The simplistic motor mount I made for my electric bicycle (which consisted mostly of me bolting a motor to my wire basket and holding the basket away from the axle with a piece of PVC pipe) had been working well for five months. Until, that is, I ran over a particularly large pothole and [...]
Saturday, November 28, 2009
My electric bicycle has a motor that draws up to 450 watts (if I drive it over its nominal 250 watt rating), and the batteries have only 5AH (approx 120 watt hours) total capacity. Keeping in mind that I should only discharge the lead acid batteries to 50% (approx 60 watt hours) this [...]
Ever since I mounted an electric motor to the front wheel of my
bicycle I have been keeping a plastic bag over the motor with a clothespin whenever the bike is parked. This does a decent job of keeping rain out of the motor, but the process of uncovering and covering the motor takes extra time. [...]
An electric powered bike makes it easier to go up hills, and can turn a ride to the train station from a workout into a commute. Typically however, the batteries need to be plugged in to charge after your trip. Although electricity is cheap, this does require that you have removable batteries (or wheel your [...]
In case I need to commute home after dark on my electric bike, I added a front headlight (5 watt MR11 halogen) and a rear tail light (Red LED tail light for “off-road” use). The front headlight enclosure was designed to be used on a bike, and included a nice mounting bracket and [...]
Electric bikes are expensive. Even if you buy the cheapest electric bike you can find on deep discount at walmart, it costs $300. (Formerly $400 before they deeply discounted it.) I decided to build my own out of surplus parts and things I could buy at the local Ace Hardware for less than $300. (Mostly, [...]
After building a PVC pipe battery holder for my electric bike, I used a vacuum form machine to make a polystyrene battery cover. I built up a cheap tool form using cardboard (which turned out to be too week, but it was quick).
As the vacuum was forming the polystyrene around the cardboard the [...]
Bolting a DC motor to the front basket of a bike and running a chain to the front wheel takes care of the mechanical linkage needed to make an electric powered bicycle, but you also need to provide power to the motor, and control that power in some way.
Luckily, the same place that sold me [...]
I purchased a surplus 250 watt motor with a matching wheel hub and 90 tooth sprocket. The motor has an 11 tooth sprocket, and both the motor’s sprocket and the hub’s 90 tooth sprocket are designed for #25 motor chain, which is slightly smaller than standard bicycle chain.
To get the hub and 90 [...]
I purchased a surplus Currie Technologies “Diagnostic” throttle. (Which includes 3 LED’s labeled as 1/3, 2/3 and full charge indicators) It has a six pin (7 cable) connector with no pin-out diagram.
After opening it up, it appears that the blue, black, and red wires are connected to the throttle sensor itself, while the other four [...]