My Random Eco(no)-Related Things Thread

[Piotrsko]

When you do the propane conversion, what kind of fuel tank do typically use for what purposes? A 5 gallon would be awkward on a lawnmower.

Place the motor in a sunny place all day which is sufficient to bake out the remaining water, or my favorite is the bathroom heat lamp.

[Stubby79]

Been a good week for deals...

$100 Gaming laptop:



It's about 5 years old. It was supposed to have 16GB of RAM and an SSD, plus the battery was supposed to be bad. None of which was actually true; I wasn't complaining though.

Stole 8GB stick of ram out of the free laptop handed to me a couple of weeks ago (replaced it with a $10 4GB stick). Stole the 2.5" SSD out of my PC, now it has what it says it was supposed to, plus a working battery, and it technically I didn't put any money directly in to it.

It's a nice little rig, and can play games from a few years back at full speed, should I ever feel the need.

I've since bought accessories. $5 bluetooth mouse, $10 laptop convertible bag/backpack, $10 lap desk with built in speakers.

Not much of a deal, but I replaced the 2.5" SSD with this:



Thought the old SSD was fast enough. This thing is nuts - 6x faster!

Bought this this morning:



$250, DOA. 2018 model.

Screen that turns it on was broken, damaged by water ingress. Pretty much whole otherwise. Had battery, key and charger, so wasn't stolen. I ran the serial number to double check.

Not willing to screw around or wait for parts, I re-wired it to my spare 350w controller. It used proprietary plugs everywhere, so rather than a quick and easy job, I spent a couple of hours figuring out and splicing in all the wires:



Barely fit in to the frame, with the larger controller and a couple of extra/larger plugs. If it comes out again, I will eliminate the extra plugs.

Before reassembling, I washed it:



These small images completely obscure all the wear and paint chips on it. It looks decently well used...enough that I won't feel the need to protect it from every little thing.

Within 4 hours of buying it, I had it cleaned, repaired and did the basic maintenance on it and it was ready to ride. And, of course, it started raining.

The real reason behind it, behind spending more $$ on an ebike than I would otherwise, is this:



It fits in the "trunk" of my insight! (With room to spare for my electric scooter)

Not deals, but otherwise this week, I've been working on my other wheeled rides/projects.

Fixed up my motorcycle one morning earlier this week and went for the first ride in a couple of years:



Bought an armoured motorcycle jacket for $30. Unfortunately, the washing machine ate some of the lining, and I need to sew it back up.

Also got the urge to get on with my 3000w ebike build...tired of not being able to decide how the frame should look, I decided to pull out a crappy old ebike frame that I was pretty sure I could stuff the motor/wheel in to. A little stretching of the rear of the frame and it went in:



So I can get on with other parts of the project. I scavenged a 7-speed freewheel and a disc brake for it. Got the freewheel & derailleur working. Found a bracket for a disc brake that I'm going to modify to fit the frame. Swapped the forks and front wheel for one off another bike that had disc brakes, and swapped the skinny tire off of it for one of the fat ones that came on the ebike...so it doesn't look too ridiculous with that fat tire on the back. Had to cut the rear v-brake mounts off the frame to clear the tire.

Lots of little things to do, but I can get on with electronics and battery building. Will get back to the motorcycle frame at a later date...I want easy(er) results first.

So, yeah...been a good week between deals, projects and being able to ride again.

[Stubby79]

Maiden voyage! (Maiden voyeur?) on the folding Voltbike.



It's super peppy. Takes off from a stand-still faster on the motor than I can standing on the pedals.

Seems ridiculously fast flat out on level ground...couldn't pedal fast enough to keep up with it in top gear.

Hauls me up the steepest hills at a good pace with reasonable pedalling to assist.

Normal riding position and long crank arms means I can contribute as much effort as on a full size bike(while magically closer to the ground). No harder on the body than any other bike.

Super manoeuvrable, fits in to tight spaces - like on the sidewalk - easily. Stable around corners, though one-handed riding is sketchy.

Tires survived ~50km/hr flying down the long hill on the way home. Super fun, super stupid!

Battery was dead cold when I got home. Motor was barely above ambient(10c), though the latter might be because of that long down hill right before getting home.

Nearly 15kms, battery resting voltage after was 37.9v, which suggests I used 1ah out of each cell, 5ah total, ~200 watt-hours...13.3wh/km; almost twice as power hungry as my electric hybrid road bike (which is lower wattage, relies entirely on pedal input to determine power output and has larger, skinnier wheels/tires). Sounds about right.

468w/h battery, claimed max range of 50km(min 32) confirmed.

Rode equivalent distance as my commute to work, would still have 20-odd percent of battery left if I was to ride it there and back.

Well, paint me impressed. Bafang/8Fun geared motors FTW!

Needs better braking on the rear. Fronts are great. Cheap or glazed pads?

4th gear makes the chain click ever so slightly now and then, should be a quick adjustment.

My butt needs a suspension seat post. I found one the right length and diameter on Aliexpress on the first try...$25 shipped to my door! Wasn't expecting to find them or if I did that they would be too expensive.

Going to work on the lights....already stuck a headlight on it. Something I ordered for another bike but was too small, was a perfect fit. Just gotta wire it in.

Battery switch is bypassed, going to test the switch and decide if it will just turn the controller on or if it will kill all power (which would be the wisest idea).

Oh and I had to move to the larger sprocket on the chainring to be able to pedal along with it at full speed. Said chainring is not stock; there is no shifter to shift which sprocket it's on. I'll leave it on the large sprocket, since I don't need the low gears anyway with the motor doing most of the work on take off.

Good purchase. Insight compatible. Very happy with it.

[Stubby79]

I got ambitious and annoyed with my lack of progress with the e-motorcycle/bike, so I stuffed the motor in to an old, cheap ebike frame that happened to have an almost wide enough drop-out to hold it.



Was supposed to be quick and dirty, so I could just try it out. A day project. Ha!

One morning to get the bike together with the motor, swapped out front fors for disc brake ones, and wider tire mounted.

Another full morning to build a battery from my Ego packs:



Wasn't satisfied with how un-secure the battery would be just strapped in, so another full morning and most of the next building a box for it:



Then it was time to wire it up. Hid the "1500w" controller in the old battery box with all the wiring:



Managed a 5 minute ride, at which point I was already cutting in to my sleep.

Had a nice top speed:



And very useless brakes! Talk about death trap!

Fixed up the brakes the next morning. They're adequate now.

It's oodles of fun! I can accelerate up the steepest hills, and if you aren't careful with the throttle on take off, it will lift the front wheel. Oops!

I took it for a real ride yesterday. Conservative on the way out - 17.5km, and very spirited on the way home, and the battery or controller cut out one block from home when I tried to accelerate. 52V, 15ah...~22 watt-hours per KM. Very similar to my 500w electric scooters. Would assume more like 30wh/km all spirited riding. Meaning my battery is a bit too small for my needs. Better add more batteries!

@52v I'm running the motor at 1/3rd rated continuous power, a bit over half the torque it would have with my 3000w controller...I don't think I want to find out what it's like on takeoff with nearly double the amps!

I highly recommend buying an over-sized motor and running it at a lower power, vs having a matched motor and controller of half the size...the torque is stupid fun!

[freebeard]

The electrical equivalent of 'nothing beats cubic inches'?

[Stubby79]

No replacement for displacement, indeed!

[Stubby79]

This just popped up on my Youtube suggested videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yY6TuVUxYQw

Interesting. Good idea, if it can actually keep close to a permanent magnet motor for efficiency. I could see it losing efficiency at lower power outputs, depending on how much energy is required for excitation. OTOH, higher RPMs wouldn't waste power doing field weakening, quite the opposite.

It's just like a PMSM motor inside and how it works, with the exception of using electromagnets inside the rotor.

While the various parts have been done before - synchronous(3-phase) motors, wireless excitation(as in brushless generators), separately excited, etc - this is the first I've seen of putting them all together. Thinking about it, I wonder why it hadn't been done long ago, since the technology was already there...

Welp, hopefully it means noticeably cheaper motors down the road, once others start mass producing them. Would be nice to get ebike motors at half the cost...