26" bike of Mickael Joguet. A solar canopy makes perfect sense in sunny California where I reside. I got to work studying motor and solar panel options, but the project lay dormant through summer and fall.
Design goals
The full vision is to make something to ride to South America and points beyond, but a year+ tour is not in the near future. In the mean time, this project could also replace a car on my 30 mile round trip commute--assuming we ever go back to working in offices after the pandemic. 30 miles at 30 mph is the second design target. This requires more motor power and more battery capacity than a pure solar tourer would, but it's a much closer and more concrete goal.
Here mission creep starts to set in. The most famous climb around San Jose is Mount Hamilton, reached by a 19 mile road at a steady 6% grade. But the real killer is the backside of the mountain, which climbs 1900 feet in 4.2 miles (8.6% average grade). I'd like to be able to cross the mountain in either direction without overheating or running out of juice.
Unlike Mickael Joguet, I plan to omit the trailer and let the solar panels overhang the bike, like Michel Olchewsky's 2019 Sun Trip entry. The weight savings seem too great to pass up! I'm a mechanical engineer by day, so I already have some fanciful ideas to pivot the panels and possibly even stow one over the other for tight quarters maneuvering (or windy days). But that is all for later.
Finally I'll make the bike as dirt-friendly as a recumbent can be, for non-technical fire roads and such.
Design resources
The design tools at ebikes.ca have been invaluable for evaluating the motor, motor controller, and battery options, as are Justin's YouTube videos. (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxJe_gygRGU)
Mark of solarE.bike has also done a great job blazing a trail and sharing what he has learned.
Parts in hand
I lost steam on this project over the summer, but was jolted back into activity when I learned Nazca Ligfietsen was winding down production. Dutch twin big wheeled touring recumbents seem to be an endangered species! The AZUB Max is the easiest similar bike to get in the USA, but the price is not good and they don't do aero handlebars. I missed the last of the Gaucho framesets, but was able to get my hands on the apple green Pioneer you see here. (Stand-in wheels for show, from another bike.) Compared to the newer Gaucho model, the Pioneer is limited to now-unfashionable 26" tires and doesn't break down as small for shipping. Then again, the price was right for what is regarded as a quality product.
Solar panels should rightly be the last thing to buy, but when I came across these Lightleaf rigid panels as surplus with no setup cost I snapped them right up. (Thanks to solarEbike for tipping me off to this vendor!) I think these are the same panels they make for teardrop trailers: https://droplet-trailer.com/product/solar-panel/ The curvature is a little excessive for my taste, but it helps make them hecka rigid, so much that I plan to use them as load-bearing elements in the solar canopy. Is the curvature why they are only rated 150 W vs. 170 W for the SunPower 6x8 flexible panel? More likely just lower-binned cells.
6x8 SunPower cells, ~8.5 lb each including 4 feet of 14 gauge wire:
Construction is polycarbonate in front of the cells, and carbon fiber with some kind of epoxy foam behind.
The next post will detail the parts that are not in hand, and the choices I'm still puzzling through. Hopes are to be up and running by springtime.
Background
My first ebike (2009) was a Stokemonkey kit on an Xtracycle longtail bike. It's still a good grocery getter and airport shuttle with insane climbing torque, but it's showing its age and gets appalling mileage--32 Wh/mile for a top speed around 21 mph.
My f̶i̶r̶s̶t̶ second recumbent (2010) was this Easy Racers Tour Easy I got for a coast-to-coast bike tour. The trip was cut short due to injury, but it's still my workout bike and I take it on occasional weekend trips.
Inspiration
Early this year I stumbled across the documentary of the 2018 Sun Trip race from France to China
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1LB0jPh7QQ) Studying the entrants, I was most taken by the twin 26" bike of Mickael Joguet. A solar canopy makes perfect sense in sunny California where I reside. I got to work studying motor and solar panel options, but the project lay dormant through summer and fall.
Design goals
The full vision is to make something to ride to South America and points beyond, but a year+ tour is not in the near future. In the mean time, this project could also replace a car on my 30 mile round trip commute--assuming we ever go back to working in offices after the pandemic. 30 miles at 30 mph is the second design target. This requires more motor power and more battery capacity than a pure solar tourer would, but it's a much closer and more concrete goal.
Here mission creep starts to set in. The most famous climb around San Jose is Mount Hamilton, reached by a 19 mile road at a steady 6% grade. But the real killer is the backside of the mountain, which climbs 1900 feet in 4.2 miles (8.6% average grade). I'd like to be able to cross the mountain in either direction without overheating or running out of juice.
Unlike Mickael Joguet, I plan to omit the trailer and let the solar panels overhang the bike, like Michel Olchewsky's 2019 Sun Trip entry. The weight savings seem too great to pass up! I'm a mechanical engineer by day, so I already have some fanciful ideas to pivot the panels and possibly even stow one over the other for tight quarters maneuvering (or windy days). But that is all for later.
Finally I'll make the bike as dirt-friendly as a recumbent can be, for non-technical fire roads and such.
Design resources
The design tools at ebikes.ca have been invaluable for evaluating the motor, motor controller, and battery options, as are Justin's YouTube videos. (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxJe_gygRGU)
Mark of solarE.bike has also done a great job blazing a trail and sharing what he has learned.
Parts in hand
I lost steam on this project over the summer, but was jolted back into activity when I learned Nazca Ligfietsen was winding down production. Dutch twin big wheeled touring recumbents seem to be an endangered species! The AZUB Max is the easiest similar bike to get in the USA, but the price is not good and they don't do aero handlebars. I missed the last of the Gaucho framesets, but was able to get my hands on the apple green Pioneer you see here. (Stand-in wheels for show, from another bike.) Compared to the newer Gaucho model, the Pioneer is limited to now-unfashionable 26" tires and doesn't break down as small for shipping. Then again, the price was right for what is regarded as a quality product.
Solar panels should rightly be the last thing to buy, but when I came across these Lightleaf rigid panels as surplus with no setup cost I snapped them right up. (Thanks to solarEbike for tipping me off to this vendor!) I think these are the same panels they make for teardrop trailers: https://droplet-trailer.com/product/solar-panel/ The curvature is a little excessive for my taste, but it helps make them hecka rigid, so much that I plan to use them as load-bearing elements in the solar canopy. Is the curvature why they are only rated 150 W vs. 170 W for the SunPower 6x8 flexible panel? More likely just lower-binned cells.
6x8 SunPower cells, ~8.5 lb each including 4 feet of 14 gauge wire:
Construction is polycarbonate in front of the cells, and carbon fiber with some kind of epoxy foam behind.
The next post will detail the parts that are not in hand, and the choices I'm still puzzling through. Hopes are to be up and running by springtime.