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Hey, Anybody modified their existing bike with one of those motor kits? Any Recommendations or warnings to stay the gently caress away from? There are a few official ones I can buy at my local shop.. but they're limited to like 20KM/h or something 
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Nov 21, 2017 12:05
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No, but :popcorn: E: or whatever the emote is for that
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Nov 22, 2017 06:42
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I've thought about it but haven't made the plunge yet. There was an electric motorcycle thread that included a little e-bike content, it may have fallen into the archives. Where's TTFA? He was into e-bikes and I think had an electric scooter in Canada earlier this year.
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Nov 22, 2017 17:06
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I've been looking into it on sites like endless-sphere and various e-bike sites. I picked up 200 new 18650 cells thinking I'd build a pack sooner rather than later, but might steer towards a big powerpack/"solar generator" for the camper van. There's basically three ways I could build the packs: Glue and solder, glue and spot weld, or use the plastic connectors. I just learned about Vruzend's kits and might give that a shot. http://vruzend.com/product/vruzend_basic_kit/ It has trade-offs, but seems better than accidentally melting though a battery with a soldering iron or spending $texas on a spot welder (or make your own!for christ's sake don't do this) The e-bike people seem to think those $150 ebay 1000w e-bike kits are ok to start with, just that the components are cheap and you'll probably upgrade almost everything once you learn more. Make sure you're not gonna burn your bike/pants/garage/house down, batteries can be dangerous when turned into high voltage/amperage packages. Edit: still not knowledgeable enough about battery management systems to weigh in on those, but they're pretty important if you don't wanna brick or immolate your expensive battery pack. Slim Pickens fucked around with this message at 18:41 on Nov 22, 2017 |
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Nov 22, 2017 18:34
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I'll also add this for the hell of it because the build and battery packaging looks fantastic even if it's slow. 13 mile range/46 mph top speed.
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Nov 22, 2017 18:50
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Slim Pickens posted:I've been looking into it on sites like endless-sphere and various e-bike sites. I picked up 200 new 18650 cells thinking I'd build a pack sooner rather than later, but might steer towards a big powerpack/"solar generator" for the camper van. How much is 200 cells? That website is selling them for $5 each, seems expensive.
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Nov 22, 2017 18:55
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blindjoe posted:How much is 200 cells? That website is selling them for $5 each, seems expensive. Sometimes you can get ebay deals, but counterfeit/fraudulent battery lots are a thing to watch for. It was $200 for a box of 200, plus $40 shipping, so $1.20 a cell for 2200 mah, 3.7v cells. I learned about the deal by chance from JehuGarcia on youtube, he has some interesting projects and videos and vlogs about battery deals or group buys on occasion. What other dudes will do is buy old laptop batteries and pull the 18650 cells out of those, then test them all and recycle the bad cells and build packs from the good ones. Slim Pickens fucked around with this message at 19:29 on Nov 22, 2017 |
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Nov 22, 2017 19:27
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I've bought a mid motor drive and it should turn up in a couple of days. It's a bafang bbs02 and this is probably the dumbest thing I've ever tried to do. e: Of course if you want inspiration OP my friend did this to his bike   
hemale in pain fucked around with this message at 18:44 on Jan 3, 2018 |
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Jan 3, 2018 18:09
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hemale in pain posted:I've bought a mid motor drive and it should turn up in a couple of days. It's a bafang bbs02 and this is probably the dumbest thing I've ever tried to do. lol
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Jan 3, 2018 19:19
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The classic duimobile
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Jan 6, 2018 09:25
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I was into those bike kits for a little while. They're great fun. Make sure your killswitch actually shorts to ground and that it isn't momentary. The original switch on a kit would kill the bike only to have it re engage when you let go. Took out a chunk of fence that way. Also scrounge a rear coaster brake and mount a front disc. It'll save you from replacing your brake pads on the weekly.
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Jan 6, 2018 23:20
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I just converted a regular bike frame with a kit off eBay and a battery from AliBaba a few weeks ago. It's 1000w hub and a 20amp battery so it hits around 25mph. In true DIY fashion, I put a 26" front hub on a bike that regularly sports 27" and I don't have use of the front brake. It's pretty easy to convert on up- most work I had to do was file my fork to accept the beefier axle. Warning: you essentially are making a lightweight motor scooter. It's fast as hell because it's a big 'ol motor on a lightweight frame. You'll blow your back tire out repeatedly and wear down your brakes weekly (as noted earlier) but the good news is that unlike a motorbike you can wrestle it back inline instead of laying it down. I would highly recommend a motorcycle helmet. Electrical issues I've had: - the hot wire on the battery and the controller was different. - phase short after the connectors to the controller wiggled loose (you may want to consider laying in a stock of stay cons if this happens to you for replacements). You'll know it's a phase short/connection issue if you the hub goes but has no torque and your motion is RRR RRR RRR RRR like a sputtering jalopy. - fuse popped from the above On the whole, I commute to work on it 2.2 miles and have to recharge it every three or four rides. Total cost to convert an old bike: <$500. Below is my e-bike.
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Jan 7, 2018 17:33
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That's a pretty rad setup and definitely more reliable than the gas powered contraptions. I'd highly recommend selling your fork on craigslist or whatever and getting something that will let you use brakes on the front. I honestly have no idea what kind of preternatural control you've gotta have over a bike at 25mph to not need a front brake. Is there a reason for keeping the tiny back tire? When I had my 50cc setup I ended up finding some supercycle tires that were as large as the frame could accommodate and I never had a blowout.
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Jan 8, 2018 03:50
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One last thing: check your local laws. Certain regs classfiy e-bikes at a certain wattage and once it goes over it becomes a scooter (registration and lights). I found out I essentially am driving a libertarian electric scooter and by not having a chain, making it a bike, I am going to shoot myself in the foot if I ever get pulled over. Breakfast Feud posted:That's a pretty rad setup and definitely more reliable than the gas powered contraptions. I'd highly recommend selling your fork on craigslist or whatever and getting something that will let you use brakes on the front. I honestly have no idea what kind of preternatural control you've gotta have over a bike at 25mph to not need a front brake. Is there a reason for keeping the tiny back tire? When I had my 50cc setup I ended up finding some supercycle tires that were as large as the frame could accommodate and I never had a blowout. I agree 100% that it's really unsafe- it was just a test setup to see how cheap I could get it and if the electronics could hang for more than a week. I still don't charge the battery without supervision and a GFCI extension cord. I just ordered a folding bike that has larger tires/fork because I wind up using the foot-on-the-back-tire emergency brake method too often in traffic + it's just a winter ride and I want to be able to store it. I work second shift in Philadelphia so going in there is a ton of traffic and I rarely get up to speed. Going home it's almost midnight and the main streets I ride on have that 20+ speed limit where the lights will be all green so there's usually no one out. In the end though, that isn't a good excuse for not being safe and I am trying to rectify it. I am also going to get a 3/4 motorcycle helmet as the half I have is old and from when I rode motorcycles. I want more protection.
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Jan 8, 2018 16:35
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The ebike laws are really silly here in the UK but unless you're a complete idiot there's zero chance of getting pulld over. You'd have to be doing 30mph in a town center pedestrian zone or something. We're limited to 250w motors and can't go over 15mph legally. hemale in pain fucked around with this message at 18:02 on Jan 8, 2018 |
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Jan 8, 2018 17:57
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After you get your folding bike and helmet could you please record a video of yourself topping it out on a straightaway? The amount of rattle is going to be phenomenal.
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Jan 8, 2018 23:58
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NC Wyeth Death Cult posted:One last thing: check your local laws. Certain regs classfiy e-bikes at a certain wattage and once it goes over it becomes a scooter (registration and lights). I found out I essentially am driving a libertarian electric scooter and by not having a chain, making it a bike, I am going to shoot myself in the foot if I ever get pulled over. Yeah, Australia is similar, I think 200W? Naturally you can buy whatever you want, for "offroad use only".  Please do be safe Death Cult, you can get pretty messed up even at regular bicycle speeds.
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Jan 9, 2018 05:01
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I put a BBS02 on my road bike about a year ago and I've been commuting on it about ten miles round trip ever since. I bought everything through lunacycle.com which wasn't the cheapest, but I've had zero issues with the hardware, electronics, or battery with daily use. The only major mod I did was disable the "pedal assist" function since the way it works is dangerous as poo poo for city riding. The install is easy enough of you have bike tools already, and the only real advice I have is make sure you have REALLY good brakes and to keep your drivetrain is good shape or you'll shred chains.
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Jan 12, 2018 07:43
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oXDemosthenesXo posted:I put a BBS02 on my road bike about a year ago and I've been commuting on it about ten miles round trip ever since. Did you use the stock cranks and chainring? I'm putting mine together tomorrow but the Internet tells me the stuff it comes with sucks. I got some shimano cranks for their ebike kit which will apparently fit the bafang but I don't wanna spend like £80 on the stupid custom chainring.
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Jan 13, 2018 00:57
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hemale in pain posted:Did you use the stock cranks and chainring? I'm putting mine together tomorrow but the Internet tells me the stuff it comes with sucks. Oh man I forgot about that. The stock chainring that comes with it is completely worthless. I tried it when I put the kit together the first time, but it was way too many teeth to be practical and constantly derailed. I ended up ponying up for the 90bux one on lunacycle which has been good for the last year or so. The crank that came with has been fine though, no trouble except it came loose until I tightened it properly.
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Jan 13, 2018 04:55
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I'll have an update in a bit, but for DIYers you should probably read this. It seems kind of obvious now that a 1000watt front hub motor would rip the front forks off a pedal bike and spool the controller cable around the axle obliterating several wiring harnesses in the process. Bad news: I don't have any. Good news: excuse to stock up on them. http://www.ebikeschool.com/torque-arm-need-one/
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Jan 15, 2018 02:27
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So like, no offense to anyone in this thread, but I've always perceived e-bikes to be something mostly built/ridden by people who are extraordinarily cheap (like "I want a scooter but can't spend a thousand bucks for a cheap one / don't want to pay for a helmet or the registration or the gas"), and so thisquote:Good torque arms won’t be cheap. Don’t expect to spend less than $15-20 a piece for a decent stainless steel torque arm. quote:If you’re in a pinch or you really want to make your own, a 10 mm spanner wrench makes a surprisingly good torque arm. just made my day Sagebrush fucked around with this message at 02:56 on Jan 15, 2018 |
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Jan 15, 2018 02:53
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e-bikes are nice because they can go places a regular scooter can't, be that because of a bike's much larger wheels or just legality (no scooters on bike paths). I know a lot of folks who use ebikes to help them either extend range or help with brutal uphills/headwinds. More importantly the pricing for scooters vs. ebikes makes it so you can get a really well built ebike conversion for the price of a no name electric scooter of dubious quality.
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Jan 15, 2018 03:36
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I'm getting mine because I'm a bike courier and it would really suck having to worry about delivery insurance for a scooter, also it's a pain to park and they're way more targeted by thieves in my area. There's a gang which go about stealing scooters and dismantling them in their garden. e: bike is almost ready   There were some really dumb problems like the battery holder not matching up with the bottle cage mounts so we had to drill new holes in the battery holder. hemale in pain fucked around with this message at 00:46 on Jan 16, 2018 |
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Jan 15, 2018 17:03
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Gonna need more pics of how that thing actually powers the bike! I know a courier who says he'll get a hub motor once his knees give out, gonna be an interesting decade or so when the fixie diehards get beaten out by motors.
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Jan 16, 2018 01:37
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Yah. I slapped a $200 generic chinesium 1000W rear hub direct drive kit onto my hardtail steel-is-real touring bicycle because I hate car commuting. I got a nice fat battery from Luna Cycles because their TMI webpage is really good and I had ~20 miles to go. It was a fail++ for a commuting ride, but otherwise a great experience. It is way too fast and absolutely terrifying to ride and I took it off until I can put together an e-bike with suspension. I'll try to dig up a photo. edit: It's a lovely photo, but there it is. 
Cyberpunkey Monkey fucked around with this message at 06:54 on Jan 16, 2018 |
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Jan 16, 2018 06:38
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Breakfast Feud posted:Gonna need more pics of how that thing actually powers the bike! I know a courier who says he'll get a hub motor once his knees give out, gonna be an interesting decade or so when the fixie diehards get beaten out by motors. Yeah, single speeds suck if you live somewhere hilly. I know about 4-5 people who've gone with electric bikes now so it's starting to happen.  video of the motor spinning the chain osirisisdead posted:edit: It's a lovely photo, but there it is. Is the duct tape holding the battery on? That's kinda amazing/terrifying. hemale in pain fucked around with this message at 12:01 on Jan 16, 2018 |
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Jan 16, 2018 11:58
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Wow, 1000W is 1.3HP, which is frankly quite a bit for a bicycle. Will it wheelie?
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Jan 16, 2018 13:19
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Yeah. The duct tape was janky, but it did the job. Re: wheelie, The motor controller and extra long wheelbase from a touring frameset and my fat rear end keeps it relatively copacetic... and I overvolted it with a 52V pack, so it's closer to 2HP.
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Jan 16, 2018 20:31
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I got to ride my bike properly yesterday and it's great. I set the speed limit to 30kph but it really wanted to go faster and felt perfectly safe with my dumb downhill tyres.oXDemosthenesXo posted:I bought everything through lunacycle.com which wasn't the cheapest, but I've had zero issues with the hardware, electronics, or battery with daily use. The only major mod I did was disable the "pedal assist" function since the way it works is dangerous as poo poo for city riding. I just set the assist to zero when i'm on shared paths. I've also got some brake sensors glued on which shuts off the motor when I brake. 
hemale in pain fucked around with this message at 12:28 on Jan 17, 2018 |
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Jan 17, 2018 12:25
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Does anyone know anything about building battery packs? I wanna start building my first packs and getting into electric motors as a hobby, but I'm not sure if my idea is entirely practical. I can't extra info on those batteries I bought, so I'm gonna assume they have a discharge rate of 1C(so 2.2 amps max). I'm playing with the idea of having flexible battery packs that work with a battery "generator" for camping as well as an electric bike, and being able to swap between the two as I need. So my thought is this: build 4S12P packs(with bms) that'll give me a 14.4V 26Ah battery. I'd have four of those, which I then would run in series to power an electric bike, and in parallel to power the battery generator. I don't want to run all four packs on the bike at once, just three to run a 36V 500W motor. Is this dumb? I wonder if 26 Ah is overkill for a little motor, and simultaneously 100Ah is not enough for a camping battery(running leds, charging phones and maybe laptops). Is there any inherent danger in running individually-balanced battery packs in series or parallel? A risk of throwing the pack balances off without minding the battery rotation on the bike? Should I just build 36v 17Ah battery packs for the bike and buy a prebuilt 250Ah battery from Amazon?
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Mar 9, 2018 23:15
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You shouldn't just hook up those packs in parallel if there's a significant state of charge difference between them, no. That said, do you know the efficiency of your battery generator? 3 of those packs should get you about 1kWh of power, so total up the wattage drain of your appliances and see how far that gets you.
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Mar 11, 2018 17:23
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Slim, and others experimenting with making battery packs, may I suggest you look at heat shrink tubing for your blocks, you can do something like 3x4 packs quite easily, and end up with a light, rubust and waterproof pack.
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Mar 21, 2018 09:23
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I'll probably do that on other battery pack builds, but for this e-bike I picked up an empty canister like hemale's setup so I can take it on-off easily and not look like some hobo with a battery pack in a backpack taped to the frame. Got this one with a 15% off ebay coupon. Sad I missed the 20% last week, but they're still rotating through deals. https://www.ebay.com/itm/36V-48V-li...8.c100675.m4236 Slim Pickens fucked around with this message at 18:05 on Mar 21, 2018 |
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Mar 21, 2018 18:02
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Sooo, I... -replaced my replacement fork with one that has a suspension and it makes a ton of difference. The dropouts are also much more robust (I had to dremel them to accept a 9.5mm axle). -replaced almost all of the connectors (resoldered and recrimped) on my cheapie $150 eBay kit and it works amazingly well now. More and more, I am seeing the exact same kit being sold in bike shops around here for $1200 - $1500. -commuted every day rain or shine for the last two months and found my bike to be amazingly reliable in downpours and through two Nor'Easters. You're not wrestling with a heavy frame or engine like you would with a motorcycle in snow/slush and you can do that thing where you put your feet down for stability like you can in a scooter. Me, I bought FootSkis from eBay. The downside of riding in a snow storm is that just a back brake doesn't cut it but now that I have a wider front fork I can get a brake for that, too.
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Mar 23, 2018 15:08
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Sagebrush posted:So like, no offense to anyone in this thread, but I've always perceived e-bikes to be something mostly built/ridden by people who are extraordinarily cheap (like "I want a scooter but can't spend a thousand bucks for a cheap one / don't want to pay for a helmet or the registration or the gas"), and so this You're not wrong. I'm pretty drat cheap. But it's more about not having to deal with traffic or worry about parking (anywhere) than it is saving money. You get the practicality of a bicycle without the downside of having to rely totally on your own body's output (plus some torque) to get around. Plus you get some exercise with an eBike (if you want), and therefore you also build up some body heat such that riding in -30 degree weather is possible.
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Mar 23, 2018 16:30
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Got this kit in the mail a couple days ago, no idea where the BMS is supposed to fit.  10S5P  Edit: found a 10s BMS that'll probably fit that gap left by the two extra battery spots, but it might be tight. https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.com%2Fulk%2Fitm%2F272945895227 Slim Pickens fucked around with this message at 17:19 on Mar 26, 2018 |
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Mar 26, 2018 09:54
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Who did you buy the batteries off of and do you trust them? I hear too much about sketchy fly-by-night battery rebranding and I'd love to hear about the quality you have.
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Mar 31, 2018 00:31
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Jehugarcia posted a video about an eBay seller selling these cells for $1 each, and posted a video of some dude testing the same cells and finding they were legit. I generally two boxes and the rest sold out pretty quick. They're 2200 mAh and only a 2C rating so this pack is probably ok for a 500w motor. I think those controllers draw 26A but I need to find better spec sheets of eBay kits.
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Mar 31, 2018 17:36
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The biggest and last part of the bike kit showed up: a $140 front wheel. 500W, 36 V It's a heavy fucker.  Everything came hooked up, I guess so they could test everything at the factory.  Seems kinda thin.  And finally, this controller is supposed to fit into this plastic box I bought separately. Maybe I should've checked measurements before mashing buy on the $8 case? I guess we'll see when I get the giant aluminum case off?  Still need to spot weld/solder up all the nickel strips on the battery and find a home for the BMS. The one I ended up going with might take some work to fit into the battery case.
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Apr 11, 2018 08:21
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