My electric bikes & projects

[Stubby79]

Pressure washed 'em, put power to 'em...one worked right away! The other is missing the controller. That works fine for me...one to "restore" and one to mess with.

I've already swapped some parts over - leg shield and front wheel/tire - and done some maintenance on it. At this point it needs batteries, of course, and a broken wire for the gauges/headlight replacing, and more TLC.

I found this particularly interesting...



I could tell by the height of the plastic that there wasn't much room for the crank sprocket, but how far apart the two sides of the chain were suggested otherwise...



Jackshaft!

I think that's just spiffy! I might be able to screw around with the size of the sprockets and make the pedals more useful...or tie in a secondary motor and a freewheel. Ahh...the possibilities! I'm such a geek!

Other positives...the sheer size of the motors suggests they should put out more torque than the ones on my original ebikes, and the motors are direct drive, not geared hub motors...so regen braking is possible (though the controller in it does not support it)

[Stubby79]

Curiosity got the better of me; I had to see what one looked like without the plastics:



Looks like I was hoping the one I chopped up would look like. Too bad it doesn't have rear suspension, otherwise I approve.

Got a better view of the jackshaft:



Pretty dang simple. A stationary, long bolt sticking out with a bushing rather than a bearing (unless there's one hidden beneath). Maybe I'll take it apart and see...

[Stubby79]

Finally took it out for a spin this morn...

Ha! Totally gutless! Only really usable on level ground, at least for someone of my weight. Brakes are just as bad. I'll have to find it a particularly light rider, if it's remaining stock.

[samwichse]

Originally Posted by Stubby79

Finally took it out for a spin this morn...

Ha! Totally gutless! Only really usable on level ground, at least for someone of my weight. Brakes are just as bad. I'll have to find it a particularly light rider, if it's remaining stock.

Fresh batteries might make a world of difference, if the existing SLAs are high IR and sagging very low under any kind of strain. Do you have a newer pack you could test-swap in?

[Stubby79]

Originally Posted by samwichse

Fresh batteries might make a world of difference, if the existing SLAs are high IR and sagging very low under any kind of strain. Do you have a newer pack you could test-swap in?

I was using 3 over-sized(20ah), healthy SLAs. Even so, I'll check the draw and for voltage sag. Not likely at the batteries, but could be from undersized wiring.

[jjackstone]

Originally Posted by Stubby79

Finally took it out for a spin this morn...

Ha! Totally gutless! Only really usable on level ground, at least for someone of my weight. Brakes are just as bad. I'll have to find it a particularly light rider, if it's remaining stock.

Well it does say GWEV in that first photo. Maybe the GW stands for Gutless Wonder.
JJ

[Stubby79]

Originally Posted by jjackstone

Well it does say GWEV in that first photo. Maybe the GW stands for Gutless Wonder.
JJ

[Stubby79]

Just got back from a ride on my giant hybrid. Made it to work and back! A bit over 30kms in an hour and a half, including a rest while I was there. Did it on one battery that still had 1 bar left when I got back. (and I don't fully charge them)

[Stubby79]

$20 deal of the day, yesterday:



$40 deal of the day, today:



Same bike, essentially. Izip Trailz and Izip Mountain Trailz. Red was sold as "parts", though it works (his wife just wanted it gone) and the blue has electrical issues (power not getting to the controller). Blue came with a supposedly almost new set of batteries (plugged it in to the red bike and they work better than the ones it came with) and two chargers (one with a broken wire, easy fix) and the red came with an interesting charging setup that puts the two batteries inside in to parallel to charge at 12v:



That's...err...creative?

[Stubby79]

Fixed the blue bike this morning.

Found the electrical issue PDQ:


Replaced the inoperative brake switch (Read: safety necessity). All those spare parts salvaged previously are already coming in handy. It's not much to look at, from the outside:



Pumped up the tires and took it for my typical 4km test ride. Goes decent, considering; better than I expected from the two little 10ah batteries. Noisy gear box, normal for these motors. About what you'd expect from an entry-level electric bike.

Opened up the battery box after, so I can check the battery's real-world amp-hour capacity. Looks like the previous owner got tired of replacing fuses:



And considering battery options (seeing as there's little chance the 10ah batteries can put out the 35-amp limit for long):