Electrifying a Lance Cali Classic 125 (Honda Joker Clone)

Higherwire

1 µW
Joined
Aug 7, 2022
Messages
4
Location
Tempe, AZ
Hey all, I started a company that repurposes lithium batteries for stationary energy storage applications. Since many of the batteries we receive are from scooters and e-bikes, we’ve refurbished a few to go back into scooters and e-bikes for several employees. I recently found a cherry Lance Power Cali Classic with a blown GY6 engine. And while I have plenty of experience with ICE that meant it would’ve been cheap and easy to rebuild, that kind of goes against the grain of what we do. So we’re going to build a shop scooter for local events and pickup/deliveries.

Thankfully a lot of the prep work has been done by JimVonBaden in this Vespa build. That includes replacing the integrated cantilever swing arm and switching to hydraulic rear disc, which is our exact same scenario. Our plan is a 5kW QS hub motor and controller, which will leave plenty of room in the middle for battery. This is a cruiser so unsprung weight isn’t a high concern.

How we picked her up:
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How she sits now
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That’ll buff out?
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This is the engine mount, which allows for some additional rotation beyond the engine/swing arm itself. Might replace this with a bar welded to the rails with tabs for the custom swing arm. Really going to have to think about how we do this since the frame rails are 10” apart and we’d need a 15” long bolt if we simply went through the existing tabs.
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Should be a fun scooter. We've found a cheap swing arm that we'll strengthen a bit and add shock mounts. Dimensions appear to be what we need, will need to weld to the frame a cross member with mounting tab and modify the ends for pinch bolts.
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We've been having a helluva time finding an electronic throttle for 1" handlebars. I believe there was a converter in the Vespa build, I'll find that link and investigate. Also need to source protection for the high-voltage circuit.

QS motor, controller and gauge are on order. Also ordered some other bits:
-72v to 12v 20a buck converter
-6-fuse panel
-5v dual USB port

Leaning toward this for the rear disc setup:
-Master cylinder pair (couldn't find anything in natural finish like the front brake, so we'll match them)
-Rear brake caliper
-Brake line (need to verify length)
 
It has been a really long time, but she’s finally up and running! Happy to offer up more photos, wiring diagrams and answers to any questions.

I’m sure the first is, would I do this again? The answer is probably not simply due to the work involved making a custom swing arm. That said, we are definitely going to do a proper motorcycle in the future because this thing is an absolute riot even if it’s not finished yet.
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Motor and Controller
We decided on a QS Motor 12” 5kW hub motor with Votol VM-150 controller. The controller requires power input from the “ignition” switch and a latching button that acts as a sort-of kill switch.

Battery
We manufacture batteries for a whole host of applications including e-bikes and scooters, so naturally we built the batteries for this particular project. The battery is actually three separate refurbished packs that didn’t meet capacity threshold on test. We’re simply using them to test for now since we don’t have a ton of extra time to design and build a pack to fit under the floorboard. The batteries are ~20Ah (1440 Wh) each for a total of 72v 60aH = 4320 Wh. These are capable of ~3C discharge, although they each have 30a BMS boards and 40a fuses. Believe me, we’ve popped fuses and BMSes hammering on it during testing. Suffice it to say the actual battery and protection will be sized to handle the 200a required of it.

That said, I’m really not sure how we will be able to fit more than 3kWh on the machine. The floorboard area is capable of 2kWh absolute max, and we might be able to fit a little bit more above and in front of the rear wheel. But we’re going to have to get creative unless we modify the floorboard to fit a similarly-sized pack to the 3 we’re testing with.

Swing Arm
Because the engine and gearbox also functioned as the swing arm, we had to find and modify our own to mount the hub motor. This took a few days of cutting and welding, cutting and welding once we found a swing arm that was close to what we needed on Amazon. We sourced a bolt and brass bushings from eBay, then welded in a crossmember to mount it to the frame. We also had to weld together flanges for pinch bolts to hold the hub motor/wheel in place.

The swing arm is an inch or two shorter than the GY6, which pushed the wheel into the plastic wheel well with the stock spring. Solution: add cheap aluminum spacers from Amazon to lift it 1-2”. While not ideal both aesthetically and performance-wise, it’s far cheaper and easier than adding a second spring.

12v System
The 12v system consists of horn, headlight, brake light, turn signals, a 5v USB charger. We used an inexpensive buck converter to step down voltage to the 12v system, which is switched using the key (72v in). If you’ve wired one bike you’ve wired them all.

Cockpit and Switches
The cockpit consists of a digital gauge switched via the key (72v in). It has a single (white) wire in from the controller, rather than CAN. It also has turn signal and high-beam inputs, so it can show battery SOC, speed, gear, and amp draw or regen charge. We made a simple bracket to mount. Purchased from QS.

The throttle and switches were all purchased from QS as well. We couldn’t find anything that fit 1” handlebars so we also picked up a set of cheap 7/8” motorcycle handlebars off of Amazon as well as adapters to mount them with the stock 1” risers. The right switches are gear selector (1/2/3), head light on/off and a momentary switch for boost mode, which is essentially just a 4th gear. We originally connected the momentary switch to reverse but couldn’t get it to work, even when we grounded the reverse wire; we briefly played with the software but haven’t gotten into why reverse isn’t working just yet.

The left-hand switches are high/low beam, turn signals and horn. Pretty straightforward.

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Brakes
We ended up ordering a brake disk off of QS motor. We then found a rear caliper with bracket on Amazon and mounted it to the swing arm with aluminum spacers. The caliper bracket is threaded, which made mounting pretty easy. It took some trial and error to properly line up the caliper, and even then we had to clearance it a touch so it didn’t rub the rotor. We haven’t even put fluid in the rear circuit because the regen was set so high from the factory. The gauge shows 30a charge (2.5kW!) when stopping from speed. Would really love to set it up with regen when rolling off the throttle like in an EV. I believe it’s possible after reading some threads on the software. Speaking of…

Motor Programming
So while we haven’t gotten too deep into programming the machine just yet, I’ve read through many of the posts on this endless sphere thread concerning how to properly setup the EM-150. I’m hoping to be able to lower the speed for gears 1 and 2, get reverse running, modify regen and setup reverse at the very least. Would also like to get it switched to filthy American units instead of SI.

Comments
First of all, holy sh!t this thing is fast. Even with battery limitations, this doesn’t even break a sweat up to 40+mph (the max I’ve tried before it starts pulling more amps than I’d like). I don’t have properly-sized conductors going from the test batteries to the 200a fuse, so I’ve kept it well under an indicated 100a and in 2nd gear max. It will still pop the 40a fuses or BMS boards if I’m not careful. I’ve built cars and motorcycles before and this is legitimately scary, maybe in large part due to the fact that it’s a Vespa.

I had installed a 200a golf cart contactor for the motor, but never got it to work properly. The controller would simply shut off under load. At first I thought this was due to the battery being undersized, but it’s still doing it despite having no hiccups when bypassing the contactor. Protection consists of a 200a fuse, so we’ll leave it like that for now.

We will be assembling a proper battery soon and then installing the fairing and bodywork, hopefully for good. The swing arm and gauge bracket also need to be removed and powder coated, and some of the wiring wrapped. I need to add a connector for a battery charger. The kickstand could stand to be longer. And of course get it licensed and then begin riding it properly.
 
Will get some better photos of the swing arm. I need to pull it off, clean/grind it up and powdercoat, it's still bare metal. The swing arm was crazy misaligned as we received it and we had to modify the axle mounts. It also required a cross member welded to the frame. I ended up bolting it to the frame, cutting the swing arm's cross member and tack welding two L brackets to it after bolting on and straightening the wheel.
swingarm1.jpg
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Batteries are still temporary, about 60Ah at 72v nominal.
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cockpit.jpg

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Well done :thumb:
Good to clamp the motoraxle like that. Total battery capacity seems very good. A cover over the battery boxes painted black would be great.
 
Nice build! The custom swing arm looks good and the bike must be a bit of a sleeper, especially looking so clean. I'm using a similar motor on my Grom clone.
 
Is there any other torque-resisting hardware on the axle that mounts to the swingarm, or is it just the thin-looking metal plating of the dropouts? (how thick is it?)
 
Higherwire said:
I had installed a 200a golf cart contactor for the motor, but never got it to work properly. The controller would simply shut off under load. At first I thought this was due to the battery being undersized, but it’s still doing it despite having no hiccups when bypassing the contactor.

How exactly is the contactor wired into the system, both for activation and supplying current from battery to controller? (and which specific contactor is it?)

Is the controller shutting down from LVC due to voltage drop across the contactor?

If so, it sounds as if the contactor is not closing completely, and is high resistance. Or it's miswired so that current is flowing thru the contactor coil instead of the contacts (unlikely, but...).
 
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