Elixxer- An Electric motorcycle is born

[mattW]

Well I've finally saved up enough cash and done enough planning to at least start my first EV. Its a 1984 Suzuki GSXR 400 with an aluminium frame plenty of battery space. I've posted my intoduction blog about it over at www.diyelectriccar.com/blogs and will be documenting the whole process over the next 6 months or so. Trying for a 60-80km range 80-100km top speed and the performance of a 250cc bike. I've called it the Elixxer because its the electric version of the GSXR, often called a gixxer. So subscribe to the feed and watch while I dive headlong into the deep end of ecomodding !

[MetroMPG]

Woohoo! Another build to follow.

Congrats on getting going & can't wait to follow the progress.

Feel free to post back here if only to bump the thread when you've done updates to the blog.

[bennelson]

Yea! Another motorcycle! And less junky than mine!

Seen mine yet?

Read my thread in this forum or visit:
http://web.mac.com/benhdvideoguy/cycle/Welcome.html
or
http://www.evalbum.com/1133

-Ben

[mattW]

Yeah I've seen yours Ben, looks great. I'll be looking to you for fairing advice when you get yours started , any progress on the controller yet or is it still in the mail.

[bennelson]

Yeah, controller is in the mail.

A fairing would be great, but I still have to build an electric car, an aero-cap for the pickup, paint the house, etc...

My dad has been building wood canoes covered with fiberglass, and there's another guy there working on a wood and fiberglass kayak, so maybe theres room in a corner at the shop for a fiberglass motorcycle fairing....

[mattW]

There are so many new skills I want to pick up yet so little time lol... welding, fiberglassing, cad stuff. Ah well one at a time I guess. I got my Kelly stuff in the mail today.

[mattW]

I've decided to use this as a build thread for my electric motorcycle, to keep everyone up to date and save the more polished stuff for the blog (as more of a how to). It will be primarily on DIY but I'll copy the posts to here too.So here are the first shots of picking up my GSXR 400, very exciting.


Andrew, who built this electric GPX-250, came with me to pick up the bike with his ute. Here's us unloading it.


The right hand side frame rail gets removed to take the engine out, you can see the juice bottle full of (yellow/brown?) coolant in the background as well as the beautifully light aluminium frame in all its glory. Removing the engine took a couple of hours of removing bolts, wiggling, unplugging and getting hands dirty. I downloaded the shop manual for the bike but Andrew seemed to know what he was doing so I just followed his lead:

The engine, sitting in the back of Andrew's ute, it wasn't in the best condition but I think he has plans for it either on a jet boat or a small race car/ go cart. This is a man with many projects.

And Voila, one engine-less motorbike (note wiring harness is in tact for the headlights etc):

[Daox]

Nice project. The frame looks a bit lighter than the older steel frames eh Ben?

[mattW]

The only real problem with the bike is that one/both of the front brakes is/are currently seized (dual disks). I'm not really sure how to get them working again. Tips anyone? As you can tell I'm pretty newb at the mechanical side of things, but I decided the best way to learn start something and get my hands dirty.

[Daox]

I'd recommend googling on how to rebuild a brake caliper. Its not real complicated. There are a bunch of good tutorials out there. Car calipers are essentially the same as a bike caliper.