My electric bikes & projects

[California98Civic]

Originally Posted by Stubby79

I have it. Not riding it much. Kiddo has grown to the point of wanting to ride her own bike, so we're using old-fashioned leg power this season. I just took her for her first motorcycle ride on the weekend, so she's still getting rides...just faster ones.

Awesome. Kid on a motorbike. If you can get them on early and loving it, sooner or later they'll want her own motor.

[Stubby79]

Originally Posted by California98Civic

Awesome. Kid on a motorbike. If you can get them on early and loving it, sooner or later they'll want her own motor.

She's 9 and is already saving her pocket money to buy a car like my purple firefly when she's old enough. Meaning she's already picking up on my same interests and enthusiasm towards them.

Of course, she gets distracted and buys other things now and then.

[Stubby79]

I slapped together a pedal generator this morning, using an old exercise bike that I bought for this eventual purpose, and a treadmill motor I bought on the weekend for such experimental purposes.



Friction drive, with the tire rubbing against the flywheel of the motor. Its a 130v permanent magnet motor, runs at about 400 rpm off of 12 volts, so it just happens that running friction drive against the tire gives you probably 500 rpm at a steady cycling speed.

I put a load on it (100w inverter, and a sub 100w fan), and a diode to prevent the battery from running the motor, and tested it to see how hard it was to keep the battery voltage steady.



That steady, easy pedaling speed would put out about 4 amps and hold the voltage around 12.6v. I'm out of shape, but if I got going fast enough, I could get it up past 14v, and about 8 amps.

It took a bit of screwing around, and my lungs got a good workout...but maybe now that I've combined a "doohickie" with exercise, I might be inclined to get some. :P

[sendler]

https://youtu.be/S4O5voOCqAQ
Olympic Cyclist Vs. Toaster: Can He Power It?

[Stubby79]

Originally Posted by sendler

https://youtu.be/S4O5voOCqAQ
Olympic Cyclist Vs. Toaster: Can He Power It?

Dude's legs are nearly as thick as my waist!

All that to generate just a bit less than one horsepower.

[sendler]

So much energy we use that we take for granted like a tank of fuel in a car for $30. How many people would it take to push a car uphill through the snow for 200 miles and how long would it take and how much would you have to pay them?
.
Man made is a misnomer. Everything you see around you that is "man made" is really made from huge amounts of super cheap fossil fuel energy. And a small amount of raw materials that were harvested and processed with huge amounts of fossil fuel energy.

[Grant-53]

So I 'll stick to making toast on an wood fire

[Xist]

Doesn't a gallon of gas contain 31,500 Calories? Someone calculated that walking gets 400 MPG.

[Grant-53]

I'd rather drink apple juice than gasoline. Riding a velomobile is even more efficient.

[Stubby79]

Been thinking I need to stop screwing around with cheap, basically broken crap, in general, and start replacing it with "something nice".

That being said, I've been vaguely looking out for a Giant hybrid bicycle - I used to own a half decent one, and it was a great machine - with thoughts of making it electric. My classified searching came up with a "barely used" one that came factory electric, with dead batteries, that was about the kind of price I figured I'd have to pay for a non-electric Giant hybrid. A few emails and a drive later, I brought her home:



I'll see if I can revive the batteries this weekend. And, if not, well, it was still worth the price, even if I have to buy new cells for it.