UK Giant DH Team eBike - First build!

[RichiePA]

Hi All,

This is my first eBike project, the thing that inspired me to do an eBike was seeing the Australian made stealth bomber and being blown away by the youtube videos of it. I've had motorcycles before but can’t really justify getting one at the moment and I’ve always loved mountain biking but having been spoilt by motocross bikes it just seems like a little too much hard work standing on the pedal and working up a sweat just to ride slowly up a small incline... so it seems like an eBike could be just the thing for me.
After some research online I soon came across Mark_A_W's DH Team/MAC Shanghai/64v Headway build and then Doc's Giant DH comp 2003 build threads. I’ve always liked Giant as a brand and could see that a DH would make an excellent electric off-roader. A quick look on eBay came up with a 03 Giant DH team for a reasonable price.

Giant Team DH.jpg (97.73 KiB) Viewed 3743 times

So now I have the bike (its Über heavy!) and I’ve been trying to read and digest as much from this forum as possible before posting stooopid questions but I think I’m about ready to start buying the parts I’ll need and though it would be good to hear other people’s opinions before I spend too much money.

So here goes:
• What I’m after is good acceleration and to be able to cruse at approx 25 – 35mph / 40 -55Kph with a higher top speed.
• Have Good range 20 – 30 miles / 30 – 50Km with pedalling
• And it needs to be strong enough for off-roading
What I have in mind is the Crystalyte X5 Motor which seems to be the daddy of rugged powerful hub motors or the new HT/HS which I haven’t heard as much about. Your opinions and suggestions would be much appreciated. Especially with regards to the number of windings I should get.

I’m thinking of using lipos as my battery pack although I have had experience with them before and I think its fair to say their a bit sensitive. I’m thinking of getting some Turnigy or similar 8S (29.6V) 5800mAh packs and setting up
four of them in 2S2P to give 59.2V 11.6Ah
or set up six in a 2S3P to give 59.2V and 17.4Ah
Does this seem like a good idea? Does anybody know of bigger more powerful lipos so that I don’t have to buy as many? What sort of range realistically do you imagine I’ll get with the above set ups?

For the controller I think I’ll go for ebikes.ca’s Infineon C3640-NC 40A brushless controller unless anyone has a better suggestion.
And I think I’ll stick a Cycle Analyst CA-DP in there as well for good measure.
Anyways thats probably way too much waffle from me, I’m really keen to hear your opinions and suggestions for my set up .

Cheers.

[Spacey]

Stay away from the Turnigy 8 cell 5.8ah packs, 3 out of 6 packs were delivered with seriously low cell 8 in each pack. 0.8v was the lowest!

Go for a different pack size as I think the 8 cell 5.8ah were a bad batch.

[Mark_A_W]

Nice bike

Have you thought about how you are going to mod the dropouts?

And does this frame have 135 or 150mm rear dropout spacing? If it has 150mm you will really struggle to find a motor with an axle long enough to span the distance..

[full-throttle]

Welcome to the forum!

You might find these threads also of interest to you:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=26029
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=27043
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3365

[RichiePA]

Nice bike

Have you thought about how you are going to mod the dropouts?

And does this frame have 135 or 150mm rear dropout spacing? If it has 150mm you will really struggle to find a motor with an axle long enough to span the distance..

I just measured it and the gap between the dropouts is 135mm

[RichiePA]

Stay away from the Turnigy 8 cell 5.8ah packs, 3 out of 6 packs were delivered with seriously low cell 8 in each pack. 0.8v was the lowest!

Go for a different pack size as I think the 8 cell 5.8ah were a bad batch.

That could have saved me a lot of hassle cheers Spacey.

You might find these threads also of interest to you:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=26029
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=27043
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3365

Wow lots of usefull stuff there, I especially like Keyne's DH Comp Build.

Cheers.

[knoxie]

Hey

Welcome to the forum, nice bike~! seems a shame to weigh it down with even more kit if you are noob then a Hub motor is your best option and the parts that you have suggested so far are all fine, the X5 is very heavy you could look at the new HT motors as they are lighter however as they are so new not sure on their durability yet, although my buddy deecannio on this forum is about to test this out for us on his bike (we are both in the UK).

Yes Lipo packs are fine, 50V 10AH is pretty small, it depends on how long you want to stay out and how hard you ride also how heavy the bike rider combo is, to be honest the X5 wont really light up on that bike until you give it at least 72V 40A, I would be looking at 15AH for decent ride times, the frame makes it a good candidate to stash cells, get them nice and low in the frame, CA is a good idea and pretty much essential as you are a noob, charging can be dealt with by using a multi channel hobby charger or PSU and balancers, I think the Hobby Charger route is a good way to go.

There is more than enough info on the forum for you to make a very decent bike, you will also need to factor in torque arms for the rear axle as well, you may have to fabricate something as the off the shelf ones will most likely not fit and or handle the power esp off road.

Get this right and you will have one amazing machine for sure I love riding off even on my normal road steel bone shaker! check some of my videos and posts and you will see what I run on my bike, I also have a little video showing how I charge my batteries on my youtube channel, I will subscribe to this thread to see how you get on.

Good Luck!

All the following my vids from my youtube channel, subscribe to it if you like for more

My last video with my normal bike riding fast off road



My charger set-up, I can charge quicker now in under an hour



What you can do if you really want to scare yourself, thats deec with the bloody arm!

[RichiePA]

Hi guys

I've been Über busy for the last few days but the light is at the end of the tunnle so it must be time to start ordering some stuff so I can start my build as soon as I get some free time First I need to get the motor, all of your posts have given me lots to think about and I have decided that i'm going to go with the crystalyte HT35 rear hub motor. I'm going to order it from crystalyte-europe.com and i'm thinking of getting a crystalyte 72V brushless 40Amp digital controller from them at the same time but I've read on ebikes.ca website that they don’t think much of crystalyte controllers which has put me off a little bit. can anyone recommend a good controller for me that will be able to handle 72V and around 40amps. I want one that works well with the crystalyte HT35 (which I believe is sensorless) I'm not shy of tinkering with these kind of things and I'm lucky enough to live next door to a robotics genius so a good strong versatile and adaptable controller that works with a sensorless hub is what I'm after.

Any ideas? or would it be best to go for the crystalyte controller?

I've also decided that I am going to go the full 72V lipo route, Knoxie I like the look of your charging set up. how many battery packs do you use to get 72V I guess you have more than just the 4 your vid shows you charging. do you have to charge 4 then another 4 then another 4 etc. or is there a way you can charge them all at the same time?

As ever any help or advice is much appreciated.
Cheers.

[jimw1960]

Maxwell65 has a thread in the For Sale New forum. He offers a 72volt crystallyte controller with his motors. Its a sensorless controller, though.
viewtopic.php?f=31&t=26500

[full-throttle]

can anyone recommend a good controller for me that will be able to handle 72V and around 40amps

The NEW Crystalyte sensorless will do that. Its a good controller, smooth start-up even up a hill.

The other option is to modify lsdzs sensorless. Mine is 67V/70A, capable of 80V. All of my videos in the Stealth Electric owners thread are shot while using that controller.

I will eventually install hall sensors in mine though, along with a temp sesor.

[RichiePA]

Ok some progress today, I finally bit the bullet and placed the order for the hub, controller, throttle and CA from crystalyte-europe.

I decided to go for the HT although after finding that my existing rear wheel was only 32spoke i would have to order the hub laced into a rim the temptation then was to then go for a HS in a 24" rim but I decided I wasn't cool enough to go that fast and i'll brobably get far more use in the 20-30mph range that the HT should do comfotably at 72v. If i find that its too slow for me i can always sell it of better still build an e-bike for the Mrs.

so the order looks like;

HT rearwheel motor in 26" rim 220euros

Since I was ordering from crystalyte europe I thought I'd get the controller from them while i was at it
72Volt 40A Rear digital sensorless controller 195euros

A full twist grip rh throttle for that motorbike feel that i'm going for. 15euros

and finally a Direct Plug-in Cycle Analyst 2.23 to act as a interface for the motorcontroller and let me set current limits etc. 145euros

for a grand total of 600 euros inc shipping eeeeeeeeeeek

while I wait for that to turn up i'm going to try and psych myself up to order the lipos but i must admit i'm a bit nervouse that i'm going to get some duff ones since i'm going for budget turnigy or zippy or l/fightmax from hobby king. i tried to order 12x turnigy5s 5000mAh from the international warehouse but there is a power limit for airmail so i think i'll order from the DE warehose instead. anybody rate or slate these batteries or have any better suggestion for a 72v 15Ah set up i was thinking of running the 18v turnigys in a 4s3p configuration.

[RichiePA]

OK here's what i'm thinking of doing for the battery pack

battery circuit.jpg (49.87 KiB) Viewed 3454 times

I'm still not too sure tho.... if I go with Hobbyking 12x ZIPPY Flightmax 5000mAh 5S1P 25C (DE Warehouse) @$60each thats $720
If I go for 12x Hobbyking Turnigy 5000mAh 5S 20C Lipo Pack (DE Warehouse) @$49 thats still $580 and they seem to have some bad reviews

I suppose I could reduce cost a bit by going for 8 batterys instead of 12 to give me 72V 10Ah as a start and then get another group of 4 in parrallel later. Can anyone give me an indication of distace i could expect from 72V 10Ah with the HT35 hub. I weigh about 85kg and the bike is quite a bulky beast I do intend to bedal but I expect I'll be riding the bike hard and there are plent of hills round me.

+ i'll still need to sort out a charger, I like the look of Knoxie's Etronix powerpal 4 but that would mean that i would have to charge 3 times to charge the whole pack

any thoughts?

[knoxie]

Hi

OK there are quite a few folks on here who are running similar packs, I suggest you look at Gindc thread, he has built such a pack for his bike, although my setup works great for me with the 4 x packs I would do something different if I had more in parallel.

Nothing wrong with the circuit that you have shown in theory, however you need to allow for LVC low voltage cut-out on the packs as well you need to combine this all in a package that is easy to charge and easy to monitor.

Myself and Greg did this by running the balance leads in to a 32 way D plug, this greatly reduces the plugging and unplugging of the JST connectors however I would suggest that you bulk charge the pack using an RC charger and use Geoff's LVC boards for cut off.

There are loads of ways to skin a cat! ha ha, if you wanted to go with a 4 channel RC charger you could parallel all 3 packs discharge and balance wires to each channel and charge this way, it would take longer to charge but it could still charge the lot from flat in under 3 hours.

The bigger the pack gets the trickier it gets unless you are comfortable with bulk charging although I wouldn't recommend this to a newbie esp. without LVC or HVC protection.

Deecanio here in the UK is about to take his bike from Jozzer in Brighton who has rigged his bike exactly as what you are intending to do its even on a DH bike, PM Deec on here and ask him, I know he is using an RC charger to charge but not sure what Jozzer has done re the monitoring bit.

Oh and range 72V 15AH no peddling, it all depends on terrain as well but you could do over 25 miles or so if you keep the speed down below 20, gun it and that will drop like a stone, if its wound like the X5 then you can expect to burn 1AH per mile very worst case.

There are online calculators that you can use to work your power requirements out this one is a good one,

http://www.kreuzotter.de/english/espeed.htm

Good luck, but keep an eye on Deecanios thread as he is about to run exactly this, I would bet he would even let you have a go, where are you in the UK? you are most welcome to have a go on any of my bikes any time you like, good luck!

Knoxie

[RichiePA]

Cheers Knoxie,

I currently live in Brighton as it goes so I've PM'd Jozzer aswell and hopefully he'll be able to give me some help. hopefully i'll be able to draw up a new circuit diagram including all the balancing and so forth in the next few days. (can i parrallel up the balance wires when charging or does that make them useless?)

Yeah it would be good to see / try as many other eBikes as possible are there ever any events in the UK?

[knoxie]

Ahh

Great you are so lucky then you are in the right place, Jozzer is the king!! and will be able to give you some advice and he will even build it for you if you don't fancy it which is what Deec is doing, Jozzer has been his ebike mechanic for about 5 years now.

Yes you can parallel up the balance wires as well, if you are going to go this way then use Geoff's low voltage cut-out boards as they have the sockets for the JST connectors on them and they provide low voltage cut off this will switch the brake line on the controller so that when the batteries get to around 3.2V the controller will cut out, this will save your cells from any damage.

You can of course run as I do without any protection, I just use cheap buzzers on each pack that buzz when the cells get low, using this and the watt meter I can gauge how much of my pack I have used and how low the voltage has sagged, OK its not as good as LVC board protection but it has served me well for over a year now and I am happy with it.

I don't like leaving boards of any kind connected to the cells as they drain power albeit small amounts of power, also the whole time there is a piece of electronics connected to your pack there is another mode of failure in there, as soon as I finish using my pack its unplugged from the charging harness and it sits there with nothing connected, so many folks have had cell log alarms and BMS drain the packs doing more harm than good.

Each to their own, the main advice when using Lipo is to treat them with huge respect, never over discharge them and always store and charge them safely, they are an amazing cell but they can be volatile if abused, I would advise never to store them indoors and if you do keep them in your garage keep them on the floor away from anything combustible, oh and fit a smoke alarm in the garage too!! I have never had any fires or smoke but its better to be safe.

If you get to Jozzers before the weekend then you can see Deecs bike, its a Kona stinky with the exact setup on it you are after, I think with this kind of rig you will get similar performance to the Fighter which is an amazing bike as is the bomber, but for less money.

Let me know how you get on

Knoxie

[RichiePA]

OK after a bit more detective work snooping around the battery threads I've realised my layout for the battery pack was going to make charging and balancing a little tricky as the packs were being grouped in series first to get up to 74V then in parrallel to give me 15Ah doing things the otherway round should make charging balancing and monitoring a lot easyer as wiring up groups of 3 batterys in parrallell to give 18.5V 15Ah then hook those 4 blocks of batteries up in series to get me up to the 74V. I'll have to be really carefull that I get everything balanced exactly right befor i parrallel up the balancing leads but once i've done thet they chould be able to plug thw 1s3p block into an standard lipo charger with balancer and that will make life so simple. especially if I get the etronic powerpal 4 i can do this for all 4 blocks at the same time. (might be a bit of a workout for the chaeger tho? )
a picture says a thousand words so here.

battery circuit V2.jpg

(66.16 KiB) Downloaded 5 times

when its on the bike I'll hace a LVC board or buzzer for each block and conect the terminals with the serial wiring. then remove the LVCs and serial wire for charching.

In other news...
I contacted crystalyte-europe yesterday to see how the order is getting on, they told me that the 72V controller is out of stock at the moment but should be arriving some time next week and that the CA DP wont work with the controller and that I should have a Crystalyte APM display instead for the same price but that wont be in stock for at least 4 weeks I supose I'm in for a long wait
They told me tho that the hub and throttle are instock, so i'm hoping that they'll be nice and send me the stuff as and when they get it but i've got a feeling that their going to try and save on postage and not split the order or try and charge me more if they do.

[RichiePA]

The new crystalyte HT35 hub motor arrived this week built into a pretty basic rim with some really chunky spokes not sure what gauge they are but they look more than up to the job, it looks like whoever built the wheel had a hard time with the chunky spokes as some of them are a bit kinked. I havn't checked out how well the rim is aligned yet as i really need to be able to spin the wheel to do that but it looks ok. the motor controller has also arrived and the throttle.

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Now I'll be able to start making the new dropouts I'm thinking of sandwiching the existing dropout and using it as a mounting point for the new drop out which I will be extend back in line with the chainstay. I want to try and keep the original dropouts so that the bike can be converted back to a pushbike in the future. I'll post some drawings soon.

[knoxie]

Looking Nice

Wheel looks sweet mate, looking forward to seeing this all come together, you are going to have a sweet ride there when its all done, if you need any advice just ask! what a horrible day today, nice day to get out in the garage and get your bike sorted

Knoxie

[RichiePA]

Not a vast amount of progress since my last post, Me and the Mrs did the British Heart Foundation London to Brighton bike ride on Sunday it was a top day out and we managed to stay dry almost all the way to Brighton.

I took the swing arm off the bike last week and have been photographing / measuring / CADing / printing / comparing/ re measuring / re drawing / re printing the designs for the new dropouts and have come up with...

dropouts.jpg (35.09 KiB) Viewed 1173 times

originally I was going to try and make the new dropouts fit behind the original dropouts so that the bike could be converted back to its original form, however this would have been very complicated, weaker and would have upset the suspension geometry so now the plan is to cut out the original dropouts to seat the 15mm steel axel clamp sections and grind flat the outer face of each dropout so that the 4mm fixing plates can be bolted flat to the existing dropouts. I will then (once I'm happy with the placement) weld the pieces together and use some sort of metal to metal bonder and bolts to hold everything together.

If I should ever need to convert the bike back to standard I'll make new 15mm steel sections with standard axle holes.

Other than that I'm currently trying to hunt down a UK supplier for a 9 speed freewheel (crystalyte europe do them and Jenson USA but postage is going to be pretty steep)

I've also selected some tyres that I think should be pretty sweet, they are Schwalbe Table Tops 26 x 2.25 they look knobbly enough to handle the hardpack chalky trails around here while still being fast and grippy on the road. Not too expensive either at £18 each

Schwable tabletop.jpg (72.35 KiB) Viewed 1173 times

On a side note, I was in a rush to get a semi slick tyre for Zoe's bike on our way to the london to brighton so against my better judgement we stopped at halfords as I though a budget tyre was something that even halfords should be able to get right. WRONG! having bought the tyre and finding it to be more expensive at the till than it was priced on the shelf we set off and when I came to change the tyre the damn thing was about 2 inches too big for the rim... checked the old tyre and it was a 26in checked the new tyre and surely enough embossed on the sidewall it said 26 but there was literally an inch gap all the way round the rim
Took the tyre back a couple of days later and was told by the runt that worked there that it was a 26inch tyre as it says it right there on the sidewall and that it must be my rim which is wrong (guess I’m just lucky that non halfords 26inch tyres fit it )
Next step is to try and find someone to laser or waterjet cut the new dropouts, Anybody know any uk companies that do small jobs like this?

[RichiePA]

Got the quote back for waterjet cutting the 15mm steel parts of the rear dropouts = £93
looks like i'll have to re-design it a bit and then make it myself. should save me some money

[knoxie]

cut your own! I made mine from a cad template, took a few hours but saved me dollars made this one 3 years ago, still good as gold

http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=4539&p=67175&hilit=+x5+torque+arm+knoxie#p67175

[RichiePA]

At last I’ve had a bit of time to work on the ebike. I’ve been to see Jozzer who has given me a few lipos to play around with so that I can see if I can swap out the dead cells for good ones. If I can then I’ll be able to get my hands on a whole load of duff packs and repair them which will bring the cost of the bikes batteries right down. So far I’ve managed to weed out the dead cells but my soldering iron is a bit cheap and nasty and is refusing to get up to a decent working temperature so I cant make any more progress on that till I can borrow my neighbours decent soldering iron. In the mean time I’ve ordered a 9spd freewheel from Jenson USA, and a Etronix Battery Doctor (which should be really useful now that I'm playing around with lipos) and have been tinkering in the workshop with my dropouts.

left dropout.jpg (180.02 KiB) Viewed 1107 times

right dropout.jpg (179.16 KiB) Viewed 1134 times

As you can see from the pictures I’ve got the axel clap parts done now I just need to make up a couple of torsion plates and hack up the original dropouts and we should be in business...

[RichiePA]

Today I got Etronix battery Doctor and it seems like a pretty neat bit of kit, defiantly going to be extremely useful to me but it might have been better if it displayed the voltages of the cells to 3 decimal places rather than two. Also I finished repairing my first lipo pack (Turnigy 5s 5Ah) swapping out the dead cell with a good cell from another slightly dodgy pack. I'm balancing it as I type this and there doesn't seem to be any signs of any problems so far.

[RichiePA]

Had a good day grinding, welding and drilling in the garage today and managed to get the right hand dropout pretty much done. The left hand side is almost there just need a bit of adjustment and head scratching to make sure the wheel is aligned correctly before I weld the axle clamp to the plate.

Righ dropout and clamp.jpg (139.09 KiB) Viewed 1101 times

The 9spd freewheel arrived from JensonUSA today. (Very fast delivery considering how far it’s had to travel and there was no import tax to pay ) The only problem is i whacked it straight on the wheel and it has screwed up tight against the hub body so it won’t spin freely and I haven’t got a tool to undo it so for the time being its stuck there. It also overhangs the first few threads of the axle so I’ll have to put some spacer washers on the axel so that the gears don’t clash with the frame. it should be ok though the swing arm does have a bit of flex so I can open axle gap a bit and hopefully it won’t put too much stress on the swing arm.
below is a picture of what I mean about the freewheel being too tight against the hub to spin freely. has anyone had this problem and know how I can stop it tightening up too far?

freewheel.jpg (127.38 KiB) Viewed 1074 times

[knoxie]

Hi Richie

Looking good there mate, any local bike shop should be able to supply you with the spacers to offset the cassette, I have used them many times else get Jozz to turn you one up on the lathe

Bet you cant wait to get out and ride, the weather is nice at the moment

Knoxie