the e-bike life....

Well I always sound like such a tough guy I thought I would show that my wife and kid have tamed me some. That and age dropping the testosterone levels. lol

I might just become an advocate for the healthy life. Okay probably not but I took the bubba bike out for a spin. I took it down to the local chicken joint to buy some cold slaw for dinner tonight.

Yes I have made this trip before on the bubba bike and there were a couple of hills that kicked my butt. Not so today. Today I pedaled hard up them alright but I wasn't gasping for air when I got up them. I got home feeling pretty darn good about myself. Maybe there was some unknown hand guiding me when I bought the undersized motor. I have to pedal hard now and then but it seems to be helping me improve my stamina. The biker god works in mysterious ways,

Also I took a good look at my experimental bike. The one I will be putting the pusher motor on. It has a friction drive front wheel drive already. I might just leave that as well. It would give me a total of 650 watts of raw power.

Here is the real beauty of it. I began a while back putting an extension cord female end on my battery pack and a male end on the motor. Now I can plug both motors into the cord. I can remove either of them at will. Sometimes you just have to get lucky.

All in all a good day so far in E-Bike land. AkA sparkville, NC. The good thing about being the only bike builder in Sparkville is I get to be the mayor. Wonder if I can get my title changed to Mayor of Sparkville.

Forgot to do a battery assessment report. I left the house with the pack reading 26.5 volts. I returned with it reading 25.9 Which is a lot of battery left. I think 24.5 is about shutdown on the bike. I might be able to pull it down a little farther but I wouldn't want to force the issue. I like coming home with a battery that has charge left so the battery isn't damaged by too much drain.

I will have to watch that on the pusher bike. I have no idea how to control the drain on that one yet. I'm not even sure that I will put a controller on it. Maybe if I put one on the friction drive on the front, it would always be charging the battery. Or maybe just get a diode to keep it from draining the battery and have it be a charger forever. It will just need testing to see what happens.

For todays ride I went up to main street to meet my wife for coffee. She is off work and went shopping. I wanted to ride the bike so I didn't go but I met her at McDonalds (aka the rainbow steak house). Someone asked me what the **** was I riding. When I explained he walked over to inspect the bike.

When I left I almost drifted into a lane filled with heavy traffic. The trailer makes the bike a little less responsive to fast changes of direction. I learned that just now. But knowing that I won't be letting it drift any more.

Well back to work... The wife is home on holiday.... This is what her retirement is going to be like? I can only hope not.

Over the last couple of days I have been keeping an eye on the charging times vs the miles I rode between charges. I have a 1.5 amp charger and it looks like its a little over an hour per mile. That being the case a person riding ten mile to work would need about 11 hour or so of charging time to start for home with a full charge. not enough.

I think the person would need a 5amp or so charger to do it in an eight hour shift. That is more than a solar cells array that would fit on the bike could handle. So I think I will have to look for a stronger 24volt charger or go with a car battery charger and maybe flooded marine cells after all. Rewire them as Parallel to charge and then back to series to run. With a 6amp charger the time should be cut drastically. Maybe down to 20 minutes a mile for recharging.

I think I might do some testing on that aspect of E-biking....

I wonder if a guy my age can join the foreign legion.... I mean they took away my car... and a whole lot of physical things I used to have. Now they are taking away the little freedom I have left...

If not the legion maybe I can go into bomb disposal in iraq.

Just kidding, I'm going to move my bed to the shop. She refuses to go out there....

Why do I feel like James Bond lol....or more to the point prison break.

I have to find some errand so I have an excuse to ride the bike today. It's going to be a glorious day today. All the parts for my pusher trailer have been bought. They are either on the way or in my shop waiting.

I might just have to ride the bike touring the area. I do want to test ride it to Wallymart and home. You know that old e-bike bugga-boo routing for the best topography.

Even that is fun. It's like whenever my wife drives me somewhere I am assessing the hills the whole trip. It's interesting the steepness of the hill is tempered by how much speed I can accumulate before I hit it. I remember that as a child running full out to make the hill easier to climb. It is still the same.

A hill that I have very little trouble with ordinarily will kick my butt, if I don't gain speed to bleed while climbing it. So the route has to be judged with a lot of factors weighed. I know you all knew that but just getting it clear in my own mind.

Okay today I went 5 miles almost exactly. I left with the battery pack fresh off the charger I rode the bike for max comfort not conserving at all. When I check upon arrival home the batter pack read 25.5 It had at least another five miles on it. With conservation I probably could do 12miles. It is all I want it to be. I doubt that I would ever ride this bike more than seven miles or so.

today I rode to wallymart. Round trip without stopping was almost exactly five miles according to yahoo maps. I got home with 25.5 volts on the battery. I used about half the available power I estimate.

I rode it for total comfort so I could have stretched it a few more miles if I had pedaled more. Of course I probably would have been exhausted.

I also managed to find a route off main street that worked pretty well.

I am just guessing but I think a 12ah lithium pack would work pretty well for me. If they ever come down in price I might give one a tray. But 250 to power a motor that only cost 250 seems a lot. Also I think I will wait to see if I want to buy a bigger engine instead. Not to mention I want to see how the pusher goes.

if you go ebike the hub motor on the front wheel seems to work pretty well and you can have all the gears you want on the back. Those appear to help with the pedal assist part of it/ I don't have them but I see bikes with no motor sail by me/

By the way I charged up the bubba battery pack after a five mile run and the time held true as before about 1.1hrs per mile. To get a better charge you would need a charger that put out more than 1.5 amps.

Since I have my packs on household extension chords with a female end, and the charger has a male end. I wonder if I couldn't hook a second charger up to get a faster charge.

Be careful you don't trade your GW for something worse. Your kids and grandkids could pay for it.

Are you sure that your law covers e bikes the same as gasoline bikes. Here a moped is defined by cc of the engine, max speed, and only one gear. But so far Ebikes seem to be unregulated. A good reason to move that direction for me.

I rode the bubba bike five miles this morning. It is about all I can do comfortably. I had one of these small bikes throw me on my butt and I got a nasty bruise. I got bruised all the way down to my spine. It still hurts after five miles or so, but this time I didn't put the bike away. I locked it to a utility pole in my back yard. In about an hour I'm going to ride it again. That is pretty much what I would do If I took the bike somewhere. I my case it would be go there, do something, then come home.

So in an hour or so, I will ride it around my test track till it stops pulling. Then I will know about what range i have on the double battery pack. At least I will know riding it for comfort. So far I have run it full power all morning.

I run my bike single speed, but I think for max range a geared bike would be better. How many gears I don't know. I will update this when I know what the final range was. One more thought... It looks like I averaged over ten miles and hour. That means I'm going faster than I thought. Most of the time it was on a flat to slight inclined surface, So when I get the speedometer I might be in for a pleasant surprise.

Running it as much like a china kit bike as possible, given the fact that it isn't I did ten miles in my terrain on what amounts to a 24ah sla battery pack. It finished at 24.6 volts which is very close to shutdown level. I might could have squeezed two more miles out of it since it was still helping on the hills rather well.

Since I was pretty much exhausted, I shut it down. I think possibly one could do twenty miles on the battery pack if one did it in a true pedal assist mode. I was more into assisting the motor than having the motor assist me. There really is a difference.

Well I took the pusher bike to that auto parts store this morning and it got noticed. I like that part of riding weird bikes. I came home charged it up and took off to home depot. I got there an bought my toys. I even got them tied to the bike and half way home before it got dicey. First thing I noticed is that it was riding hinkie. I had a pretty good idea that the pusher was swaying a bit but nothing I couldn't handle. Then on an uphill. while pedaling away, the chain came off the bike.

I put it back on but it was loose. I was a little bit afraid to pedal it much because the chain operates the only brake I have as well. So I rode it home carefully but using the motor all the way. Without being able to pedal to help it, the bike got hot and blew a fuse. I am resting now before I take the bubba bike to the auto parts store. I might just wait till tomorrow. The coaster brake arm came loose as well. And the connection to the bike's axle had moved.

Here is what I think happened.

The trailer was secured to the bike's rear axle. I think somewhere along the way the trailer managed to work the nut on the rear axle loose. Just enough for the wheel to move a little.

That movement caused the chain to work loose. Somewhere during all this the brake lever came loose as well. With the axle nut loose the trailer began to sway. It all culminated in the above consequence.

I welded a couple of metal plates to the bike frame. I am going to attach the trailer to those. That should take care of the axle movement problem. I am also going to rebuild the trailer much more rigidly to help with the sway problem. I put a much larger bolt in the coaster brake holder. That should take care of the problems. Working out the bugs always is a big part of any new bike as you all know.

The newer version of the pusher bike.