Another RG250 with Colossus Motor

[SplinterOz]

Arlo1 you sound like black board from an old kids show over here.

"Hurry up... Hurry up"

[SplinterOz]

Arlo1 just for you...

I realized that you guys have not seen these two videos...

Friend on board for the first time


Just a little ride down the street.

[SplinterOz]

Ok so I have the connectors designed and the outer plates slightly modified to fit better. I will be using 3mm Aluminum for the battery connectors and they will be all laser cut. This should all be ready for me by Wed next week ready for a long weekend.

You will see I have increased the gap between the plates...


Battery Holder Designs by Splinter, on Flickr


Battery Holder Designs by Splinter, on Flickr

Note the green highlight is the outer battery holder plates.

[Dreddydave]

This is the first time I've seen it and I'm very impressed! I'll keep an eye on this one; great job!

[SplinterOz]

Next week is Australia Day. This year it falls on a Thursday and in the tradition of all hard working Australians I plan to take Friday off as flex time. This gives me 4 days straight to get a huge amount done on the bike.

The next major task is to build the final battery pack 72 volts and 50 amp hours of Headway batteries. Luke and I have designed the layout and holders for these and we got the first try a month ago. We needed to make some minor adjustments to the outer plates and also design the electrical connectors. I made a small video on the battery layout so you can see how it all goes.



My CAD work (Cardboard Aided Design) was put into a real CAD system by Luke and everything looks sweet.


This weekend I cleaned up the frame, pulled out the motor that was in the way and charged the batteries (man did that take some time).


Here is the bike ready for major work next weekend. I am hoping to complete the following:

• battery pack constructed and fitted to bike
  
• all battery sense wires connected to the battery pack
  
• fuses mounted
  
• contactors mounted
  
• BMS placed in a case and plugs wired
  
• BMS mounted

This would then only leave the following tasks:

• Controller mounted
  
• Water cooling plumbing and mounting
  
• 12 volt fuse and battery setup
  
• 12 volt wiring
  
• All panel work complete

I can see the end of the tunnel.

[SplinterOz]

Ok so the plates have only just arrived (don't ask) and not all of them yet (don't ask again).

However we have enough to test assemble the pack outside the bike and get all the measurements for all the spacer rods etc.


Battery test construction by Splinter, on Flickr


Battery test construction by Splinter, on Flickr


Battery test construction by Splinter, on Flickr


Battery test construction by Splinter, on Flickr


Battery test construction by Splinter, on Flickr

Last one shows the spacing between the 3mm aluminum plate and the plastic.

[markobetti]

Beautifull! beautifull , i like it very much. The design is great and it will fit like a charm on the bike

[SplinterOz]

I will be putting the full pack into the bike next weekend however.. I have had some small progress this week. Between putting in about 60hours each week for the last two weeks and sleeping I have done very little.

However I did get into LiPo! No I am not replacing my nice Headway pack... but I needed a battery pack to start building all my wiring. So three 6S RC packs and some wiring, some sparks and some swearing I have a pack with enough volts to drive all I need for testing.


Test Lipo Pack by Splinter, on Flickr

That has allowed me to test a switch/light combo for the controller turn on. I picked up a pushbutton switch a while back with a illuminated green ring. The ring is just a LED with no load resisters so it runs straight out of the Kelly. 4 Wires pack positive to NO switch to controller on and the two for the LED.


Controller Switch - Off by Splinter, on Flickr


Controller Switch - On by Splinter, on Flickr

I plan to complete my turn on circuit and testing it this week. Next week the last of the battery plates and spacers arrive so I should have the full pack and enough wiring to safely turn it on and off and go for a ride

[jonescg]

Must be so frustrating being so close yet still can't get it to turn a wheel! So the LiPo was just to make sure the Kelly fires up and turns the motor, while testing all the 12 V stuff?

I highly recommend a fuse box from Eastern Beaver (if you haven't already got one from there). And never ground the low voltage wiring. One stray wire and your BMS transistors tend to pop when anything over 4 V hits them.

[SplinterOz]

Yep got the beaver fuse box. Not really to spin the motor but to do all the DC/DC setup, turn on circuit and the control lights out of the controller. Although these batteries would turn the wheel .

Yep the frame has neither pack or 12 volt earthed. That is the other thing to get the wiring loom complete.

[jonescg]

You cracked 10000 views mate! Better finish it up soon!

[SplinterOz]

You cracked 10000 views mate! Better finish it up soon!

It's only a 1000 views because I have taken so long...

However Dan just sent me my new Sprocket... 64 teeth and 500g. Compared to the old 54 teeth and 1kg.


Old Sprocket by Splinter, on Flickr


New Sprocket by Splinter, on Flickr


New Sprocket by Splinter, on Flickr

[SplinterOz]

So with the help of my good friend [url="http://www.mabula.net/"]Paul[/url] I have got the battery mounted in the bike! I have some photos here of the process and how much "fun" it was.
Firstly I have to construct the centre pack and tighten it all up.
This is all easily done outside the bike on the "comfort" of the garage floor.


Centre batteries and mounting plates together. Yes the hammer (rubber) and wood are used to encourage a snug fit


Close up of a spacer made of aluminum and threaded.


Spacer bolted into place.


Central pack assembled.

Next part was to get the central pack into the bike and bolted to the engine mounts on the frame. High tensile 10mm bolts and nylock nuts.

Central pack mounted on the bike. Note the front mount to the frame uses the original engine mounting points.


Closer shot showing the centre electrical plates resting on the grub screws.


Now the first of the double width batteries go in and I get the centre electrical plates and BMS wires in place... now this was just fiddly and required a contortionists arm.

One side of the double width pack.


The centre electrical plates and the cells screwing together.


Keeping the BMS sense wires out of the way to avoid pinching.


Two man four hand job just to get the cells to line up.

The other side of the batteries are placed in and screwed tight against the plates and other batteries.

Other side of the cells being placed in to hold the electrical plates in place.

Last task today place the outer plates on and "encourage" them to fit snugly over the batteries.

Sizing up the outer mounting plate.


Sizing up the outer mounting plate.


Gently placing the plate over the batteries and making them snug.


Outer mounting plate in place and sitting pretty.

The right hand plate does not sit quite right due to some old mounting points for the air box. I will get them off tomorrow and finish the mounting during the week.


Continues....

[SplinterOz]

Here are some final shots of how neat it is.

All mounted with nose cone on to show width.


All mounted with nose cone on to show width.


Here is the final position of the battery in the bike


Here is the final position of the battery in the bike

[jonescg]

Probably a bit late to suggest it, but should the chassis or the plates be covered in some kind of insulating substance? It gets close in some points.

Otherwise it's looking very neat! Hope you don't have to pull cells out too often.

[SplinterOz]

Probably a bit late to suggest it, but should the chassis or the plates be covered in some kind of insulating substance? It gets close in some points.

Otherwise it's looking very neat! Hope you don't have to pull cells out too often.

Not too late... I had some thick but flexible plastic covering the pates as I was mounting the battery, however it was not good enough for a permanent solution. I am going to get some really thing polycarbonate (or similar) and mount that over all the battery ends. So yes it will all be insulated.

If I have to pull out cells I will probably reshape the outer plates so they don't have the "shoulder" in them so the batteries can just slide out. Inner batteries however will require complete disassembley. I should not be pushing these batteries too hard (not like the race bikes) so I hope they will hold together.

[jonescg]

5 O'clock Canberra time - surely you have the bike ready by now? Can't wait to see the first videos

Did you work out if you are required to put some kind of protective housing around the outrunner in order to pass the pits? I was thinking this would probably reduce it's self-cooling capacity.

[SplinterOz]

That would assume that I didn't mow the lawn, clean out the shed, go to the dump and collapse.

Also I have 4 electrical plates yet to come... sigh... they will be here next week and I will have the pack done and the BMS on. Then I will charge up the battery and mount the motor.

At that point I will have the first visit from the engineer. Just hope he likes the construction

[Bluefang]

most likely the engineer with have NFI what you have done or created Good luck with getting it certified, should be pretty easy as you should be able to get it done under a engine swap mod plate

[SplinterOz]

most likely the engineer with have NFI what you have done or created Good luck with getting it certified, should be pretty easy as you should be able to get it done under a engine swap mod plate

I am getting the Engineer that the fabrication company I have been working with use all the time. Hopefully that will make things go easier. I heard that you guys up in Qld were just getting the engine swap checked and little or none of the electronics and electrics certified.

[Bluefang]

nahh we still need to get the electronics checked, i just cheated on my scooter and was under 60V so it was not required. Pitty the guy i got to do the inspections etc was unknown to me and everything so he was going to make me pay $1k+ to get a official speed test done to register the scooter under 50km/h. Yours i hope is straight forward, its not what your know its who you know

[SplinterOz]

Ok did a little bit of work this weekend. All the batteries are wired up in series and parallel and the BMS is wired up in a temp fashion. Now I get to wire up the charging controls.

So a question, I am going to use a kilovac contactor to enable the charge leads for the off board charger. When the bike key is in the Park position the contactor will be engaged and the charge leads will be "live". I was thinking of using the HVC alarm just to turn off the contactor so the charger would see open circuit and just shut down. What do you think?

[SplinterOz]

The method of testing has been to use three 1.2Ohm 1kW resisters in series. These then draw about 21 amps from the battery pack and I time it until the low voltage trips on the BMS. With this draw I would expect to get about 2 hours of discharge (50Ah pack 80% usable). After that I would charge until HVC. After the first two cycles the pack was fairly well top balanced with all cell groups going into shunt mode before the HVC was tripped. Now my charger is rigged to go to 87.6V (24 * 3.65v) but the BMS is designed to trip at 86.4V (24 * 3.6v) so I will have to look at trimming it down a little.

So with the battery pack in and testing the BMS and cells I have found a few things.

The BMS works. It cuts out the charger on high volts and also cuts the throttle at low volts
The wiring from the cells to the BMS should be fine as is
I have some bad cells

Number three is a concern it appears that at least some cells in the 7th parallel set are not holding capacity. That set consistently hit low voltage first and at about 1.9kWh which is about half the expected capacity. Also the high voltage is tripped when the whole pack is at 83.7volts when it should be 86.4V. Now do you think that the 7th set would be in the inner or outer sections of the pack? You guessed it, they are in the inner... so I will be disassembling the pack (unfortunately) to locate and replace the bad cells. I might even test the pack outside the bike before fitting it again

I hope to do that this week.

[jonescg]

Ahh Tony that blows. Believe me, you will get good at ripping that electric RG down and putting it back together in no time. Is it just me or is it common for Headways to have such a high dud rate? Jon was forever pulling them out of his bike.

[SplinterOz]

Honestly it is my fault... I should have checked every cell before I put them in. I don't think I will get the rate of failure Jon did... won't be pushing them that hard.
Mind you I have to find a good way of checking every cell before installing.