Looking for a new neighborhood.

deacon

deacon

minor bike philosopher
I build DIY bikes... I build DIY Ebikes to be exact... Thought I might come in here and Post, since it really isn't exactly the right place for me in the electric bike section. Most of those guys are using bought bikes and systems... You know kits and stuff. So I was hoping you guys could find a corner of this forum for a guy with a multi meter and a big ole box of batteries.

The last bike I built was an ebike with a 450 watt 24v motor. I got the motor and 20" wheel on ebay. It was from a mongoose that the seller had stripped out. Since I like 20" wheels I bought the wheel and the motor. I managed to mount the motor at the rear axle. Not on the axle but near it. Actually from one of those fender or dérailleur mounting holes. That and I welded a piece of steel to the bike frame to hold the motor tight.

The rear wheel from the mongoose 20" has sprockets and free wheels on both sides. Fortunately the motor would run backwards. I was able to mount the motor to the outside of the frame which was easier to get the chain to line up. I hate chain drive, so a short chain run was good thing for me.

I run it with a small trailer to carry the batteries. The trailer also makes it more stable since I have almost zero balance lol. I ride the bike trail with it now and then and the tunnels where it goes under major roads are a nightmare for me.

I like everything about this build except that the roads here are terrible. I think it is the same all over town and probably all over the country. I am looking for a full suspension bike again. I had one but junked it out. I think this system would work well with a full suspension.

I want to get a used one. I hate to screw up a new one. I have to remove the rear wheel to put my wheel on it. Also I hate those mountain bike handlebars. I like to ride sitting up not all hunched over. So anyway here I am for better or worse.

I'll post a picture of the junker when it stops raining.
 
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I have been thinking about my new bike. First of all I really do like it just fine, b ut I wonder if the motor was on a bike with a larger rear wheel, ie say 24inch, would I get batter range or just better speed. When I get a little more time, I might take a look at that issue.

P/s i noticed a nice little shop in the next block over there. I hope you guys don't charge too much for rent.
 
I was testing a battery that I'm building from a few hundred aa cells a couple of days ago, when the darn thing shorted and caught fire. Now it didn't flame much, and it did go out by itself, but it created a huge amount of smoke. I have no idea how toxic it was but the epa is probably on its way out, since it sure choked me up. I am glad you have a good fire department in this neighborhood.

I mean between the electrical fires and the welder setting fire to the leaves last year, you never know when I am going to need one in a hurry these days.
 
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Today I went to my special bike shop, thrift store of course, they had and alum suspension bike, I almost bought it but since it was alum I wanted to think about it a while. I came home and did some experimenting with my Ebike. I replaced my hard front forks with suspension ones. First I tried 24" inch but my wheel is in pretty bad shape so I switched ot the more substantial twenty inch suspension fortks and a good solid wheel. I have no idea why I took the suspension fork off because I really do like it. I also found that I like the 24inch front wheel. It makes a good weight shift for me. I can also ride it with the seat lower making the bike feel more stable. Thats a bigger issue with me every day it seems.

So I have decided exactly what kind of bike I want to build with. The perfect bike for me to use as a platform for the parts I am now using.

I need:

A fifteen speed 24" mountain bike. Yes I know my rear wheel is a 20" inch one speed but I figure I can leave the dérailleur on the bike and set it for the sprocket I have on the one speed wheel. Then I can use the three front sprockets to give me a three speed bike. It shouldn't be hard to do at all.

It has to be a steel frame of some kinds since I need to weld on a piece of steel to hold the brake mechanism for the smaller wheel. I also have to weld on a plate to bold the motor to for stability. And finally I have to attach a trailer hitch of some sort. All of those are doable they will just require some thought. Now all I need is a little patience till the perfect bike frame comes along. In the meantime I have a perfectly good bike and soon with have a fifty ah battery pack on the bike. That I will have to test for months. 17ah are sla 32(approximately ) are nimh.
 
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I got bored today so in spite of saying I was not going to rebuild the friction drive rhino, I gave up and did it anyway. What really happened was I went for a ride on the bike trail. Since I didn't want to walk today, I tried to go slow and pedal assist the chain drive bike, but I just had a hard time keeping the speed down. So I decided to use my under powered controller and the rhino with the big motor to make a bike. I decided to put it on a 24" bike and do just a few modifications. I wanted to see how little I could do to it.

I didn't get the full suspension model but the thrift store had a really nice 24" mountain bike. It had two good wheels and the dérailleur and the the chain guide seemed to work pretty good. As did the brakes.

I changed out the front forks for a suspension 24" fork I had laying around. then I got rid of those awful flat handlebars and put on a bmx type. I added the rhino motor using a U bolt over the seat post and two side tie downs. I added a side mirror and a trailer hitch which is no more than a very solid "L" bracket. Tomorrow I need to bolt the trailer to the hitch and put the batteries on and ride it. Thiat's all there is left to do.

I put the bike together in two hours. You reckon I have done this tooo many times....

I really should switch out the crank set for a shorter one. The pedals are made for someone with shorter legs. For now I just put on a coaster seat and cranked it as high as I could.
 
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I couldn't stand it so I test road the wimpy rhino. I had to come back and switch the chain on the friction dive. It was so tight that it was binding the motor. After that the bike did much better. I had to increase the tension and I didn't get to test it again so there are still things to do. I did get one test in with the chain adjusted it was fun, I mean in a full body workout kind of way.

I would like to run it over the bike path coarse tomorrow but they are calling for showers. If it looks clear for a while I will give it a try. It does have a rhythmic click when it runs along. Im not sure but I think that the dérailleur needs oil. Of course I couldn't find my spray can so tomorrow I need to go buy one.
 
I rode the bike with the wimpy controller today on the bike trail. It did just fine on the trail it was when I put it on the road for home that the wimp factor kicked in. It isn't the bike or the drive, its the geography or should I say topography that kicks it's butt. I am going to keep at it, because I really want this to work, If I get another strong controller I will be riding the bike again not pedaling it so no exercise. Yeah I would get some fresh air and some balance training but no cardio workout.

After I got back from more testing, I was bored again so I looked around to see what I have laying about the shop I could play with.., I put the basics for a new rhino drive together from the junk I had laying around. I should explain right here that I have been buying thrift store bikes and junking them for parts for a couple of years now.

I had a 600watt at 24v motor laying about which I had welded a rear coaster bike sprocket onto. I had the frame from a rhyno drive that I was no longer using, the tire on the drive wore out. I had several coaster type wheels laying around as well. So of course I built a rhino drive just to have a different one to test one day.

First I used a grinder to cut the spokes on a 16" coaster wheel I had picked up somewhere or other. Most likely from a really cheap bike I bought for the front wheel to make a trailer. You can buy a whole bike for 6 bucks or pay 30 bucks for a wheel. Anyway with the spokes cut I removed them until i just had the hub left. I used a axle mount I had laying around to attach the scooter motor to the Hub. After I downsized the old rhino drive frame, I had a friction drive ready for the finishing touches. The gearing is about one to one which doesn't matter much with friction drive. Actually the spricket on the motor is a little bigger than the one on the drive so the drive wheel will probably turn at 3000 rpms or so. The hub is smooth of course, so it will get a coating of jbweld and sand.


The hub is two inches wide so I have to be careful with the mounting so that it fits the tire well.. This one a least wont have the eight inch tire sticking up over the rear wheel. No telling when I will get around to mounting and using it.

My next decision after a few more tests is do I want to get a more heavy duty controller for the thino drive. The whimp claims to be 25amp but I don't believe it for a minute. It runs more like 15amps.
 
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Hi Deacon,
I had to come over to this side of the forum too,the electric bike thread wasnt helping me too much since i have a electric scooter that i am customizing.
I always enjoy reading your threads.

Karl
 
If you want full suspension, stay away from the cheap full suspension bikes like this one:
fullsuspension.jpg


And go for something a little more pricey:
mountain_full_suspension_home_2.png


Or just keep your hard-tail. Those cheap mountain bikes are crap and will break on you. What's more, they have very little suspension travel and almost no damping, so they ride like crap.
 
Thank you for the advice. I actually wound up for now with a hard tail and a front suspension fork I had in the shop. It does some good. I think I might try a suspension seat post. Mostly I needed it for the bike trail they do no maintenance on that pavement it is awful. Hit a bump and the bike takes off for the edge.

Thanks Kark it's good to know someone is reading this stuff.

Today I am replacing the rhyno drive with the small wheel of the bike hub drive. I have no idea what I will call it since it does not look like a single horn. It looks more like those drives from the store.

The drive is going to be interesting. I used comfortable shoes recipe for jbweld and sand so it will pull I know. I'm just having to wait for it to cure before I can mount it. I'll tell you one thing that controller I bought to downgrade the power system is a toy. It would be great at the beach or on the great plains but in this up and down terrain it is pretty much useless over all. It works good on the bike path but on the road trying to get home it is a train wreck.

I will most likely have to replace is. I hate to buy the big one but I don't want to go up one step at a time either. I could wind up with ten controllers and still have to get the 40 amp one. I think this one will pull 25amps for a couple of seconds then drop to 15 lol...
 
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The new setup is much noisier but that's the other guys problem. It seems to be just a tiny bit more effective. It doesn't have the big wheel on top so it looks less dangerous for shirt tails ect. I could actually cover the drive wheel if I chose to do so. The bike really needs more controller power so I guess I will have to bite the bullet and pick up one. At the moment I have computer problems so that is priority one buy a new or used computer.
 
As most of you know I have two ebikes at this time. One is a chain drive with a 450 watt (at 24v) motor. I am running it on 36v which makes it a better system for me. This bike is suitable for going anywhere I want... up and down any hills in my area with a minimum amount of pedaling.

I also just rebuilt a friction drive bike to ride on the park trailes. It has a 600watt (at 24v) motor and a sprocket from a coaster wheel welded onto it. The drive on this bike is the hub from a 16" coaster wheel. It is pretty much one to one. It does however have a 25amp max controller and that just isn't enough to get up one of the hills on my way home. Sometimes I can pull that hill but I am exhausted. The bike which has the friction drive is a working 12 speed. Actually I only use it as a 6 speed I'm not even sure the front guide will move the chain.

All this is to state that I ordered a slightly larger controller. The one I ordered will do 30amp max which should help me up that one hill. I like this bike because I can run the gears on the trial and use the motor sparingly. I think I will enjoy riding farther on the trail once I am sure that I can get home without choking from the exertion of that one hill.
 
So I'm waiting for a bigger controller from tnc before I go back to work on the sissy friction drive. I was planning a ride to the lake this morning, but alas I found that I hadn't moved the battery charger plug from the timer to the wall so my slap (SLA Pack) was down significantly. Last time I tried the lake run with a pack like that, I wound up walking home. Not a pleasant experience. So here I sit waiting for batteries to get hot.

The nimh pack will be hot first so the best I can do it test it a little this morning. Yesterday I tried to test it but it had some wiring problems created by me trying to IMPROVE it. Fix it till it will never work again seems to be my motto these days.

So I have a few hours to kill. I had about half the effective charge off the batteries, so I suppose it will take three or four hours to get the pack hot again. Really hot that is. I think the nimh pack charges faster than the slap.
 
I think I mentioned that I ruined one of my sla batteries. I hooked it up backwards so the last time I tried to run it, the thing drained down to 10v while the others were down to 12. I expect it would cause them to be drained too much so I pulled it out of the pack. That left me with only a 24v pack since I have no spares.

I pulled a rhino drive out of the moth balls, and attached it to the 12 speed I just bought. I have never had a geared bike with a motor before so it is interesting. I had a 24volt controller that I have used with as much as 36v so when I decided to rig a 30v battery pack the rhino 12 speed with that controller was a natural.

I used the two 12 17ah year old batteries to make 24 then I added a 6 volt pack I made with nimh batteries. I wired up 12 volt strings of c cells. My guess is that it is about forty or so ahs. I only ran it a mile today just to see how it does,

The bike with that configuration is just as powerful as the 36 volt chaindrive. Probably because of the gearing to add a little kick to it. Tomorrow I will make some range tests with the bike then maybe work on a 12v nimh to add to the 24 sla battery to run the shopping bike as I now think of the chain drive. I string 30 12 volt nimh batteries together. I will have to give it a try tomorrow to see how it does. I figure that to be just over thirty amp hours.

My trailers are big enough to run the batteries so I might not buy a replacement battery for a while. It is a good chance to test how the nimh batteries do when co-mingled with the sla.
 
Today I made a monumental decision. I have been walking on the hiking /bike trail. Lately I have been riding my ebike on the trail. Walking is not something I enjoy all that much. Riding the ebike isn't the best idea either. I get some strange looks and I also tend to rely too much on the motor. So I have decided I'm going to ride the ebike down to the trail which is only a 1/2 mile away mostly downhill.

Then I am going to drop the trailer full of batteries in the parking lot. Since the rhino drive motor has a freewheel or clutch I should be able to ride it with just a little more effort than it would be without anything. When I finish my pedal power ride, I will just hook up the motor and head off home. I think that is possible because the new rhino has 12 gears.

The motor is to pull me up one nasty hill I encounter on the way home. I can not make it up that hill without gasping for air at the top. So this might be a fun way to get my exercise and still get home in one piece.

I know I could ride in a place without that one nasty hill and leave the motor home but I really do like to ride the power bike more than I do pedaling, but alas I need my exercise to maintain my balance.

I am going to buy a 3/8 wing nut and an eye hook for a lock so that I can quick drop the trailer. I attach and unhook the tailer before and after each ride anyway. At least I do for the rhino. On the chain drive the trailer stays attached.
 
I got my battery and route problems solved so now I can ride the bike trail whenever I want. By using the throttle just to counter the weight of the trailer and drag of the drive, I am able to ride with pretty even resistance just like a stationary bike. The difference is I'm in the great outdoors not a sweaty gym. It is glorious I tell you simply glorious to ride home at fifteen miles and hour covered in sweat. That fresh air is amazing. lol.

Okay I admit I'm a happy camper.
 
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