Amberwolf's DayGlo Avenger, MkII

[amberwolf]

First, a review in the first few posts about what this bike *WAS*, before I start on what it is now, and then what it is about to become.

This bike has been through a lot, as almost all of my experiments were done on it before I built CrazyBike2. Right now it's unpowered, just my pedal-only backup cargo bike and commuter, since one of the radiator-fan motor shafts snapped on the friction drive over a year (and a half?) ago.

It's an aluminum frame Columbia Comfort Bike, from 2005. I think the only original things on it are the frame, front fork, stem, bars, and brake arms. Maybe the BB bearings and axle, and the left crank and pedal. (The right crank is on CrazyBike2 because I needed that triple for it's gearing ratio). Oh, and the derailers and gripshifters.

The DayGlo is faded, but still there. Used to look like this when I got it:
View attachment 7
And slowly changed to this:
View attachment 6
(with no assist on it in this pic). That's my first trailer attached to it. Lawn chair, computer desk, and a couple of 24" bike rear triangles with 20" 44spoke wheels.

My safety gear to match:

though the helmet has an orange stripe around it and orange circle on top now, and the headlight is a flashlight ziptied thru the top holes instead of front-mounted. I don't wear all of that stuff most of the time now, but during experiments I figured better safe than sorry. I used to wear it all the time, but after riding CrazyBike2, the semi-recumbent, I found I did not need anything but the helmet (and gloves when it's cold), since I basically never fall of of it or crash, unlike with any regular upright bike (because I have a lot of trouble staying balanced).

It changed now and then to look like this:

with a headlight made from a CCFL slide-scanner attachment,

and another in back with red filter over the light,

to which I later added turn signals and marker lights

since so few people seem to know what hand signals are.

Should have done that YEARS ago but didn't think of it.

 

[amberwolf]

Then I tried adding a motor to it, but I had no idea of what power and torque and whatnot all were, really, so I actually expected this little power window motor to be able to move the bike at a reasonable speed:

Of course, it did not. It actually did move the bike a little bit, if I first pedaled up to speed, but it couldn't start the bike moving unless I got off of it. :lol:

I thought it was kind of clever right up until the first test ride.

It uses a very simple drive. This 7/8" socket 1/2" adapter hole happens to fit onto the square-taper BB shaft tightly when bolted down, *and* fits the gear output of the power window motor well enough to engage teeth to grip, though it was a bit off center since there are different numbers of teeth on the socket vs the output gear on the motor.

The other side of the BB has the triple (later used on CB2 and destroyed by the power of the motor on it) which I used to run power via bike chain to a large bike chainring bolted and JBwelded to the left side of the rear hub.

The whole thing is mounted on a rear triangle from another bike, bolted on backwards via the dropouts of DGA,

so I wouldn't have to modify DGA itself, or interfere with my cargo pod (made of a kitty litter bucket bolted to another few parts of that desk I made the trailer from).


I tried some other modifications, including different gearing

to no avail. A power window motor like this is just too small. If I had run it at sufficient power to drive the bike, it would have melted inside a minute, I bet.





So it was on to new ideas....

 

[amberwolf]

After a few frustrations testing out some direct chain drive methods (basically variations on the above using first a scooter motor and then a radiator fan motor, on a Kensington junk bike) I decided to try out friction drives, based on some of the concepts I found on Jim Rudholm's ebike pages. It looked easy enough, and should in theory work fine as long as it's dry. This *is* Phoenix, Arizona, so it is dry enough to work 99% of the time, maybe more.

EDIT: links above are dead, so here's the archived version on the wayback machine:
http://web.archive.org/web/20080731140412/http://www.psnw.com/~jmrudholm/elecbike.html

I thought I'd use the K.I.S.S. principle, and try it out the "easy" way first, which I was pretty sure wouldn't work or at least keep working, and I was right. So this was Friction Drive 1.0.
View attachment 9
I just took a rackmount front panel blank and cut holes big enough for the pair of Toyota radiator fan motors (radial brushed) I had gotten from a junkyard, to fit thru it and line up with the rear wheel.

The batteries went in the rear rack. I shoudl've moved them forward, but that didn't happen till a lot later. They're just 12V12Ah SLA, used, from either a scooter or a UPS, I can't remmeber which. The 7Ah in the forward left basket corner is my lighting battery.

Dunno if you can tell, but that poor little kickstand is curving from the weight on it, which wasn't that much yet.

I used the controller out of a ScootNGo I'd gotten as a carcass. The controller had blown FETs and a melted relay, and the board was burned so bad I had to mount the replacement FETs externally.
View attachment 7
Tension was controlled by a lever-type shifter pulling down on the rear end of the rack plate, with it's pivot being one of the rack mounting tab notches hooked into the front edge of the basket. No, it wasn't very good or stable.

I left the plastic hubs of the fans on, just cutting off the blades and roughening the surfaces a lot (it wasn't enough).

There were a few failures right off. The first was breaking the hollow adustable-length kickstand, made of some cheap cast aluminum.
View attachment 4
Then I blew up some (a lot, actually) MOSFETs, not surprising since I salvaged all of them from various old UPSs, motherboards, and so on, and I don't think I even checked the specs on most before throwing them on there.

Then a few potholes later,

I broke off the plastic hubs from the aluminum centers that bolted to the motors. Pressure in the tires makes air transfer from the bottom to the rest of the tire, slightly expanding it all over, when you hit bumps or holes. That flexes anything on a shaft pressing against it, and I should've realized that from the start.

Not only that, but I shoud've realized what that would do to v2.0.2, before it did. More on that later.

This is the replacement stand, which worked better, but not for very long. I'm just glad it was a donation and not out of my pocket.

The plastic you see above the spring is surrounding a VERY thin aluminum tube that's riveted up at that silver rivet head for a pivot. The plastic cracked and then the aluminum just sheared thru, after not a lot of use but with lots of heavy groceries/etc.

Since I had them, I used the scooter's power meter and keylock.

as well as it's turn signal switch and horn button. The horn sucked so I took it off. It wasn't loud enough to help but was annoying to me.

Also visible is the red-cabled tension adjuster for the drive.

After the fan hubs broke off, I began a quest for version 2.

 

[amberwolf]

I decided that the other version would probably work better if it were lower to the ground for COG reasons, and it also blocked my basket rack so I couldn't carry as much cargo.

This version fixed both of those things.

I used pancake style motors, also radiator fan motors from a junkyard. They turned out to be axial-flux 4-pole motors with no iron core, which is probalby why they worked so well for this (eventually).

They're mounted on another old rackmount faceplate, but this time over 1/8" thick aluminum, which didn't flex, and moutned in such a way as to provide a heatsink for the motor casing.

There are some pictures in a post farther down I'll put in that show the brackets it was mounted on, attached to the frame. I never took pics of that when I built it, only when I took it off later.

I changed to follow Rudholm, and used skate wheels instead of the fan hubs (he used skateboard wheels, which I should have gotten but didn't; I thought I had a better deal with 8 skate wheels vs 4 skateboard wheels, and for less money, when I decided between the two items at a thrift store).

They're JBWelded in place, which turned out to be not so hot an idea.

But it was easy to mount and center them that way.

And if I am anything, its...well..."efficient" with my time, whcih means sometimes I take shortcuts where I shouldn't. I keep learning, slowly, not to do that.

I didn't get two and a half miles before they broke off. But they did last almost the whole two and a half miles!
View attachment 3
If it weren't for the bumps causing tire expansion, they would have lasted longer before falling off.

I also made a few systemwide improvements, such as adding e-brake switches. I was already using the one in the brake handle for my lghts, so I just added a pair of buttons wired in parallel (for larger surface area so my gloved fingers would be more likely to hit at least one), siliconed onto the lever. Looks stupid but it worked.


The bike fell over and destroyed the hall throttle at some point, so I used what was left of it's handle body and built some shims inside the handlebar end, and on the body end, and used this front panel pt off some old computer monitor as my throttle instead.

I had a hole drilled in the handlebar on the left side of the brakemount for the pot wires to come out. Worked well. The pot friction fit inside the bars, with the plastic shims, with more plastic in there for insulation. The pot's knob friction fit inside the throttle grip body end, so that turning the grip turned the throttle.

There was no spring return as that disintegrated with the hall part, but it was easy enough to operate, and the narrow voltage range the throttle responded to meant a narrow 45 or maybe 60 degree throttle rotation range even though it was a 270 degree pot.


Besides the breaking-off rollers, there were other things needed, so on to 2.0.x.

 

[amberwolf]

The biggest change here is that I bolted the rollers to the hubs, using the bolts from molly bolts, and some nuts and lockwashers.


Not as easy to center, but still worked and never came off.
View attachment 3


I also moved the batteries forward to the triangle, one above the top tube, one between, and one below, whcih was an additional 12Ah since it didn't work very well at 24V. Not enough power out of these 12V radiator fan motors, which like the first version were wired in parallel (should have used a switch for series/parallel but didn't ever try it).
View attachment 7
Changed to some 123A 100V MOSFETS actually intended for stuff like this, instead of the wimpy ones I'd salvaged before. Mounted them to a nifty heatsink out of a donated fried car audio amp. Mounted that to the main motor mount panel, in a place where air from the rear wheel spinning would cool them off (along with the motors).

Controller itself bolted to the back of the plate, between the motors.

Batteries are ugly duct taped and ziptied on, but this actually worked fine the whole time I used the bike, even with falling over and a few road spills.
View attachment 4

This version worked fine until one day another road bump broke the motor shaft on one of them. More on that in a later post.

 

[amberwolf]

The broken motor shaft kind of made the whole thing useless, because one motor by itself was not powerful enough to help, and would quickly overheat even if I pedaled to speed first. With both motors, if I pedalled up to around 15MPH, I could then turn on the motors and get up to 30MPH on a long straight flat stretch of paved path. Of course, the batteries would be flat by the end of that, and it took a long long run to get there, but it did.

Under normal use, it could last for several miles as just an assist to get going and keep going, minimally, but the batteries were already used when I got them and they wore out quickly. They were down to barely working to get me to work, then requiring recharge there to get me home, when the motor shaft finally broke.

The shaft broke at the circlip groove that held the bearings out against the housing.

There isn't anything I can do to fix the motor, and I don't even know where I could get another one to match it to use with the first, as I don't know what car or truck it came from. They were already removed (still on the radiator) when I found them in the junkyard. No p/ns or anything recognizable on them that I recall, either.

As I said before, they're 4-pole brushed motors, and are ironless axial flux.

The rotor is some type of molded plastic with the coils embedded in it. The plastic must be a very high temperature type, as these things got hotter than boiling water on the OUTSIDE when I ran them really hard during tests. (pouring cold water on them turned to steam instantly).


Some pictures of the bike as I removed the motor system:

The system detached (with the broken motor already off the plate)

and the brackets I had holding the plate on
View attachment 6
View attachment 5
View attachment 4


I have it all in a box waiting for another motor, or a way to fix the shaft.

 

[amberwolf]

Post-motor-removal, I changed to different rack and cargo pods, which I still use now. None of the lighting or turn signals is on it anymore, becuase I had moved them to CrazyBike2. They've since been replaced by the more normal lighting, but while in use there, they got damaged in various ways, so they need repair to put back on here, and I have not gottenback to doing that yet.

I am using flashlights for headlight and taillight now.

So except for the lights, this is what it's like now:



Holds a lot of stuff. Wish I could afford to load it up with that particular stuff right now, though.

Images before adding the lockable lid to the cargo pod

View attachment 2





Oh, and to hold the 7Ah SLA on the rack, I had used the bracket out of a UPS that used the same size battery.
View attachment 8

Worked very well.
.

 

[amberwolf]

After setting up a deal to work for a couple of friends to get the money for it, I bought the Fusin gearmotor/controller from Dogman, and will be powering it for now with some used NiMH packs bought from Deardancer.

Eventually I will figure out how to defeat the freewheel in the gearing, in a way that leaves me able to reverse that later, if I decide freewheeling is more important than regen.

What I would *like* to do is figure out a way to make a cable-controlled (or servo/solenoid-controlled) "locking pin", which can switch between freewheeling and regen modes as desired. I doubt I can do this, but it will be worth trying.

The goal is to use it for the regen braking, which is advertised as an EABS, or electronics antilock braking system. That would be nice to have, in addition to the physical brakes on the rims.

Even without the regen, it's at least a geared hub motor that will help me startup from the frequent stops I must make in traffic, and move groceries and whatnot until I can get the CrazyBike2 or the trike going.

Should be here this week, and I'll have more to post by then.

 

[bzhwindtalker]

man you are ghetto !
not in a bad way, but ghetto :wink: I like what you do, I'm myself sometimes on the edge of this rugged/junkyard/rat way to do things, but I find really hard to mix scrap parts and of the shelf ones in a clean way...I hope you can manage it with your new hub motor.
I'm interested in the motors you used for your previous friction drive setup, are they car blowers motors?

sry for my english...

 

[amberwolf]

man you are ghetto !
not in a bad way, but ghetto :wink: I like what you do, I'm myself sometimes on the edge of this rugged/junkyard/rat way to do things, but I find really hard to mix scrap parts and of the shelf ones in a clean way...I hope you can manage it with your new hub motor.

I'm sure I can. The only problems I seem to have real trouble overcoming are making straight chainlines that don't skip or come off; that's why CrazyBike2 keeps breaking. If I could fix that, CB2 could be a power monster.

Ghetto, DIY, home-made, etc. They're all just more ways to describe what I do and how I do it. If I had the money for good shop tools and the skills to use them, and more money for materials to make things from, I'd probably have much nicer looking projects, but they might not work any better. I tend to "make do" with whatever is "just good enough", because I get impatient or frustrated or even bored with projects if I don't keep doing stuff that gets me measurable or at least visible results. I always have a bajillion ideas for fixing problems or doing new things but end up never doing anything about them partly thru lack of time, but mostly because I simply get fed up with trying to finish things and not having the right part(s), then having to figure out a way to do it with what I have already, adn maybe going thru that several times during any small sub-part of a project.

I'm interested in the motors you used for your previous friction drive setup, are they car blowers motors?

Yes, they are radiator fan motors, from radiators that used pairs of them at a time. I know the smaller black ones on the over-the-basket drive were from a late 80s or early 90s Toyota, but I don't know what the pancake style ones were from. I really wish I did, because they're nice motors and took so much abuse electrically that I am surprised there was no damage at all to them (except the snapped shaft, which was not caused by any of that, but rather just too much side-pressure).

 

[BLUESTREAK]

I give you a lot of credit for trying so hard, keep it up and someday you will have a nice bike.

 

[AussieJester]

I give you a lot of credit for trying so hard, keep it up and someday you will have a nice bike.

Your obviously not aware that Amberwolf only uses parts/components sourced for free or extremely low
cost to build his creations...check his blog for his other 'inventions' Hes all about 're-purposing' as in
recycling others unwanted items, not all of us have the money to gotto a shop or order what we want
and pay full price for it unfortunately...Can't always be 'nice' in everyones eyes, in this case it is more of
what can be done with what is available to the person...

Nice job Amberwolf..

KiM

 

[amberwolf]

Another factor is that I dont' want a "nice" bike. "Nice" bikes get stolen. Pieces of crap get left alone.

The more obviously custom and the junkier it is, the less they get messed with, in my experience.

When I originally started just putting lights on the bike, even just flashlights, when the bike was new and blue/white before I crapified it with the DayGlo paint, the lights got stolen frequently, sometimes even when I had it *inside* the breakroom at work.

After I started using recycled junk for the lights, like the scanner assembly, but still had the bike like new, they'd steal the battery packs instead because I was using old laptop batteries and I didn't disguise them at first.

The bike itself had obvious signs that people sometimes were working on stealiing it or parts of it before being interrrupted, too, such as loosened seatpost clamp, wheel QR spears (front one missing once!). If I'd not cable-locked it all together I'd've lost parts of it or the whole thing.

Once I started crapifying it, I never had much of a problem. Other bikes were better targets with parts no one would recognize instantly, unlike the stuff on mine.

I still have people mess with things, but not that often, and not to any great degree.

FWIW, before I got this bike I never had one good enough to tempt anyone before, so had never really had to deal with it. My lights on other previous bikes were generally powered by the rim-friction-generators, sometimes with it charging a little battery, usually just direct, but that sucks so I didn't want to do it with this one.... (I have two or three sets of lights/generators in a box around here that dont' get used anymore, if anyone needs them--I keep considering putting LEDs in the headlight, but there are so many more interesting things I can use for casings instead!)

 

[dogman dan]

Sucks about the theives even at work. I totally agree about the ghetto look. I do the same thing with my bikes, at the very least I immediately get em all muddy, greasy by riding through oil puddles on the road etc.

I took a small hit on the shipping for Amberwolf on the motor I sold him. I paid about $300, and used it a year, 800 miles, and get to keep $70 on selling it to him. He'll have to do some wire splicing to make the ebrakes work again but otherwise its cool. Hopefully nobody will steal the light, it's kinda nice. Dayglo paint oughta do it. I love his style, If I could weld I'd be making a crazybike too. Not exactly a dumpster find, but pretty close by the time I ride it for a year.
We desert dogmen have to stick together. Amber has a St bernard in his pack of dogs too.

 

[amberwolf]

Sucks about the theives even at work.

Being thieves, they probably were also the one(s) stealing from the store, and thus caught over time. Never had cameras in the breakroom at CompUSA, though plenty of them elsewhere.

He'll have to do some wire splicing to make the ebrakes work again but otherwise its cool. Hopefully nobody will steal the light, it's kinda nice. Dayglo paint oughta do it.

Splicing is easy; it's just as likely I'll open things up and replace the wires from the starting points. I got some pink and green DayGlo that I haven't used much of that might repel people enough. :lol:

If I could weld I'd be making a crazybike too.

I am trying to work out a way to make a no-weld xtracycle-like addon out of bikes and clamps. Preferably in a way that works out like Justin's bike, so one can sit on the rack behind the original seatpost, move the bars back there with a link to the front, and ride in comfort. Just keep the seatpost and saddle in the cargo bin (like he did) so it can be put back if there is enough cargo to require it.

That will probably end up in this thread, if I test it out on this bike first. If it actually works, you could build that with hand tools.

That said, welding is not too hard to do even with little practice, at least with a wire-feed type. I hate stick welding--that I really suck at. I'm not great at welding even with the wire-feed. Might be better with one that didn't stick and jam all the time, but I work with what I've got. Even my crappy welding has held together remarkably well--that trailer didn't disintegrate, even after a little bath in the canal. CrazyBike2 I fully expected to fall apart, but I never had a problem with the welds themselves that I can remember, just with lots of little things about the design (mostly chain alignment).

I suspect you could build a wire-feed welder out of scrap, if you have the right scrap around. The hardest part would be the low-voltage high-current power supply. But Harbor Freight has them for $99 sometimes (like mine was), and they'll do for this stuff.

Brazing (or welding) with an oxy-acetylene setup would also work, but I have never done that. I've only used an OA setup for cutting, and that only back in highschool shop class over a couple of decades ago. Brazing is supposed to be easy if you fit the parts up right, and get them evenly heated. Someday gotta get some propane or MAPP and try it out.

We desert dogmen have to stick together. Amber has a St bernard in his pack of dogs too.

And one of her puppies (since she came "preloaded"), who looks half-German-Shepherd, and at the rate she's growing might get bigger than momma.

 

[BLUESTREAK]

HEY I LIKE HIS WORK, What i ment about someday having a nice bike is haveing a nice crappy looking bike that run's good and won't fall apart, I follow his builds and it makes me happy to see someone make things out of stuff that other people throw away, I have been doing the same thing all my life.

 

[amberwolf]

All you have to remember is that I am crazier than my bikes, and it all makes sense.

 

[amberwolf]

I *almost* got the Fusin hub stuff today (wed). But I had to be at work at 4pm, and I always leave myself time for traffic, fixing a flat, etc, so I left at 320pm, figuring that the UPS truck probably wouldn't come till after 5pm anyway; I never see them in the area for anyone else till around then.

So they came by at 3:24, according to their site, and the little tag they left on the door. Since I didn't see or hear the truck they must have come from around the other corner of the block than the way I go to work. :|

Missed by *that much*.

What is wierd is that they have left every other package ever sent here, signature required or not, but not this one. Probably because I really wanted to play with it tonite, and most of the time I am not that excited about stuff.

At least I have tomorrow (thurs) off so I can be here all day waiting--I'm sure this time they'll come at the last possible time (usually around 7pm), just so I have to wait longer.

In the meantime I have been making sure the 36V NiMH is trickle-charged, and moving the watt meter and power connectors and stuff over from CrazyBike2 to test it all out with. I've not decided yet, but I'll probably just zip-tie the battery down into the cargo pod, along with the controller, for the first tests. Once I know if I will have enough range with the 36V NiMH for most things, I'll make a box to fit it onto the front half of the bike somewhere, so my cargo pod and rack can stay empty for schtuff.

 

[dogman dan]

One nice thing about that fusin controller, is the abilty to limit it with the three speed switch. In low your range will be phenomenal, but it will still leave a stop sign just fine.

My new 48v fusin is tracking arrived at customs. I may get it today.

 

[amberwolf]

Package arrived about 3 hours ago; but had a bunch of stuff to do so couldn't start working on it till an hour ago. Of course, I opened it up to check it all out, and took some pics, which I will upload later. At the moment, All I managed to get done so far was to put my tube and tire on it (since I like the feel of mine better than the one that's on there), and mount it to the bike's shock fork.

The fork fits, *barely*; it actually spreads it a couple of millimeters, but the shock mechanism still works, though not as freely as it would with a regular wheel hub.

Then my tummy started growling, and since the next stage half an hour after that is shaking hands and dizziness, I decided that stopping and fixing breakfast/lunch would be a good idea. While I'm eating, I figured I'd post the progress so far.

 

[amberwolf]

There are too many pictures to put in one post, so it's divided up into unpacking it, peeking at the guts of things (hey, you don't think I could resist!?), wiring it up, and what it looked like when done.

First, the customs dog Bonnie checks for illicit p-mail.

Not finding any, I get to open the box, and Nana walks off after not seeing any yummies inside.

Neatly packed inside around the wheel are all the nifty bits.

I spread them out to get a better look

The headlight/keyswitch/battery meter unit:

The switch actually carries the whole power of the system thru it, and has a very satsifying ker-chunk when you turn the key in it. Feels like the Honda scooter ignition lock did (except it was disintegrated electrically and this is not).

There is also a "horn" in here--it's just a piezo buzzer that beeps a single tone. It is actually funny to hear---it might get the attention of another cyclist or pedestrian, but it is not useful in any other way. No car could hear it, probably even with their windows down.

The lights are switched on and off automatically with a CdS sensor on the bottom left, but there is no manual switch. I wonder what will happen when car headlights shining on my light colored pants reflect upward--will the light blink on and off? It seems to be fairly sensitive, as it shuts off even a few feet away from my porch's indirect light. I will probably put a physical switch in there that bypasses the CdS sensor to just leave it on when I want to.


The controller looks...like a Chinese controller. There is hotglue filling up each connector from the backside, and silicone sealing the exit holes from the controller itself. The wiring colors on it and it's harness have little to do with the colors described on it's diagram, but it is still very easy to figure out what goes where. There is a jumper to plug in for enabling the speed limiter, and that does work; it limits it to something below full throttle of the Low setting. Med and High don't even do anything with this engaged. There is another jumper to enable the EABS/Regen, which I did not test yet (as the motor has a freewheel so it wouldn't work anyway).

The throttle control including High Medium and Low switches, and horn button on a separate piece. I'm not going to put the horn on there--waste of space for one switch (even if the horn was worth having there). I might put the other car horn off the Ford on there (one is on CrazyBike2) and then use this button for it, but it'll need a DC-DC converter (laptop power supply, probably), as it's a 12V unit.

Exit point for the wires from the hub; it has a spring on there to keep them from rubbing--that's a nice touch. The phase wires themselves are very small though--20gauge according to my Molex stripper/crimper, when I cut the existing connectors off and stripped the ends (prior to putting a longer wire to run to the back of the bike).

The tire tread I don't like; it's not as bad as some knobbies but it isn't my favorite. I'll swap it out for the one I had put on that Schwinn Sierra (so I can leave the original wheel for DayGlo Avenger intact for instant-swapout if I need to).

 

[amberwolf]

Rim seems nice--it's a double-wall, which I have never owned one of before. Was a little out of true, easily fixed though I didn't go all perfectionist on it.



Then it was time to start checkin' out the guts.

First up was the motor itself, since I wanted to see if it's freewheel is easily disabled or not.

and see what the axle/stator connection was like, magnets, halls, windings, etc. First hubmotor I ever had open in my hands.

Looks nice and nea. No signs that 800 miles of riding it's already had have done anything to it, either.

Then I pull out the whole motor assembly from the case to see the gears:

and they look nice and neat. I didn't see any issues at all, so far, though I would need to clean the grease off to see some things; didn't want to do that just yet. The freewheel looks similar enough to the one Russell un-freewheeled that it is probably the same inside, too. I'll check it out later, after I know what it does in it's original form.

The inside of the casing, including the ring gear.

Closeup of ring gear


I started looking at various wires. Some I decided to re-strip, some were unused and cut off flat. When I got to this one (forgot which one it is) I pulled off the black plastic sheathing to find the blue wire *spliced* inside it. Must've been done at the factory that made the wire/cable itself. It's just twisted up and knotted. The red wire is not, so I guess this is how they proceed when a spool runs out of wire when they're creating these cables.

Makes you want to think about the fact that somewhere in your cables could lurk a splice like this, where there is only a single layer of insulation between the conductor and the outside world. Imagine a nick in the insulation in the right place, so that water gets down in there. With a dual layer it wouldn't matter but with the bare splice in there the water would just seep into the wire, wick up both ends, and corrode the wire.

Then for the real curiosity--the controller. I had to know if it was as cheap inside as it looked from the outside. No, it's not, at least in appearance.

The casing comes apart along the top. It has an adhesive strip seal on the face between the rounded outer sides of the lid and the matching "hook" lips on the sides of the case.

 

[gilnet]

Whaaa...!what have you done?hub motor? HORN? KEY!!!I am greatly disheartened!Please ,be a hallucination from meds and 4am!The rat has turned into a chinchilla!ALAS!

 

[amberwolf]

The board is quite neat, and the workmanship of adding the wires in is pretty good.
View attachment 4
Not entirely obvious in that pic is the extra copper bar they've soldered to the top of the traces behind the MOSFETs. There is also an added wire along the trace at the right.

It's easier to see it on the bottom of the board, where they did the same thing.

The MOSFETs are not screwed down to any heatsinks. Instead that vertical thin plate attached to the top cover presses the plastic bodies so that they seat fully against the inner part of the side wall of the main case.

There is heatsink paste on the back of all of them, that appears to have all made good contact with the case so far.

A better-lit shot of the board to get the MCU chip numbers:

shows this:
SPMC65SF112A
001A-HL211 0843
MCY0586.00
It's a SunPlus MCU, and there are references to it on ES that I have not had time to read (just found via search).

I couldn't get any of the MOSFETs to show up their lettering in the pics, and I forgot to write down what they are, but they are all six marked as International Rectifier parts (whether they are or not remains to be seen . The last one on the same end as the big cap is an LM317 by ST Micro.

All of the caps are pretty small values, none rated over 50V. The largest is a 1000uF and is probably just filtering the main battery input or the low-voltage supply for the MCU/etc.

The inside of the headlight assembly. This I actually *had* to take apart, because the power wires into and out of it were so thick and stiff (the plastic casing, at least) that they wouldn't bend enough to be out of the way of the handlebars when mounting it onto the bike.

Thus I couldn't slide it into the little clips. I fixed that with an old vacuum-cleaner cord, from back when they used tough sheathing on the outside, and reinforced cord on the inside.

 

[amberwolf]

Since Hachi the borg dog (7th of 9 puppies :lol has been assimilating a lot of technology, it was easy to find some cables to use for inserting between controller and motor.

That used to be a PS/2 keyboard/mouse extension cable, now neatly bitten right in half. That's ok, since I needed something with at least five wires in it and a male/female connector for the hall cable. Being shielded is a bonus.

She also has done in a few regular power cords and an extension cable--fortunately none was plugged in at the time. I used one of the power cords to extend the phase wires. However, I didn't have any heatshrink small enough and didn't want to waste what little electrical tape I have left that's any good, so I found some house-AC-rated wire with insulation big enough to barely fit over the wires plus solder joints, and stripped it off in inch-and-a-half pieces.


Lap-soldered the power cord to the phase wires from the controller (braiding the strands together a little),

slipped the insulation over the connections,
View attachment 6
placed the heatshrink over them (since this insulation could slip around, in theory, though I doubt it will),

and then a bigger piece of h/s to hold them all together.


The same thing was done for the hall wires, except only the big h/s was used, not the little per-wire pieces. Just the red stuff for per-wire. Then the same again at the other end, for the motor.

It's not all that neat, but it looks like this in the cargo pod now:

with the controller bolted to the front of the pod, and the wires ziptied in bundles. The wire to the battery is not ziptied at all, so I can remove it completely for charging away from the bike, or any other reason.

First power on of the system once wired to the bike:

The watt meter is off CrazyBike2 for now, until I learn the bike and battery, so I can try not to run the battery into the ground.

Like on CB2, it's setup so I can flip the connectors around for charging to monitor what goes in as well. I can also use this as an emergency disconnect.