Dueling Yubas

Voltron

1 MW
Joined
May 2, 2013
Messages
2,803
Location
Santa Barbara CA
As some may have seen, this was my first Yuba conversion... from sad derelict front motor project that I adopted from a guy to long range battery carrying rear motor beast.

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I love the way the frame handles enough that I jumped on it when a second one came up on craigslist near me.. a steal at $200!

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So that one sat around waiting as I toyed with mid drive options, but decided that the mid drive broke up the lines of the back end the way it tapers to the small back wheel.
Then as usual, some guy heard I like broken down scooters, a second motor landed in my lap recently, so the building got serious!

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Thats all the leftovers lashed on and heading for recycling. About 70lbs of junk (and just keeping the front long enough to strip the tire off)


Then it was off to my shop for some metal work on the back end to get the slightly wide motor in..

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A few pieces carved off... shortened the headtube, and removed the rear triangle braces to left the back end spread... new ones will be welded in after

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And its in, and fits great.... another day at the ebike project house...lol

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reserved... more details to come..
 
Now in very temporary hack together mode just for handling tests, running on my trusty old sensorless Wilderness controller on 14s backpack battery.


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I always try to get out for lower power test rides early, it's annoying when you spend a lot of time on a really pretty build... then realize you don't like the feel somehow. This ones going to be another winner in that department.
It's now the same top speed as my gf's bike, so its been fun to zip around a little with her.
One big plus of these type motors is the self contained brake... it makes it a snap to just drop one in a frame and go. I wasn't sure I would be able to use this on at first as the Panther scooter carcass it was on was the no pedal kind.

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But under the black rubber cap.... freewheel threads. Nice.. :)

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The new one is 18" vs 16", and the brake cover was bigger enough to make the install a little tougher, but not bad.

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It was pretty pleasant putting the rack on the original blue and then doing all the heavy hauling for the new one with it, and really looking forward to having a mostly matching pair for taking a friend canyon cruising once its powered and braked up a little more.... so soon if any ESers are passing thru Santa Barbara, hit me up and we'll take one of the finer winding low car traffic road rides in America (but I might be biased :))
 
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