My 5kw-h "Sport Tourer" (with HD video)

Update:





I decided that I have enough time and pictures into this bike to start a build thread.

Introduction: I'm a huge 2 wheel fan of all varieties, electrical mad scientist, sailor, urban assualter, traveler, tech nerd, and general supporter of the electric revolution. Here are a couple of the daily rider gasoline powered bikes (the Vespa is really my girlfriend's ):



The blue one is a Honda st1300 part of a motorcycle niche known as the sport tourer. I've ridden my ST1300 all over the country and I have about 40k miles on it. I love it because its: fast/reliable/comfortable/practical.For me there really is no compromise. I want to build the e-bike version of a sport tourer.

Motor: First I stumbled upon a 1000w hubmotor from a member on the forum from goldenmotor. This should be sufficient for what I want. I'm hoping for a reliable 30-35mph so this should do the trick. Next build will be high performance with a beefier motor... My first build was a front wheel hubmotor, and this time around I'm going with a rear wheel so that I can keep with some modern suspension without worrying about ripping about dropouts (as much). Should satisfy the "sport" end of things (hey 35 is pretty fast for a bicycle frame )


Frame: My first e-bike build was similar to a few others I've seen: a ductape mess... I wanted something that could conceal the batteries neatly so that I wouldn't need hose clamps and ductape. My forte is electrical and so I want to spend most of my time messing with that and not welding brackets. I found a Norco scrambler frame on craigslist for cheap and it was perfect, chromo with decent components. For cargo I got an xtracycle conversion. This will allow me to hide the batteries and I just love the possibilities for an ebike It allows for more touring capability for sure.
View attachment 5

Controller: The motor came with a 48v controller from golden. This isn't bad, and theres alot of things I like about it. However, it didn't have the performance capability I was looking for, so I built up a Methods 100A 100V controller. I plan to only run it at about 64 volts ~40A so it should satisfy my requirements for long-haul sport-touring.


Battery: If you want to tour, your going to need a healthy amount of Whs. Luckly for me, it was time to clean out the storage cabinet at work... Instead of throwing out perfectly good prototypes, I decided to put them to better work on my ebike. The tricky part? Theyre LiCo. Low power density BUT the best energy density you can get (for the most part). How do you make up for low energy density? Quantity. The pack should be somewhere around 3.6kwh when I'm done, but I may have room for another Kwh or so. Well see... I plan to build a bunch of different batteries for this bike over time and I have another couple kwh in Konion cells waiting to be fitted as well . either way I figure at around 40wh/mile (which is high) I should still be able to get 90miles or more on a single charge, even if I'm flying uphill the whole time The pack setup right now is 64V 48Ah with cells to spare....

Wheels: I'm using a triple wall Alex Supra-e 26" wheel which should allow for plenty of touring weight. I had a few of these laying from my old P-3 urban assualt bike. I had 2 sets of spokes cut from Ebikes.ca. The first set I gave them the wrong length. Double butted spokes are awesome.


I really want the bike to not look like a mess so I decided to first break down the frame and xtracycle and paint them. I think itll be easier to catch the imagination of someone if it looks a little finished. some of the builds lately have really raised the bar as far as clean builds go. Since its crappy out, I used my dungeon of a basement as a paintbooth




Lunch breaks over, more to come....WIP

Nice build! Love the look of the black frame and matching Xtracycle! Very clean! The GM motor casing goes great too...

Thanks Jeremy .

I decided on 203mm mechanical bb7s. I was looking into hydros for the front but for the price, I couldn't pass up the BB7s. I also ended up with a threaded disk brake adapter so that I could run disks on the goldenmotor (also from ebikes.ca) The adapter is nice however the frame didnt end up being the right dimensions so I had to make an adapter for the disk brake and mount the hanger on the outside of the frame.
I also have a ebikes.ca torque arm that I intend to supplement with some Methods-spec box end wrench torque arms


I finished up the cabling and fitted the chain.

Stuff still to do:
Wire up batteries
build charger
setup cycle analyst (for current limiting etc)
box end wrench torque arms
Drill out side covers for ventilation
hubmotor thermocouple
Chainguide (so it dosn't slap the frame all the time)


and much more... just figured Id get the thread rolling. I really plan to put tons of miles on this and possibly some 1000+ mile trips.

Looks really well thought out. The long wheelbase( I think) makes rear suspension less needed that on short base bikes. Front shocks though, are always worth having to make hand fatigue less on a 60 mile + day. Cargo capacity to carry the luggage and batteries for cross country travel is no problem on a longtail.

You may already have it in the plan, but for high mileage daily riding, you really need to have a thermometer in the motor, or on the axle stub to keep from melting down the motor climbing some huge hill in the middle of nowhere. Each day on a tour, you will have to know what speed is sustainable in that days weather and terrain. If you travel above the sustainable speed and get hot, you need to know when to stop before damaging stuff.

dogman said:

Looks really well thought out. The long wheelbase( I think) makes rear suspension less needed that on short base bikes. Front shocks though, are always worth having to make hand fatigue less on a 60 mile + day. Cargo capacity to carry the luggage and batteries for cross country travel is no problem on a longtail.

You may already have it in the plan, but for high mileage daily riding, you really need to have a thermometer in the motor, or on the axle stub to keep from melting down the motor climbing some huge hill in the middle of nowhere. Each day on a tour, you will have to know what speed is sustainable in that days weather and terrain. If you travel above the sustainable speed and get hot, you need to know when to stop before damaging stuff.

Click to expand...

Absolutely Dogman! I plan to drill out the sidecovers for ventillation, and add a thermometer inside the motor as well. I also plan to beef up the phase input wires a bit from the weak 16 guage wire that comes stock.

I ordered about 50 bucks worth of pins (yes just pins) for the batteries which will be in soon. Also have about 25 dollars in PTCs which will be for battery protection.

I took it out for a ride (sans batteries) just to make sure everything was solid.... It was not. It almost felt like I had a passenger in the back who was shifting their weight back and forth. I figured out that the steering head bearings were missing one spacer which was not allowing the bottom of the fork to turn properly. At first I figured it was just all the weight of the motor in the wheel throwing it off. Once I put the spacer back in it handled like a long-tail should.

More progress soon...

Super cool, I think cargo bikes are the way to go for this...I had my eye on a kona UTE, as another host...keep up the great work!!

K

I made some more progress over the weekend. I managed to assemble all of the packs. It was no small task. The TO200 and axial parts are essentially extra protection for the BMS. I apologize for the crappy pictures. 3 megapixels of garbage... It probably would look better if i cleaned the pocket garbage off first but meh...

It's looking like this will actually be more like a 5KW-H sport tourer...

Each pack is taken out separately and they are all charged in parallel (to assure balance) and then connected in series for the bike.

I took it around the block under pedal power and the handling definitely still needs tweaking for 30mph. The steering head bearings still aren't as tight as they should be. The Xtracycle carrying case drifts a little bit from the frame and creates a 'Wobbly Passenger' type of feel as it shakes back and forth, but I'm sure I can find a way to secure them a bit better.

I am hoping for a maiden voyage tonite, but well see how cooperative the controller is?

You need to drill out those side covers. I first drilled mine half way up the unibit. It worked well last year. This year I drilled mine out to the largest unibit size. It can take a little over 2000w+ continuous without having to back off 60v 45+A. WOT for 15 miles Ive tested and I got into the 130s. I still got the stock harness in mine but its chopped off an inch or two out the axel. Soldered and shrinked wrapped halls and terminated phase wires with andersons. To extend the wires I used 22G hall and 10g phase. Working just fine. Even routed mine through the fork and frame. Good Luck! Nice Build. I wonder what your pack voltage will be under load. I rest at 66v and hover around 56-57 under full load without restriction on my 60v 20AH Thundersky Pack. I currently have my controller lvc set around 59-60v. You feel a soft shutter under load as it clips the lvc. It feels like it throttles the current back allowing the voltage to stay 59-60v and allows me to go slightly faster than me just letting the voltage sag to whatever 57 or lower. I have the timing advanced enabled also. My controller is also set to overshoot on current before it pulls it back in to the correct amount. I have phase current set at 125. I peak around 35ish on my GM front motor on level ground with 325lb rider 33lb battery pack and 60lb bike you should be able to get to the high 35+s atleast.

icecube57 said:

You need to drill out those side covers. I first drilled mine half way up the unibit. It worked well last year. This year I drilled mine out to the largest unibit size.

Click to expand...

Which unibit? I have them from this:
http://www.irwin.com/tools/drill-bits/high-speed-steel-fractional-self-starting
(but the very tip is broken off, which is why I have it now)
to this:
http://www.irwin.com/tools/drill-bits/high-speed-steel-fractional-hole-enlarging

@grindz: those are interesting looking packs. Are those little LCDs on there to display battery info?

I used the second one. The larger guy. But i think one thing that cools mine efficiently is i did holes on the outer ring on one side and holes near the axel on the other side. That centrifugal force is throwing the hot air out and cooler are is coming in to replace it.

Good to know. I'm considering a forced-air cooling on the Fusin gearhub, to run it at higher voltage and power levels and pull CrazyBike2 with it. I don't think "passive" cooling like yours would be enough, since I mostly go slower than 20Mph and the wheel won't be spinning fast enough to get much airflow in there.

So I am considering a couple of brushless fans bolted to holes in the casing between the flanges, one blowing in and one out on the opposite side, with a little piece of filter paper slid into a holder to keep most of the road crap out, that I can periodically change out. They'd be powered by a small LiCo or NiMH pack secured to the hub between the fans (at the opposite quarters). Probably have it thermally activated with a sensor poking just enough into the hub to not quite touch the magnet ring--that way it'll keep cooling the motor even after I stop. And a switch to turn it completely off when I need to.

icecube57 said:

You need to drill out those side covers. I first drilled mine half way up the unibit. It worked well last year. This year I drilled mine out to the largest unibit size. It can take a little over 2000w+ continuous without having to back off 60v 45+A. WOT for 15 miles Ive tested and I got into the 130s. I still got the stock harness in mine but its chopped off an inch or two out the axel. Soldered and shrinked wrapped halls and terminated phase wires with andersons. To extend the wires I used 22G hall and 10g phase. Working just fine. Even routed mine through the fork and frame. Good Luck! Nice Build. I wonder what your pack voltage will be under load. I rest at 66v and hover around 56-57 under full load without restriction on my 60v 20AH Thundersky Pack. I currently have my controller lvc set around 59-60v. You feel a soft shutter under load as it clips the lvc. It feels like it throttles the current back allowing the voltage to stay 59-60v and allows me to go slightly faster than me just letting the voltage sag to whatever 57 or lower. I have the timing advanced enabled also. My controller is also set to overshoot on current before it pulls it back in to the correct amount. I have phase current set at 125. I peak around 35ish on my GM front motor on level ground with 325lb rider 33lb battery pack and 60lb bike you should be able to get to the high 35+s atleast.

Click to expand...

Drilling out the side covers on the hubmotor is most certainly on my list of things to do (right now I have to make it actually go down the road first) It's great to have your data as a sanity check to make sure I'm in the ballpark. Ill get some type of thermometer to measure the temp too. Eventually Ill rewire the phase conductors to 10 gauge too. 35mph would be awesome. I am really looking for longevity and reliability over extreme performance (don't tell methods). Ideally I want to find out what I can maintain for a speed without anything getting too hot. I'm hoping 35 is reasonable The fully charged voltage of the pack will be about 68 volts, but I'm actually not going to charge the cells up quite that high for longevity's sake. I will on long rides (150+ mile days ) Right now the pack is only charged to about 60 volts..

I finally got all of the wiring finished up last night. I essentially bring everything out from the packs in parallel to a block of Anderson connectors, then from there I can charge in parallel or connect the harness which in turn connects the packs in series and provides an output voltage to a couple of Andersons which mate to the controller input.

I also added a 'precharge' header. Which is another connector which I can first connect to the controller through a power resistor. This slowly charges up the caps instead of the nasty slug of current (and sparks) you get otherwise. Then I connect the main connector once the caps are all charged (I can watch the voltage slowly rise on the Cycle Analyst)

As soon as I connected the precharge header, I saw saw the cycle analyst light up (for the first time). I was definately pumped. I took a stab at guessing the phase/sensor wires, but when I rocked the throttle there it just made some noise. I looked up a schematic on the thread: 'known good motor controller wiring' or something to that effect. It worked perfectly no noise! Except..... Its running in reverse I was satisfied with that for the night anyway. Ill have to draw it out and see if I can figure out what I need to swap in order to make the motor spin the other direction.


The CA only shows this voltage because I took this picture while still connected to the precharge harness

If it runs in reverse, I think you only need to flip any two phases. Possibly also have to flip the same hall pair, but can't remember now.

Looks like it's going to be a great bike!

I'm guessing those packs are clusters of 18650s inside a little can with a BMS and display? Field Coms batteries?

amberwolf said:

If it runs in reverse, I think you only need to flip any two phases. Possibly also have to flip the same hall pair, but can't remember now.

Click to expand...

This is exactly the same conclusion I came to, but I couldn't get it to work... I think it may be because of the placement of sensors being between phases or something... I tried a few more configurations yesterday but the whole thing fell over on me and whacked me in the head with the handlebar and I threw in the towel for the night. Luckily with enough ice, you can't even notice the bump unless you really look for it...

liveforphysics said:

Looks like it's going to be a great bike!

I'm guessing those packs are clusters of 18650s inside a little can with a BMS and display? Field Coms batteries?

Click to expand...

You got it, 2 sets of 4s3p 18650s in each pack. They're a standard mil type battery that are used for a bunch of different radios.

amberwolf said:

@grindz: those are interesting looking packs. Are those little LCDs on there to display battery info?

Click to expand...

Yes, they're 'fuel gauges'

When a brushless hub goes in reverse it is quicker to flip the wheel around if it were a front hub.
There are 36 combinations of hall and phase wires. Only one good forward and one good reverse combo. To reverse you have to swap two phase wires, the right two phase wires and make some hall wire changes as well.
With an RC motor it is easy, just swap any two phase wires. My BMC controller has a reverse jumper to save the hastle. I spent over an hour on various combos on a front crystalite with rim brakes and wished I had just flopped the wheel.

mr.electric said:

When a brushless hub goes in reverse it is quicker to flip the wheel around if it were a front hub.
There are 36 combinations of hall and phase wires. Only one good forward and one good reverse combo. To reverse you have to swap two phase wires, the right two phase wires and make some hall wire changes as well.
With an RC motor it is easy, just swap any two phase wires. My BMC controller has a reverse jumper to save the hastle. I spent over an hour on various combos on a front crystalite with rim brakes and wished I had just flopped the wheel.

Click to expand...

Thanks. At least I know which sensor wires go with which phase wires which should limit the amount of combinations I have left to try.

It's alive!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWrYpuelhQ4
[youtube]BWrYpuelhQ4[/youtube]
All in all it only took a spreadsheet and alot of trying before I got the phase/sensor wires right.

The handling is less than ideal 8) But its definitely manageable. The performance up to 25mph is awesome. I'm somewhat surprised that my top speed is only around 30-35 ish on flats. This may be the controller limiting (I have yet to program it). It may be simply that with all the weight it just doesn't quite make it up there, or maybe its just topped out Kv wise. That thing is dangerous any faster that 35 anyway

After I setup the cycle analyst I took it for a nice long ride. I ended up with a flat tire :| I think this is because of the skinny front rim I have and a 2.5 inch hookworm on there.

It seems like the motor is really under stressed. I may just have to Y-Delta convert it

We went for a little ride 2-up to get some milk. even 2 up it has no problems doing 25Mph with tons of torque. I didn't dare go faster with 2 people, not enough testing.

This is just the begining

I calibrated the shunt resistor last night using an inductive current probe. I couldn't figure out why the number I came up with ended up being the number I THOUGHT I put in the cycle analyst. As it turns out the cycle analyst in low mode, tops out at around 700u ohms (even though I entered 250u ohms). It is working fantastically now. I can't seem to get the current limit to activate controller foldback though. Ill work on this, but for now I'll just by a crap load of 35-40A fuses

I am going to compete in the RIT 'Green Vehicle Challenge' this weekend. If you're in the Rochester area stop by!

Yesterday was the RIT green vehicle challenge. What a wirlwind of a day!

check an explanation of the rules here: http://www.rit.edu/imagine/green_vehicle.html


On friday I rode my bike 63 miles! I rode to work, then from work home to grab my Xtracycle center stand (so I didn't have to lay it down at the start of the race) then over to a friends house close to RIT. We performed some test runs that night while getting an incredible number of double-takes from students on campus . 2 up on an electric xtracycle is alot of freakin fun (even though my passenger wasn't terribly comfortable )



We got up early and headed over to see the variety of vehicles at the start of the race. In attendance were the president of the college and his wife both on hub-motor based ebikes. There were definitely many endless-sphere lurkers present. There were also some beautiful recumbent trikes (several pulling trailers for passengers in order to get a greater wh/passenger rating). My personal favorite was a small drag-bike style motorcycle with LiFePO4 called lowbow. Perhaps the most eye catching of all was a canoe-based 4 passenger 4 wheeler. Every vehicle was hub motor driven (much to my surprise). With the exception of the president and his wife, I was the only one who rode their bike to the race

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRc3k2m8BE4
[youtube]aRc3k2m8BE4[/youtube]
This was taken yesterday at the event. You can see me at 1:48 taking off my helmet. I avoided interviews The interviewers seemed alot more interested in the recumbent trikes. I think my bike looked less interesting but I was still quite efficient. In general I was ignored because of my slightly more traditional ebike (a recurring theme in my life ) but I was definitely a sleeper . I took home 2nd place!!! after an incredible composite recumbent trike built by the CIMS (the center for integrated manufacturing studies).
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My energy usage for the ~3 mile course was 104.5W/h. Since we had 2 passengers we were able to divide that in half for our score which gave us a total of 52.25 wh / person. The winning recumbent used only 49 w/h but they also destroyed us in time (which was a factor in the score).

Overall I think that the semi-light 2- passenger xtracycle setup (some of the trikes were considerably heavier) combined with a very efficient methods spec infineon based controller was really a winning combination. The rolling resistance of a 2 wheel vehicle rocks (and I have my hook-worms pumped up to the max).

The opening ceremony and announcement of winners was followed by a flash mob

lovit

What was the average speed on your run and what did the winner have for average speed. Reason I'm asking is that it sounds like you had to do a lot of stops and starts otherwise I would expect your efficiency to be better than that.

My average speed isn't that high on my bike but it is very efficient when I can run WOT the whole time. Last night on my commute home I had an average speed of 18.0mph with a Wh/mi. of approx. 13.7 and that was with no pedaling.

Looks like it was a very fun event.

Gary

GrayKard said:

What was the average speed on your run and what did the winner have for average speed. Reason I'm asking is that it sounds like you had to do a lot of stops and starts otherwise I would expect your efficiency to be better than that.

My average speed isn't that high on my bike but it is very efficient when I can run WOT the whole time. Last night on my commute home I had an average speed of 18.0mph with a Wh/mi. of approx. 13.7 and that was with no pedaling.

Looks like it was a very fun event.

Gary

Click to expand...

I'm not sure exactly what my average speed was but I only got up to about 30 on one big downhill. Otherwise, I was going quite slow with the starts and stops. I think I gained alot by going slow up to the stop signs. I can average about 27 mph without trying too hard, but I didn't do nearly that on the 3 mile loop for this event. If I had to guess probably only about 15mph (I never checked the cycle analyst afterward to check).