Mongo, 48v 1000w 'Magic Pie' hub on a Mongoose 'Snarl'

beautiful country thier ba. looks like our paved roads lol. with all the extra weight of motor and battery pack was the ride really rough or not much different? i am really liking your sadle bag setup and may have to get a set.
 
As most of the weight is low, the ride really isn't much different at all - the only time it's noticeable is a really hard cut/turn on a wet/slick or sandy surface as while the weight is low, it's behind the rider... but again, it's only when you're riding hard *shrug*

The M-Wave Double Day Tripper Bicycle Panniers aren't bad, partic for the price... they are a bit odd however - they're both wide & a bit shallow so while it's nice my heels don't hit them while pedaling they don't hold as much as they look like they would.

If you're thinking of putting the battery pack(s) in them, you defo want to wait until you've the batteries on hand to see what size they actually are & even then it may not quite work out as planned lol, I ended up mounting my battery packs vertically instead of horizontally due to the curvature of the front of the pack;



...while not really what I had planned it's worked out better than I thought it would - the batteries are strapped directly to the vertical rack supports BTW, I cut slots through the panniers for that reason. I'd tidy it up a bit more, figure out a way to mount them more permanently, lower & horizontally for better weight & balance & cargo space... but this is after all just a temporary test setup ;)
 
Well, I haven't posted much in this thread for a while now, but the reason is a pretty good 'un I figure & simple too...

I've not had to do a b'danged thing to the ebike 'cept ride the heck outa it & occasionally plug it in from time to time lol - well, to be completely honest I did lube the chain and checked the tire pressure... does that count?

*shrug* makes it tough to make an interesting thread as basically the weekly routine goes something like this;

Sunday: unplugged frm charger, rode to the store to get me mornin' cawfee, rode all over the place just wandering about, went home & plugged in to charger...

Monday: unplugged frm charger, rode to the store to get me mornin' cawfee, went to work, got off work, rode around a bit, went home & plugged in to charger...

Tuesday: unplugged frm charger, rode to the store to get me mornin' cawfee, went to work, got off work, rode around a bit, went home & plugged in to charger...

Wednesday: unplugged frm charger, rode to the store to get me mornin' cawfee, went to work, got off work, rode around a bit, went home & plugged in to charger...

Thursday: unplugged frm charger, rode to the store to get me mornin' cawfee, went to work, got off work, rode around a bit, went home & plugged in to charger...

Friday: unplugged frm charger, rode to the store to get me mornin' cawfee, went to work, got off work, rode around a bit, went home & plugged in to charger...

Saturday: unplugged frm charger, rode to the store to get me mornin' cawfee, rode all over the place just wandering about, went home & plugged in to charger...

Tho I'll admit sometimes I'll get a lil crazy, mix it up a bit & get lunch or something heh


Nevertheless, it was so beautiful this past weekend I had to do a lil more than my usual - so I decided I'd do a "long distance" test, to exceed the worst case scenario range I'd established (27.9mi max load) by tryin' to find as smooth & level roadways as can be expected around here & runnin' in "conservation mode" - where I use my GPS to set the hub's cruse control feature to 23mph out of the max 26mph to help control consumption (I tend to WOT all the time if it's left to me ofc). The nifty thing about this is it actually does a good job modulating the throttle input, you can feel a slight pulsing as it maintains speed on level ground, then ofc coasting downhill & full power uphill.

Now I know 3mph doesn't sound like much but much like trying to maximize a car's fuel efficiency, every little bit helps & it all adds up. Not only was I not WOT/max amp draw all the time - with the CC set to 23mph it "matches" my bikes tallest gear, whenever it'd slow to any less than 23mph I'd give it a couple few pedal strokes to help it maintain it's speed & ofc help it start off from a stop.

Result? I got to 35.7 miles w/o any signs of fatigue... I meant to just keep going until I ran it out of charge, but it was getting jus' a touch hot out & while the ebike didn't care - I did & figured it was time for some shade & relaxation, it was a bit too hot & humid to be range testing as that always means pedaling back home from... somewhere lol


Here's some pics, the rare & elusive smooth Maine road, a lil bit of the wetlands so common around here, some turkeys w/their chicks (ebikes are sneaky lol) & ofc the eagle that lurks behind my house in the early mornin' keepin' an eye on things;

 
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that is awesome ba! Maine is truly a beautiful state and the roads look awesome. we dont have the beautiful wildlife and things here. just a few mongoose and iguana's however the views of the ocean and plant life are breath taking. it's amazing how much further they will go when you dont run them full throttle. i will have to work on that. i am still on full speed ahead or stop lol. no in between. i am with you i haven't done a thing to my bike except adding a rear view mirror and i have a new kickstand coming this week. i really believe as more and more people try electric bicycles they are going to become more popular especially for people like me that are mechanically handicapped
 
I agree. I plan to drain the thing this time just to see where the voltmeter is when it dies and the "slope" of the curve. But when it gets below 50 volts, I'm just going to ride around the neighborhood so the pedal back will not be bad.
 
My e-bike had great speed but after draining it ALL the way down a few times it never seemed to recover it's original power. SLA batteries are ok to get started with but in the long run I'd be saving up for better. I hear a great source for batteries is golf cart batteries they are made for this stuff.
 
It is funny that even with that expensive battery it died without notice and made Paul Peddle home. You'd think with all that cost (It wasn't cheap with life poor 4 batteries) that it would have a warning system.
 
They have a pretty flat charge / discharge curve.

That's why I got the voltmeter. I want a little more warning than the LED's (that don't work) give you.

The controllers shut down to protect the battery. If it goes under 2V / cell you just ruined a $600 battery.
 
my apologies George i did not see the question, i have the battery that magicmotor.com sells for the magic pie. it is a lipo4 which is supposed to be one of the most advanced batteries out their. i know i impressed with the light weight for a 48volt 10ah battery and it does just like it is supposed to for me. they are not supposed to have any memories so you can charge them anytime without worrying about messing them up. from the charts they go full power to basically no power so what i experienced was normal. sooner or latter i will get a gauge for it. having to much fun now to worry about it lol
george_n_texas said:
The cheaper kits ship them I asked what kind of batteries Paul was using never got an answer...my bad.
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george_n_texas said:
It is funny that even with that expensive battery it died without notice and made Paul Peddle home. You'd think with all that cost (It wasn't cheap with life poor 4 batteries) that it would have a warning system.
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While Mike B is carefully experimenting with a voltmeter Paul and I both just deliberately ran our ebikes dead to establish range under maximum draw while recording the mileage. While a somewhat crude method, we learned our "worst case scenario" range that provides a bit of a reserve buffer under normal usage, dividing that number in half gives us the "point of no return" range.

So the "died without notice" thing wasn't actually a surprise and it's actually an admirable trait of the LiFePO4 battery technology, as Mike mentioned there's a very "flat charge/discharge curve" which unlike lead acid batteries means you'll get a uniform & consistent power supply w/o fade or loss regardless of it's state of charge right until there's nothing left to give. This does make it more difficult to monitor the battery reserve as there's little to no tapering effect to monitor - which is why the typical "low med high" charge indicator lights don't function properly, they're just a primitive voltmeter and there's only fractions of a volt variation - Mike's actual voltmeter should prove more useful as it's far more precise.

There is however a "fuel gauge" specifically made for this and other advanced electric vehicle applications, rich in data and features it's the mainstay for those that are perhaps taking this a bit more seriously than we are lol;


The Cycle Analyst

I'll no doubt get one eventually as I'm admittedly a bit of a tech junkie, but TBH once you've established your "worst case" range and combined with the discharge protection & LiFePO4's lack of a "memory effect" it isn't really needful for the average commuter/around town use... where it's very handy is if you're trying to maximize range via conservation & regenerative braking, a bunch of partial charges/discharges instead of keeping the battery topped off all the time - like when you're exceeding your "point of no return" on an extended road trip or whatever, perhaps even tapping off a gas station's electrical outlet to grab a few amps while you're eating lunch for example :D
 
hmm... speaking of "trying to maximize range via conservation & regenerative braking" it occurred to me that Mongo the ebike still hasn't had it's regenerative feature enabled as it's got trigger shifters (the brake levers are incorporated into the shifter housing) - which means that I would need to replace the trigger shifters with twists to be able to use the included switched brake levers for the regen... but as this electric bicycle project is supposed to be just a temporary test platform, I didn't feel like buying more stuff for it or strippin' bits of the taddy.

I thought about modifying the Mongoose's levers to be switched, nothing fancy ofc - just a coupla lil momentarys cobbed to the levers themselves... but this didn't seem worth the bother & I worried about water shorts... Then like always the easiest, simplest solution occurred to me last - the MP controls include a horn button right below the cruise control button & as I haven't got a horn, why not use it for the regenerative braking switch?

So I did - and lo, it works a treat heh :p

In any case the regen braking is surprising strong, I wish I could tell you what kind of returns I'm getting from it - but without The Cycle Analyst mentioned above, there's no way to know *shrug* there's just a touch of lag time between switch activation and regenerative braking engagement, perhaps half a second or so and it disengages completely when you've slowed to almost a stop... but other'n that I'm flying blind lol


I should prolly mention it's somewhat hazardous to use the cruise control without the switched brake levers as they automatically disengage the cruise control when you hit the brakes - without them you hafta push (and hold for a sec) the cruise control button to turn it off while stopping. My brakes (disc) are capable of overpowering the electric drive in an emergency, but this is ofc a bit dangerous if not potentially damaging to the drive... and it's kinda silly too, despite the fact I'd never use the cruise control on anything other than wide open roads w/o any traffic, regardless of whether the brake levers are switched or not.





Anyhoo - I like to include pics in my posts... but none of the above would make for very interesting photos (ooh, lookit - buttons! lol) so instead here's one I took last Sunday at a friend's house, jus' cause I thought it an interesting study in contrasts heh;

b8f3f152.jpg
 
so if you were gonna keep the mongo would you put new shifters on so you would have the regen braking? i am still waiting on my shifters. so far all the reports i read on the regen braking that people love it. seems more people like it for the extra braking power then recharging the battery
 
Oh yes, regen is cool. I hardley ever use the mechanical brakes. The regen switch is on the front brake lever and I didn't use it on the rear. When I stop I move the lever enough to engage the regen but not the cantilevers. I want to get as much as I can back into the battery.

If you guys get the voltmeter you will actually see the voltage rise when it engages.
 
paul said:
so if you were gonna keep the mongo would you put new shifters on so you would have the regen braking? i am still waiting on my shifters. so far all the reports i read on the regen braking that people love it. seems more people like it for the extra braking power then recharging the battery
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No & yes? :p

I like trigger shifters so while twists are a simpler solution and I like them well enough to have them on the Rollfast & the taddy project (abet for different reasons) I'd most likely convert the existing trigger shifters & levers to be switched... but there's no real good reason for that other'n the challenge really as I couldn't say which I prefer in shifters, trigger vs twist *shrug* and the only issue w/twist shifters is if you dislike thumb throttles and have front and rear derailleurs as there starts to be a conflict of interest on the bars lol - as I'm not a huge fan of thumb throttles and poor Mongo is destined to be a gas bike winter beater come fall (twist throttle ofc), no twisties for it ;)

I think it's just a case of personal preference in ergonomics offset only by project priority - if my ebike wasn't just a test platform and I didn't like messin' around modifying stuff, I'd stick a set of twist shifters on there w/the switched brake levers as the regen feature is defo worth a set of replacement shifters.

Mike B said:
Oh yes, regen is cool. I hardley ever use the mechanical brakes. The regen switch is on the front brake lever and I didn't use it on the rear. When I stop I move the lever enough to engage the regen but not the cantilevers. I want to get as much as I can back into the battery.

If you guys get the voltmeter you will actually see the voltage rise when it engages.
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Agreed! I'm already starting to use the regen more and more to assist braking, it's a nice smooth & constant drag that helps balance my habit of using my front brakes almost exclusively (clean dry conditions obv), any replenishment of the battery reserve is icing on the cake lol

As for the voltmeter... well, I was poking around looking at various options from yours to the somewhat more advanced 'Watt's Up' Watt Meter & Power Analyzer which has had great reviews yet is 1/3rd the cost of the the Cycle Analyst, but with less functionality;

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specs & user guide: http://www.powerwerx.com/techdata/Watts-UP-V2.pdf


...but then I noticed The Cycle Analyst is in it's Beta V3 stage;
IMG_5210-1024x768.jpg

http://www.ebikes.ca/store/store_CAV3.php

& as all currently available versions are still V2.23... and as the Beta 3 has some features that would complement my hybrid taddy's application very very well ... umm... I guess for now I'm not getting anything at all lol
 
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I also practice a "look way ahead" riding style. If I know I have to stop I lay off the juice way before and coast to the line.
 
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