El Escalador de Montaña Rojo - Season 2

Figured to start a new thread for the upcoming season two of commuting to work. Got some improvements in the works. El Escalador de Montaña Rojo - Season 1 for last summer's specs etc.

Upgraded motor from Clyte 4011 to an old, but "new" Clyte 504 in a 24" wheel. Got some 14mm Texas Ebike torque arms going on as well on both sides since I'll be plug braking the rear.


Removed front and rear derailleurs and opted for a single speed gearing. Not sure the tooth count etc, but it's about an 8-10mph gear to assist on the really steep parts, which I doubt I'll even need to do with the 504 running at 58.4v hot off the charger and 48A shunt. Hoping to sustain about 2.3-2.4kw for the climb.


Kinda blurry sorry, but this is the three phase bridge rectifier that will allow for a smooth braking experience. Amazingly is fits snugly with the existing allen bolt right against the frame. No heat sink needed (maybe)! Bonus!


The Steveoâ„¢ brand controller I'll be running. Converted the batt and motor connectors to Andersons.


Don't have the correct throttle and hall connectors on the Clyte motor and the ebike.ca half twist throttle so will just hard wire them all together using the ebike.ca pinout diagrams... hopefully. I'd order the right connectors, but shipping on them is more than they are worth. Hard to justify. Blargh.


Photos soon of the custom konion triangle pack at 18s7p...

Finally got some time to begin the new triangle mount konion pack that's a 14s7p about 500wh useable. Will easily power my 504 @ 52v with my Steveoâ„¢ 47A controller. Should be able to sustain 2kw very easily, which is my target sustained power.

First some wood....


Trace the cell holders...


Dremel out a wire run...
View attachment 3

Deal with 500 spring contactors all intertwined... ARGH! Thanks for nothing digikey.. sheesh...


Thread springs onto 12awg copper...


Closeup of threaded springs.. good contact, lots of bounce still etc.. should work fine with dabs of glue as needed and good compression..


That's as far as I got today.. clearly this is a labor intensive build, but my reasoning is that I'll be able to use this forever and will just swap out cells as needed and maybe someday upgrade to 18650 A123s and add balance taps etc. I'm also counting on someday there being 18650 cells that have twice the capacity and power etc. as current gen stuff!

Getting there.. I really haven't had much time to work on this yet unfortunately, but I'm picking away at it in bits and pieces... 9s out of 14s glued down so far on the one side... then the cell holders, walls and finally the top mount that will be "compressed" down with some plates/screws etc. to complete the 98 cell pack. Tons of manual labor sure, but I still believe it will be worth it in the end because I'll be able to use whatever new 18650s come out in the future. For reference I've probably put 3-4hrs total time into this so far and expect the whole thing to take between 15-20hrs, but at a total cost of around $150 for almost 500wh of high power LiMn cells it's worth it I think.

Making progress on my 98 tube 14s7p 18650 konion pack.. it's going to be a heavy beast... probably like 25lbs or so for a little under 500wh, but I'm committed so there is no stopping me now. Ha! The weight will be in the triangle so I don't think it will adversely effect me too much, but it's a little disappointing overall and makes me think I should have saved myself some grief and just gone with a 6 pack of 6s 5ah Zippy LiPos in a frame bag from Hobbycity.com.

Anyway.. now my next challenge is to get my Steveoâ„¢ brand controller working. I managed to get the 3 wire throttle figured out and got all the halls hard wired and then realized it was all running backward so now I've got to search through the forums to see how to reverse the halls to make the motor spin in the forward direction. Close, but no cigar! I have to say that dealing with halls for the first time makes me really appreciate pedal first controllers. Halls are a complete pain in the ass. Period. Anyway... progress... slow and steady. Hoping to do my first commute within a week or two. I'm going to burn this new ebike in on Going to the Sun road in Glacier National Park to see what kind of range and power I can get climbing up to Logan Pass. I'll post pics of that for sure in a couple weeks. Don't know if there has ever been an ebike on Going to the Sun road, but wouldn't be surprised if someone, somewhere had done it before.

Figured out the hall pattern to run forward... thanks Steveo! There is quite a lot of pulsing/cogging at lower power levels, but anything over about 50% throttle is smooth. Maybe that's normal as I've never run a start immediate controller before nor a 5 series.

Also got my plug brake in today finally and all I can say is wow! I can't believe how easy this is and how smooth and effective the braking power is. So far my little 6A120V (720W) rated push switch is holding in there. I kept my resistor loop pretty long so I doubt I'm hitting that, but it's extremely effective from full throttle. The coil gets a tiny bit warm, but not bad so far... we'll see if it can sustain a 1,600ft decent soon enough. I can't even describe how pleased I am this worked so well from the first try.

Now I just need to finish my stupid triangle battery pack before I kill the single fatpack I'm running on, which powers a 5 series no problems what so ever though I am sagging into mid 20s voltage under full power from 41v... haha... for $45 and getting around town for a couple weeks I don't care if I do kill the Bosch pack.

pwbset said:

Making progress on my 98 tube 14s7p 18650 konion pack.. it's going to be a heavy beast... probably like 25lbs or so for a little under 500wh, but I'm committed so there is no stopping me now. Ha! The weight will be in the triangle so I don't think it will adversely effect me too much, but it's a little disappointing overall and makes me think I should have saved myself some grief and just gone with a 6 pack of 6s 5ah Zippy LiPos in a frame bag from Hobbycity.com.

Anyway.. now my next challenge is to get my Steveoâ„¢ brand controller working. I managed to get the 3 wire throttle figured out and got all the halls hard wired and then realized it was all running backward so now I've got to search through the forums to see how to reverse the halls to make the motor spin in the forward direction. Close, but no cigar! I have to say that dealing with halls for the first time makes me really appreciate pedal first controllers. Halls are a complete pain in the ass. Period. Anyway... progress... slow and steady. Hoping to do my first commute within a week or two. I'm going to burn this new ebike in on Going to the Sun road in Glacier National Park to see what kind of range and power I can get climbing up to Logan Pass. I'll post pics of that for sure in a couple weeks. Don't know if there has ever been an ebike on Going to the Sun road, but wouldn't be surprised if someone, somewhere had done it before.

View attachment 1

Click to expand...

Friggin' sweet idea with the spring contactors and cut up pipe! Now that makes me want to assemble a123s in a similar way.

Learned last night that not all Schedule 80 3/4" PVC tubes from home depot are made the same and the last 15 or so tube chunks I hot glued to my board have too small a diameter to fit an 18650. Grrrrr!!! Sofa king frustrating!

swbluto said:

Friggin' sweet idea with the spring contactors and cut up pipe! Now that makes me want to assemble a123s in a similar way.

Click to expand...

Yeah except it totally didn't work and now I'm back to square one. The problem is the spring contactors get under the positive part of the cell under vibration.. the little plastic ring etc. and short the cells. I just couldn't keep it from happening during testing... my hand made manufacturing tolerances were just too far apart. These are just too small of a cell.. might still work fine with A123s... who knows. I'm going the tab weld route now as I've wasted WAY too much time trying to fabricate a custom individual cell holder for these little 18650s. When all is said and done I'm going to just buy the new EV Components 48v10ah Headway pack for $350 as I already have a 58.4v charger that will work perfectly with it, but it won't be ready until late summer... that's a waaaay better deal than Ping though...will be curious to see how all that plays out.

In the meantime.. trying to source a local tab welder for the 14s8p I already glued together using the Makita cell holders... 112 cells, 52v12ah, ~600wh and around 12lbs... nice... if I can get them welded. *sigh*

Ordered the SCR, capacitor, charger etc. etc. for the "$100 tab welder" and in the meantime I finally soldered together 40 VTs in 10s4p and paralleled those with my single Bosch fatpack and created a 37v6.6ah run around pack until I can build my big mountain climber pack out of 140 V cells. I have no doubt I halved the cycle life on these cells 'cause I suck at soldering and there was a ton of heat on the cells. Anyway... I took it for a serious hill climb test and drained about 5.6ah over about 6 miles and it held up nicely and was resting around 37v when I got home... couple hundred watt/hrs... works for me for now. My Steveoâ„¢ brand 47a controller was pretty darn hot to touch and that was only around 1,400 watt sustained so I'm becoming a little doubtful that it will susvive 2,500+ watts for 15 minutes straight... we'll see. The 504 wasn't even warm and the plug brake was hot after the long descent, but not insanely so.

And this townie pack has got such lovely packaging... at least I can remove it in seconds.. those straps connectors are rated to 50lbs each and the whole pack is <7lbs. :wink:

Finally!!

After months of set backs and silly ideas that didn't work I finally have a fully functioning battery pack for my commute up the mountain again! I was experimenting with a triangle frame mount and was just complicating things. I also happen to really dig my ghetto grocery getter 6.6ah strap pack so figured screw it.. go with what you know and what works. K.I.S.S.

So... I built another strap pack of 14s8p 52v nominal and about 11ah assuming around 1.35ah/cell, which I've found is a bit conservative, but I like to underestimate so I'm not caught with my pants off in the middle of the woods. The absolutely gorgeous thing about a "strap pack" is that it's got built in shock absorption. Half my commute is single track, off road and bumpy as hell so any battery mounted to the frame suffers vibration damage a LOT. I was a little worried about my homemade tab welds, but I dead shorted the pack at least twice during the build process and none of the tabs popped off so that sold me that they were fine. :wink:

I channeled my inner CammyCC and figured I'd just go square pack because it's so easy. I've got a "tail", but I did that on purpose in case I want to upgrade to 18s it's cake and I already have an 18s charger as well.


About 20 minutes with dremel in hand smoothed out all previous weld blasts etc.


Gots ta be careful though!!! KA-POW!
View attachment 3

You can see my "$100" 16v tab welder SCR and cap in the background. Cost me $140, but were I to do it all over I could have done it for $80.


Little blurry, but here's the finished product getting charged up for the first time.


Here's the strap pack mounted up for a test ride. I'll "pretty it up" soon.. :lol: I dumped about 7.2ah out of the pack and it still had tons of juice, but I want to cycle it a few times and balance the cells before really sucking it dry. I'm also pleased to report that my ecitypower custom chargers are working great and outputting 58.8v and 6A ~350 watts. So like <2hr charge time. Nice.

Might be worth noting that I'm only able to sustain about 2.2kw with my current setup and I'm not sure if that's a limit of the single 12ga batt pack outputs or my 63v47A Steveoâ„¢ controller, but now that I think about it under WOT up hill load I'm outputting around 50v under sag and ~44v, which is definitely the max my pack can put out I suppose so there is a little controller head room. It seems to be a solid controller, but gets awfully hot.. we'll see how the mountain treats it tomorrow. I have to say too that 2.2kw on a 504 is INSANE compared to a 4011. I hit ~33mph on my test ride tonight (too fast!!!) and acceleration is way better... in fact I think if I leaned back a little and floored it I could get the front wheel off the ground for a sec.

Oh yeah... the best part... not counting the tab welder this 572wh pack cost me about $84 or about $0.15/wh, which is the whole reason I've been so bloody patient building it!

Quite the setback tonight. I've finally got my bike dialed for my mountain climb work commute and I thought.. hmm.. how fun to go ride up Going To The Sun Road in Glacier Park as a test of the whole system. So I was planning on that Sunday evening, but tonight thought.. hmm.. I should probably test some serious hill climbing first so I decided to pretend like I was going to work. Well.. about 1,000ft into my climb and cruising along at 19-20mph with light pedaling and about 2kw sustained I hear this POP and lose power for a second... hmm... the power came back, but I stopped to check stuff. Motor.. barely warm... 14s8p konion pack.. a little warm, but not bad.. controller... OUCH! Move over bacon it's sizzilean! Soo... either I lost a tab weld in my battery pack or something in my Steveoâ„¢ brand controller doesn't like being cooked at 2kw for 10min+, which is hardly surprising given the tiny size of the thing. And I'm certainly not complaining as Steveo and I had a good trade going for it. I'm also... believe it or not... a bit disappointed with the climbing power of the 504 at ~50v so am going to upgrade to 18s/67v nominal and switch back to my pedal first shunt soldered Clyte controller, which I already know is a pure beast and can handle gobs of power. That should make the difference I think... I hope. And to be honest... I really dislike start immediate controllers... pedal first just feels so much better and I don't have to worry about those STUPID hall sensors anymore or low/mid speed shuddering.

We'll see... may still get'r all done in time to hit Logan Pass tomorrow night.

Oh... and the plug brake ROCKS during long decents... the 1,000ft back down at about 20mph was easy peasy for the coil.... hot, but not melting. Sooo smooth braking... me like!

Went back into the garage just now and the 504 is now crispy as hell having sat there for 15 minutes or so with no air flow... hmm... so it occurs to me that I was doing the climb WOT at about 19-20mph, but looking it up the 504 is really inefficient at that speed and power setting so I was dumping tons of heat. Stupid me. Throttle control idiot! Ebike 101! Hmm... I'm almost thinking at this point to back down to 37v and trust that my Clyte shunt soldered can just dump mad amps into torque. 37v on a 504 is much more efficient at 19-20mph, which is all my single gear is good for really. I could also go much more parallel and sag way less and get better life out of these used konions. Decisions, decisions...

I'm so used to WOT on my 4011, which put it into the perfect zone... going to have to relearn everything now! :lol:

Wow... definitely was the controller. I just went for a test ride with the old shunt soldered Clyte and was pushing 3kw+ through it and it was the smoothest damn power curve I've yet felt. Sold. Doing a re-charge then going to repeat the commute climb to see if it all holds together. Man I love pedal first controllers!

I think you should give a regular Crystalyte controller with 4110's in it a shot, Start Immediate.

I have found the exact oposite from your results, the pedal first units tend to run rough and grumble alot more, the Instant Start clyte units are much smoother imo.

Slap that X5 in a 20" rim and feed it 72v !! hehe... full throttle up most hills won't hit current limitter and just run efficiently.. somethin wrong with the stevo controller i am suspecting or the color combination may not have been right ?

Ypedal said:

the color combination may not have been right ?

Click to expand...

That's entirely possible. Halls or phases maybe hooked up wrong? I sorta stopped messing with it as soon as the wheel spun the right direction. I will say that from about 40% throttle on up was super smooth, but it's just a tiny controller modded to run higher power so it wouldn't probably last very long at 2kw anyway. Another thing I like about pedal first is that friends that try the bike don't have it fly out of their hands and when I'm working on it it won't zoom into a wall with an accidental twist. Etc. etc.

I realized a horrible error in my pack build this afternoon though... I was building a "runt" pack with about 80 leftover V cells and thought, "hmm... I've got more Vs left than I thought.. hey.. wait a sec... where are those 20 VTs I had laying around???". Uh oh... seems they've been intermixed with the Vs in my 112 cell pack. Sheesh! Even at 4.2v and 1.3ah at best it's going to be a dead pack sooner rather than later I think. I'm going to DOD quite a bit less now in the hopes of at least getting through the summer. *sigh* What a dumbass. I really should just buy pre-made packs instead of torturing myself endlessly. :lol:

Decided it was time to really torture test the whole new system. I climbed 3,816 vertical feet from my house to the summit of the ski resort I work at. I was very conservative with the throttle and pedaled a lot, but still depleted my main pack quite a ways and backup pack pretty low as well. It was one of the most physically challenging things I've ever done, but so fun... until I fried my bridge rectifier on the way down. Doh! That sure locks up a motor.. imagine pedaling hard going downhill.. haha! I made it back to my office half way down and just snipped all the wires to free up the wheel again. I didn't know at the time what had happened or I would have snipped them on the trail. I thought I had fused the phase wire taps against themselves, but that turned out to not be the case. After "fixing" it I very, very carefully descended the last 1,600ft home with only a front V-brake... didn't go over about 12mph because I figured that was the fastest I could safely run/bail if that brake failed too. In retrospect I could have just spliced two of the wires in my plug brake back together to re-enable the brake without the rectifier and not as smooth, but when you're that exhausted you just want to get home and don't think about things like that! Finally made it home at 10:15pm right in front of a massive storm front, but since it's solstice there was still plenty of light.. nice thing about Montana in the summer. Anyway.. posted some photos for who ever is extremely bored...

http://picasaweb.google.com/paraparker/SummerSolstice09MountainClimb

Finished my 80 cell "runt" pack from leftover cells tonight so that concludes pack building for this summer. I've got around 1.2kw of available wh if I need it... going to see if that's enough to get up Going to the Sun Road. It's well over twice what I need to get to work. I'm so in love with the strap pack concept I don't think I'll ever do it another way. Takes less than 10 seconds to swap to a fresh pack and provides built in shock absorption, which is working perfectly off road. Duct Tape Strap Packsâ„¢.

The top strap pack is my main pack at 14s8p. The middle pack is the 10s8p runt pack. The bottom left pack is the supposed "high powered" 10s6p VT pack, but it still only puts out around 1,500 watt sustained @ 34v45A and I'm not sure why as that's only like 6-7C.. might be wiring or whatever.. anyway it's bulky as hell because of the bosch packaging etc. Compare it's 60 cells to the top pack which has 112 raw cells in it and can put out over 3kw under full throttle @ around 60-65A... it's a hill climbing beast for sure. Going to go test the runt pack right now and see what it can do.


Here's the 80 cell runt pack mounted to give an idea of how small these things really are. It weighs a little over 8 lbs.. the main pack weighs just under 12lbs.

Took the 10s8p "runt pack" to work today (had my main in the backpack just in case). After the 7.5mi - 1,600ft climb I had a resting voltage of 35v and had used 394.17wh/11.53ah, which works out to 1.44ah/cell... higher than I thought. These cells were "leftovers" that had a range of 1v - 3.5v when I got them. My main pack was built with cells that came to me 4v+. Interesting to note the runt pack was way warmer at the end of the commute than my main pack gets so clearly the higher IR effects that, but I'm surprised I got 400wh out of it and at 35v resting I could probably squeeze another ~40wh out of it, but I don't want to stress them too much.

pwbset said:

I could probably squeeze another ~40wh out of it, but I don't want to stress them too much.

Click to expand...

Well during the decent I regen'ed .79ah back into the pack, which was plenty to get me home once I hit the flats. Cool. Although going 30mph down a mountain relying on a front v-brake and crappy 2 phase plug brake only is pretty loose so I'm not going to make a habit of it. Still... 7-8% regen ain't bad!

You might want to look for a 24" frame, so you have rear brakes. It's working ok for me on my recent escalador build. It handles different, with a bit more rake on the fork that you'd have putting a 24" on the rear of a 26" frame. But I still find it rideable.

Been commuting at 14s for awhile now and it's been fine, but I tend to take my 10s runt pack with me (and sometimes just commute with that). That's a little too much weight and hassle and I finally (after weeks) got my 16v2A charger for my tab welder so decided it was time to upgrade to 18s by adding 32 cells (4s8p) to my existing main pack. With the new tab welder charger it was so darn easy... I could make new welds almost as fast as I could move the probes. In short order I completed a 144 konion cell 18s8p that will be plenty of watt/hrs to make my commute even if I decided to not pedal at all. Whole thing weighs just shy of 15lbs and theoretically is good for about 700+wh, but I've never gone over around 450wh on my commute even with the 504 motor and my 18s ecitypower charger kicks out 75v exactly or 4.16v/cell so the pack should last awhile... even with the few VTs in there. :lol:

Another benefit is that I won't need to sustain 60A anymore, but more like 35-40A, which will just be a little less stress on all the components even though they didn't seem to care about 100A spikes etc.