<$1k DIY Neighborhood Electric Motorcycle

[captainslug]

Motor-mount finished and assembled. Can't do much else until I have a tachometer with which to measure the motor with.

However if the tap arrives in the mail today I will be able to finish the custom drive pulley.

[captainslug]

And now the custom pulley for the motor is done.

[Clev]

Most interesting. I'd love to have a little 5-mile-range bike to go to the grocery store, and removing the motor wouldn't deprive our treadmill of its current functionality as a clothes hanger... :-)

[repete]

Nice project!

[captainslug]

Laser tachometer arrived yesterday. At 60 volts the motor reaches a peak of 3600 RPM.
That's quite a bit faster than I was expecting. I will have to use two reductions to achieve a top speed of 40mph.

3.818 : 1 (41t : 11t)
1.4 : 1 (25t : 35t)

I won't have the option of using a belt at these speeds unless it's a timing belt. But those are just too expensive for me right now.

[Christ]

I can't think of a timing belt that would be short enough to work on your setup?

What about a short cogged V-belt with a milled pulley? I'm sure you could make some plastic 2-piece pulleys with "teeth" in the valley that the cogs will fit in, and Dayco makes cheap cogged belts that are very strong and in just about any length you'd need.

[captainslug]

I'm going to have to use chain. It's just easier to work with, cheaper, and offers me a wider range of ratios.

The sprockets are ordered. Hopefully I can get the chain drive done within the next week.
And better still, a bunch of the guys at work (myself included) are pitching in to buy sand-blasting equipment.
Perfect timing since I that will be the final step in completing this project.

[dwtaylorpdx]

FYI, Toothed belts come in 1" increments and are not that bad to purchase,
I'd start on the GATES web page.

Some go-karts use a toothed belt instead of chains and they use easy to mod sprockets.

Dave

[captainslug]

Replaced the 4awg wires with aluminum bus bars.

[captainslug]

So a bunch of the guys at work pooled together to buy a sand-blasting cabinet. I ran out of work to do by about lunch time so I spent all afternoon and most of the evening using a grinders with brush wheels to strip the frame down to bare metal as much as I could, then used the sand-blaster to do touch ups in the difficult-to-reach spots. I then applied two coats of flat black Rustoleum.

The battery rack is also painted. I'll have more photos to share once the bike is back in one piece.

I apologize for not having any in-progress photos. But the work was really messy and labor intensive. I was afraid that if I stopped to take breathers and take some pictures I wouldn't have reached the point I wanted to be at by this evening.