PHEW UPDATES
To get the color removed, the parts were going to need an oven bath followed by blasting as the "paint" is actually a powder coat. So I attempted to remove the rubber grommets from the fork so it could be done. Failed, utterly. I think they are glued in or something. After ripping them out, the fork is ruined -- I mean, it would still work, but the mangle side would fill up with dust, gunk, and water in weeks and just get wrecked.
Shopped around for a replacement fork and discovered that the steerer tube for this is something of a freak-of-nature. At just under 13" long, it must have been a custom-for-this-bike made model because I can't find any after marker replacements that come even close to that -- no bueno.
At that point I was pretty much ready to throw in the towel. However, as this is a very old series bike, and I had previously been thinking about needing a way to source parts, and (hope of hopes) find an OEM internal battery, I'd been searching for used A2B Metros.
Lady luck smiled upon me and I found a listing for a second generation metro, local, in (basically) mint condition with just 650 miles on it. Snapped that up real quick. Not only did it have the v2 upgrades (controller NOT in motor) but also came with the rear panier rack
and the rear battery! And both batteries still hold a charge. NUTS.
So what did I do with this perfectly working bike? Immediately started stripping it down, of course! No 36v boat is gonna work for me, sorry. The new DD45 from Grin + wheel arrived, I mounted a new tire (only popped ONE tube, amazing), and got in on the bike. Had to swap out the 7speed for single speed as the dd45 is just, like, 5mm too wide for it to not rub, and I just don't feel like bending this arm.
Working with the Cycle Analyst / Phase Runner combo has definitely had some uphill battles.
For example: I was trying to use variable regen braking and whenever I pulled the brakes, POOF, total power loss and a blinking controller. I have the "throttle low voltage" set to 1v, "throttle hig" at 4.2v. Since that's the full range, I set the "throttle fault range" to 0. If you want to use regen braking, you have the phrase runner configures to understand that 0-.8v is an inverted range for braking strength. Yet, every brake activation faulted the PR and produced the message "voltage out of range". Now, this error
kind of makes sense in that the range is 1-4.2 and the regen signal is not within those bounds, but the regen bounds ARE set, right? Well, there's a hidden gotcha: the "fault range" must cover the regen amount; in my case 1v so that the 1.0 to 0.0v values aren't "out of range". This is, imo, bad design on Grin's part.
After that hurdle, my next big todo was the phase runner/ca connection cord -- the plug does not fit through the Metro's internal routing channel. I ain't no scrub that's gonna just zip-tie it on the outside, so I
painstakingly (man, these little JST molex things are a NIGHTMARE to pin) wired a ethernet cable
(8 strands? Perfect!) to two ends of a CA extension cable.
Works great, and very glad I can hide most of it inside the frame.
I got throttle, brakes, CA, and a 3way switch mounted on the handle bars. I've got a few large items on the todo list through:
[ ] Two more battery packs (supplies arrived this week)
[ ] Parallel wiring setup for the 3 batteries (awaiting some breakers-as-switches)
[ ] Mounting the extra batteries and switches for them (3d printing time!)
[ ] Mounting the PR
inside the frame
[ ] Rechain the bike for the single speed (??)
[ ] Fabricating new torque arms
That last one should be interesting. I nabbed a dimension sketch from another thread and will likely attempt to machine these at home from some steel -- should be a fun learning experience in which I ruin a few bits
but a necessary one as all the original hardware is designed for a 12mm diameter bolt and the DD45 is the slightly larger 14, so nothing fits. I'll make at least two so I can reinforce from both sides.
Really feel like I'm getting somewhere at this point, very excited.
