off the deep end: into electric bikes and batteries

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Cobar
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Re: off the deep end: into electric bikes and batteries

Post by Cobar »

Wow.

That would have been one heck of a fun project when I was younger. Around here is a really bad place to ride bikes.
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blackeagle603
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Re: off the deep end: into electric bikes and batteries

Post by blackeagle603 »

Western NC? You have what we would call hills out west, no? The mid-drive I installed would be perfect -- keep you rolling up hill. The gear reduction has the motor spinning 22:1 into the crack, then you've got additional advantage of the rear gear cluster.

A simple direct drive hub motor at low rpm and heavy loadwill get hot and suck the guts out of your battery. If you regularly see better than 5% grade then a mid-drive is the ticket.

There's some videos of crazy steep MTB riding with pedal assist. Long tail cargo bikes with electric motors adding to the crank are getting a lot of use in steep cities out west (e.g. Seattle, Portland, San Fran).

Here's a guy making a fairly flat offroad speed run with the same drive I installed. link

Not sure if you've seen the fat-bike craze hit back there or not. Ridiculous oversize flotation tires. Here's bit of hill climb action. Link
"The Guncounter: More fun than a barrel of tattooed knife-fighting chain-smoking monkey butlers with drinking problems and excessive gambling debts!"

"The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic;" Justice Story
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blackeagle603
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Re: off the deep end: into electric bikes and batteries

Post by blackeagle603 »

The sub-category of cargo bikes is really deep hole to down. There's a lot of ideas being tried. Rear carry, front carry, small tire, big tire and so on. For example

I'll be tempted to do a build for a Home Depot/Dixieline runner. A mid drive assist with that and/or a trailer and 8 ft sheet stock becomes a possibility. I think I can resist that for a while. I think I can, I think I can.


Trailers? Did I say trailers? Oh yeah
"The Guncounter: More fun than a barrel of tattooed knife-fighting chain-smoking monkey butlers with drinking problems and excessive gambling debts!"

"The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic;" Justice Story
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Weetabix
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Re: off the deep end: into electric bikes and batteries

Post by Weetabix »

I've driven through western NC. IIRC, it's steep, full of kiss-your-ass curves on narrow roads, and it has so much roadside vegetation you can't see what's coming up on you. Not sure I'd ride a fast bike there either. :D
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HTRN
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Re: off the deep end: into electric bikes and batteries

Post by HTRN »

blackeagle603 wrote: By law to be street legal classified as a bike, no registration or license, it needs to be 750W max and max no-pedal speed of 20mph on flat road with a 170# rider.
And yet, there are hub motors that hit 10,000 watts. :shock:

Would be neat to use one to build a three wheel solar car..
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Darrell
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Re: off the deep end: into electric bikes and batteries

Post by Darrell »

Not to stray off topic, but here's an electric car for ya:

http://www.zombie222.com/

The Zombie 222 '68 Mustang, 800 hp, 1,800 lb/ft of torque. There are a couple of very impressive vids at the link.
Eppur si muove--Galileo
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blackeagle603
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Re: off the deep end: into electric bikes and batteries

Post by blackeagle603 »

Just made a run to drop a ~ 15lb package at the UPS store, then across town to the Mower/Chainsaw shop to have a chain sharpened. Got up to over 30 for a long block at one point.

Skipped breakfast and had been pruning for a couple hours, got pretty dry so downed a Snapple at the half way mark waiting on the chain sharpening. Then back up the hill. 6 1/2 miles >300' ft elevation gain, 45 minutes with 2 stops. Could hardly do any better in my car and got in my min cardio workout for the day to boot.
"The Guncounter: More fun than a barrel of tattooed knife-fighting chain-smoking monkey butlers with drinking problems and excessive gambling debts!"

"The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic;" Justice Story
Cobar
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Re: off the deep end: into electric bikes and batteries

Post by Cobar »

Weetabix wrote:I've driven through western NC. IIRC, it's steep, full of kiss-your-ass curves on narrow roads, and it has so much roadside vegetation you can't see what's coming up on you. Not sure I'd ride a fast bike there either. :D
Pretty much. If it was an empty road, sure. With any kind of traffic no way. The liqourcycles cause enough problems on the road let alone bicycles.

For getting around here anything not a car, truck , or real motorcycle is bad. Now on trails an electric assist would be nice.
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blackeagle603
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Re: off the deep end: into electric bikes and batteries

Post by blackeagle603 »

<pops up from the rabbit hole to point out that..>

Man is there ever some cool stuff being done with bikes. I've gone off looking at internal geared hubs line the Shimano Nexus. (cool vid of internals here).

That's the hot ticket for a mid-drive motor. No muss and fuss with chain line and forgetting to let up a moment to shift while under power (grind, chunk, chunk). Smoother shifting with an internal hub and I suppose longer chain life (and no wearing out rear clusters from shifting forgetting and under heavy power).

Anyhoo... That all wasn't surprising. I've seen internal geared hubs. Somewhere along the way was lookng at crank/chainring discussion and I fell into this hole aboutinternal 2-speed cranks. I had no idea... For some reason this somehow strikes my fancy as extra cool. Definitely no chain line issues and first impression is that's it's sort of elegant (in the technical solution sense).
"The Guncounter: More fun than a barrel of tattooed knife-fighting chain-smoking monkey butlers with drinking problems and excessive gambling debts!"

"The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic;" Justice Story
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blackeagle603
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Re: off the deep end: into electric bikes and batteries

Post by blackeagle603 »

...and then you take that 2 speed crank, do some machining, hang some different chainrings on it and install it in your high speed e-bike (like so).
"The Guncounter: More fun than a barrel of tattooed knife-fighting chain-smoking monkey butlers with drinking problems and excessive gambling debts!"

"The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic;" Justice Story
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