Dogman's Wilderness Electric bikes.

dogman dan

1 PW
Joined
May 17, 2008
Messages
36,392
Location
Las Cruces New Mexico USA
This is my grocery getter. A Wildeness Electric BD36 on a Schwinn Meridian trike. It runs on either 36 or 48 volts sla 12 ah depending on the range I need. To reach the grocery store, 4 miles away uphill, and get home i need the 48 volts if I run full speed all the way, no pedaling. I was a bit dissapointed in the range, but unwilling to slow down. The battery box was added to free up the basket for cargo, and add space for more batteries if desired. If I want to I can add a 36 volt 20ah ping battery in the box, as well as any stuff I want to keep out of sight. Actually the box could carry 12- 12 ah sla's if I really wanted to load up. When I get more litihium batteries I could fit about 80 ah of 36 volt in the box. Theoretically that would be about 60 mile range. Total cost, $250 for the bike, drop shipped to walmart, and $450 for the brushed hub kit with three batteries, $50 for the fourth battery. Battery box materials, FREEBIE. $750.
 

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This is my commuter, a cheap mongoose mtb with a BD 36 hub. I ride it 12 miles one way to work. The ping 36 volt 20 ah battery fits perfect in the toolbox bolted to the rack. I searched for weeks for this metal box, all the new ones are plastic or the wrong sise. After all that hunting my wife went to her shed and found it in her stuff in five minuites. Total cost, battery $450, Bike $65 used, hub kit without battery $304, Rack and longer seatpost $50. It will go uphill at full throttle for 18 miles on a charge for under $900. You see a lot of posts, asking how do I go 25 miles at 25 mph for less than $1000. Here is is if I had bought the 48 volt. If I was to do it again, I'd buy the 48 volt battery, but the 36 does what I need. Look real close at the waterbottle mount. If you try to get a drink while moving you will have the bottle sucked into the forks by the front wheel and you will go over the handlebars. Broke both collarbones. you get one chance to learn this one.
 

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Very tidy!!!
(no 40's for U)

But.......... TELL HIM WHAT HE'S WON, JOHNNY!!!


Three yummy cookies!
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Nice bikes, dude.
:mrgreen:
 
My next project is going to be a 'grocery getter' trike too.

Was planning on building from scratch, but have also been looking at a Meridian as a cheap pre-built base... I know the frame is aluminum, but what about the front forks and the rear 'forks' / dropouts?
 
The way the schwinn meridian is built, you can't use a rear hub motor, the axle is more like a wheelchair, or a kids wagon. A lot of trikes are made with a chain drive though, so that should be possible. There is a freewheel in the system. The bike is listed as aluminum frame, but the front forks are nice strong cromoly. all I did was grind some the cup on the outer side of the fork dropouts so the oversise washers fit good. If you want a suspension fork on it, you are looking for 1 inch steer tube. One of the reasons I don't use the trike for the commute is that it had poor aerodynamics and no gears. Carrying enough lead batteries to go far was breaking spokes. Our bike trail here has a lot of big bumps for water drainage. Fine at 10 mph, but since they are all at the bottom of a small hill, I hit them at 25 mph a lot. One thing about trikes is they do steer funny, especially at over 20 mph, and it can be real hard to dodge broken glass and stuff. So it really is best for shorter rides, like under 10 miles round trip. It hauls a 50lb bag of dog food, and really works good for excercising my pack of hounds. If the dogs get uppity, I can step off it and deal with the dogs without the bike falling over. The dogs can run a lot further than I want to peadle.
 
If you try to get a drink while moving you will have the bottle sucked into the forks by the front wheel and you will go over the handlebars. Broke both collarbones. you get one chance to learn this one.

Ouch - it hurts just reading that! How long were you out of commission?

Good work on the bikes, by the way. Great combination of range, speed, and reasonable cost on the Mongoose.
 
dogman said:
Total cost, $250 for the bike, drop shipped to walmart, and $450 for the brushed hub kit with three batteries, $50 for the fourth battery. Battery box materials, FREEBIE. $750.
Wow, now this really appeals to my cheapness ideal. :)

Fantastic price... a practical ride...
 
Still not riding the bike, though I did go riding last week. This week I got some surgery on the right collarbone so now i'm back to fulltime making stupid posts on forums. I'll annoy you guys a lot less once I'm back in one piece. Once the sutures heal, in about two weeks, i'll be able to ride the trike a bit, against docs orders i'm sure. But I'm turning into a potato laying in bed here so I'm riding again asap. I won't fall off the trike, so handy I have it! The original plan was to only spend the money on the trike, but thanks to the endless ping thread, I was soon buying both a new battery and a bike to go with it. So far I've spent a lot more than a summers worth of gas, but I still say, not putting the miles on the subaru is the real savings. Pulling engines is not cheap. For now though, I can't even drive let alone ride to save money. Good thing I married well, this is all on health insurance for her job.
 
Whaddayacall a girl, who showed up one night on the doorstep with a sixpack and a grin. My wife, she's a keeper. Made more money than me for 30 years too.
 
35 amp hours seems like a LOT of battery life. (and a lot of battery WEIGHT) :shock:
Do you have a postal route or just like to take LOOOooooonnggg cruises? :mrgreen:

ATB

BC
 
Sorry about the slow response. No, I didn't do any spoke tweaking till I started having problems. And had a lot less after I did some truing. Nevertheless, the stock meridian rim is cheese, and the spokes too thin to handle much cargo in the basket. The geometry of the bike puts all the weight of the rider on the back too, so that doesn't help any.

The real problem was my speed. At 20 mph some of the bumps on my bike path, water drainage channels that cross the path, can get you airborne! And I'm too dumb to slow down. :roll: . If you do replace spokes, take that opportunity to replace the rims too. Nowdays the trike is a peadler again, since I fried a motor this summer. So the trikes motor got put on the commuterbike. 30 miles a day was too far for me on the trike, mostly since it was not so nimble in traffic around the campus.
 
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