Golf cart based electric motorcycle build.

[bennelson]

Great to hear of updated progress.

Grab a photo or two when you can, as we love to SEE how it's all going.

I sort of agree with you on the prebuilt power cables. Last time I was at Farm&Fleet, I saw that there were some cables that weren't that expensive when you consider the cable, the lugs, and putting it all together. Plus, they are well made and look good to boot.

Maybe we could do a kit install at next year's MREA! (I won't be there this year )

[Ryland]

Ben, my goal this year is to have this motorcycle done by this weekend so I can hopefully get it to a friend of mine who has a truck that he's driving to the Midwest Renewable Energy Fair, because the vehicle I'm taking is already full of electric car and camping gear.

I haven't had any issue with the pre made battery cables, I have a bunch of them as battery interconnects on my commuti-car and they are holding up well and sure I can make my own cables, but striping 2/0 welding cable without the ends fraying, crimping the lugs and heat shrinking all takes time and tools, I want someone else to be able to build this motorcycle without a lathe, a mill, or a crimping tool if possible.

I also ended up getting an inner tube for my flat tire and a front brake master cylinder in exchange for replacing some rotten wood on the motorcycle shop owners house! no need to exchange any money! now with luck I'll have enough time to finish everything tomorrow, of course nothing goes as planned, at that point I should be able to roll the motorcycle out of the corner of the shop where I can take some half way decent photos of it.

[Ryland]

It's alive! well... kind of... my batteries are old and weak, I didn't realize that they were dead, so my motorcycle just crawled along, but there aren't any weird sounds, I like the feel of the throttle and it feels comfortable ridding it around.
I'm not sure if I can revive these batteries enough to make them work, they were at 10% state of charge based off voltage and I know lead acid batteries hate being discharged, so I'll cycle them a bit and see what happens!

And now for the PHOTOS!!! please remember that making it look pretty was not at the top of my list, everything bolts to this frame using stock mounts, it would take me about 3-4 hours to strip out the gas engine from another Honda CX 500 and install all of these electronics in to the new frame without any modifications to the frame.



Test fitting batteries... they fit!!! everything clears the frame.



wiring in the first few batteries



Ready to ride! as soon as the batteries come back to life... because of the dead batteries and now spending a week out of town, I don't have a clue how fast or far it will go.

[Christ]

You're going to have a contact issue with that fender while riding. You'll probably have to cut the rear part of the front fender off, and hopefully the tire doesn't make contact under hard braking or a tough bump.

[Christ]

You should also be able to lift the seat the extra half inch necessary for the battery terminals by just cutting a section of the seat pan out or putting spacers under the seat pan, if you still wanted to fit one in there.

[Ryland]

My parents drive way has a big ditch in it to keep it from washing out and I road over that a few time and the fender does hit at that point so I agree with cutting the fender, so that is on the list, but I'm pretty sure that if the front forks bottom out that the tire will not hit the battery box, to test this I'm going to ratchet strap the front suspension to compress it 100% to the point that it would bottom out if you hit a speed bump at high speeds.
The space under the seat is not large enough for a 6v golf cart battery, the frame of the motorcycle gets in the way, height is around 9" in that space and the batteries are around 10" tall, closer to 11" if you want space to water them, so after I took the photos I installed the battery charger in that space, the DC to DC converter will most likely also live in there, then the side covers will cover it up.
In the test fitting the gas tank seemed to fit, aside from the fuel petcock, the gas tank I have needs to be cleaned out and outside of it scrubbed down, but I think it will otherwise fit and make the motorcycle look more "normal" without any cutting on the tank, I'm tempted however to look for a rusted out gas tank to install and trade my good gas tank to someone who needs it, I also don't need that gas tank to cover up anything other then maybe work as cord storage.

[Christ]

Cord storage, a source for distilled water to top off the batteries if need be (not really necessary), perhaps modified with an opening lid for a small on-the-go tool kit, glove box, probably 100 other uses that I can't think of right now.

[Ryland]

I started a conversation with a guy from our local EV club about buying his year old set of Lithium batteries, $800 for two 48v strings that are 40 amp hours each, with a BMS, it's going to depend on what I need to get for a charger to charge them.

[bennelson]

That sounds PERFECT for a cycle!

[Daox]

Its great to see the cycle up and running!

The batteries sound good as long as they can handle the amps you want to pull out of them. You'll want to know the continuous and burst C rates of those older cells.