Electric Motorcycle conversion

[dcb]

Originally Posted by bennelson

It makes a great spot for the charger - I can pull the plug out through the gas cap.

LOL, nice touch!

[bennelson]

I repainted the gas tank this last weekend

I didn't really like the white. It looked like a really lame police cruiser. I tried white because I was thinking about a cowspot design, but that really wouldn't have worked very well on such a small area.

I stripped and sanded down to the bare metal. There must have been 6 layers of paint on there, plus bondo filling in dings and cracks!



Looked pretty cool as brushed steel like that. I half-considered just clear-coating it!

I painted the tank hi-viz yellow. It's easy to see and matches the Yellow Top batteries.



Heres what the cycle looks like right now with the yellow tank.



I haven't bothered to re-paint the plastic triangle trim pieces that go in back (the white things) I usually don't have those on anyways, but will paint them to match whatever color I end up going with.

I sort of think I like the metalic green (which can be seen earlier in this thread) the best.

If I didn't like the way the yellow turned out, I could just use it as the primer for a green top-coat. If I masked off part of the yellow, I could make a pattern in it. Like yellow lightning bolts on a metalic green tank!

Last Friday, I took the motorcycle down to our local electric utility. I talked for a couple hours with the guy down there about renewable energy, solar, net-metering, etc and showed him the cycle.

When I was leaving, it was end of shift for linemen. There were 5 or 6 big, burly electricians standing around the cycle. As I was walking up, I could hear them say "Look, that's an electric motorcycle", "Anybody know who it belongs to?", "Huh, well look at that..."

I showed them how it works, where the charger was, and did a test run in the parking lot. They seemed pretty impressed by the acceleration and quietness.

It's really fun when you get people's interest like this.

Tonight, there is a local "Green" meeting going on at the library. Part of the discussion is going to be about NEVs.
If this isn't a good night to bring an electric vehicle down to the library, I don't know what is. Just hope it doesn't rain or snow tonight!!!

[SVOboy]

Wow, looks seriously bling! I'm excited for you, (meaning, I wish I was riding the bike instead of you)

[MetroMPG]

It's cool that you're doing the "outreach" part of owning an EV.

Aside from the EV Expo in Ottawa last May, the closest I've come to doing that is showing the ForkenSwift to a few different people who read the thread and contacted me, asking to come look at it.

Plus a week or so back, I stopped in at the forklift place where we bought the lift truck & showed it to the guys there. Our city has a fairly large car show (150-200 vehicles) in the summer. Ivan & I were debating whether we'd want to enter the car in it or not.

Anyway... I like the yellow tank!

[bennelson]

Showing off at the library was fun.

Found another good reason not to ride motorcycles at night though. DEER!

Had one run right in front of me on the ride home!!!!!

Anyways, round trip was exactly 5 miles. According to the Killawatt, I used .57 KWH of energy to go back into the battery. My cost of energy including tax and renewable energy surcharge comes to 11 cents per kilowatt hour.

That means it cost me 6.27 cents to ride to the Library and back.

Based on current price of gas, that's about ten times less than it would have cost to drive my car the same distance. More actually, because I get below average fuel economy with a cold engine only going 2.5 miles each way.

Although if I create an artificial "MPG" based on cost of gasoline vs electricity, this last runs comes to 263 MPG. I will have to check the brake, it was dragging a bit.

Calculations make the cycle's last run come to 114 watt-hours per mile.

Doing the math to kilowatt hours to BTUs to a gallon of gasoline (I was using 125,000 BTUs to gal of gas) comes to 321 eMPG!

Anyways, even if the cycle got terrible economy, it's still a blast to ride!


PS: after entering this last charge, I had to change my signature banner from the Dodge to the Cycle. That way I get Hypermiler status! Guess I just have to ride the cycle a lot more!!!

[sharp21]

Here are some sweet conversions:
www.electricmotorsports.com
Couple of real nice streetbikes & a supermoto.
If you check the parts page, you can get a Full conversion kit with the e-tek for $1k
S.

[MetroMPG]

Is it motorcycle weather already where you are?

I saw two out last week: one dodging ice clumps in the road, the other a Hell's Angel pulled over by a cop.

[bennelson]

It is motorcycle weather in that if there is snow on the ground, but it is sunny, and the roads are fairly clean, you will see guys out on motorcycles.

They may be wearing snowmobile suits, but they will be out there.

I have been out on my cycle twice so far. Short runs. I get cold fast.

[MetroMPG]

I got cold riding when it was 20C out. :P

[bennelson]

Went for a short ride this afternoon (Easter Sunday!)

34 degrees F, lots of snow on the ground, but Sunny!

I have noticed that my speedometer doesn't always work right. At low speeds, the speedometer doesn't work at all.
When I get to 25 MPH or so it kicks up to whatever speed I am going, but then seems to stop working again anytime I get back down to 15 MPH or so.

That means the trip odometer isn't real accurate because is isn't logging my distance during all the slow speed parts of the trip, right?

I do have a pocket-sized hunting GPS I could use sometime to compare the speedometer and odometer with. I might even be able to figure out is there is a more-or-less constant % difference off for future calculations?

If anything, I have been going farther than I thought. Therefore, any miscalculations for fuel economy should be in my favor!

Need to talk to some real motorcycle people sometime. I could use a hand tweeking the rolling resistance on the cycle and swapping out the new tires I have sitting in my garage, just waiting to go on this thing.