Front 24V brushed hub, rear gas drive, on-demand recharge.

alot of electric mobility scooters use 24v brushed controllers with regen built in,
eg old curtis controllers.
 
Efficiency be damned, I love it. But if you can possibly afford it, battery big enough to last all day, or even two. Then beg a plug to charge it. A 36v battery would really improve your WE motor too. The controllers can take up to 48v with ease.

The next thing I'd find interesting, would be making that motor wheel the rear wheel. Then park the bike on a stand, leave the motor running, and recharge. The WE motor of course, comes only as a front. But to move the motor to the rear would be a good reason to switch to brushless at some point down the road.

Lots of gasser hate here for some, but you just gotta love the elegance of the weed whacker belt drive bikes. Dang efficient with your cash!
 
Rassy, it pains me to admit this, but I immediately melted the button you gave me when I tried to solder on new wires with a huge iron.

Hey, at least the price was right! :D

Maybe another switch would still fit in the bracket, which was the best part of the whole thing, if it didn't melt too. Even a toggle switch might work okay.
 
Yeah, I dig it, 24v stuff is what you have, so use it. 24v lead battery is so affordable.

I just meant to say that you aren't married to 24v by the motor itself, or the stock WE controller. That motor works best at 36v. At 48v, a bit of a tendency to overheat, or at least pit the brush commutator if climbing steep hills, partly because of the large 26" wheel.

I started out with two of the WE motors, (two bikes) and put a few thousand miles on them at 24,36,and 48v. I bet that motor would really perk up, and run cool if you relaced it to 20", then ran 48v. But what you have is working great, so keep on cruising.
 
Hello Augidog Glad to see you are still on the road.
Do you have torque arms on your front axle?
How are you able to stress the delicate gebe belt using the tanaka ice engine to power the front hub motor as a generator?

First met you on another forum. one mph per cc Gebe racer.
From a Happy time, to a scooter guy mid drive, and finally Two Wheel Drive 1000 watt cheapo bldc hubmotors.
I keep trying to build an electric gebe , But wind up building other things .

spelling edit
 
Badass your gasser is CARB, and has a catalytic converter. The gassers I've seen were at a racetrack, so none of them had that stuff. Seeing those gas bikes at the track sure made me want one.

But so far, I'm just too in love with electric. I just keep building to carry more and more battery.

My latest effort, can carry 80 miles range with ease. So that makes a long hop from town to town quite possible. Finished cargo mixte..jpg

But as you can see, this bike could easily be modified to have a belt drive gas motor right behind the seat, instead of the second battery. Hmmm.
 
Lots more room in that frame than a normal bike, so it could just be mounted to clear the tire. But yeah, I can see how 26" might be best for that approach.

More likely, just buy one more battery if I need more than 80 miles a day. Right now, 60 miles seems more my typical max anyway. I do dream of infinite range though, which you would have with a gas electric hybrid bike.
 
bicycle1 005.jpgHello Augidog, havent seen a post from you in 10-12 yrs motoredbikes? :D wishing you good luck with the project, buggered with mine for a few mnths in 06 07 ? and all i could do was build heat during regen, but would come in handy for stopping a boat.i did figure out a bunch of fixes mostly help from here.. I dont remember much, but will think about it. 8)
 
I did some braking systems for brushed motors many years ago. With the right controller, you can get nice variable braking that sends the energy back to the battery even at low speeds. It works like a boost converting switching power supply. You short the motor windings for a brief time and when the short releases, a voltage spike will be produced by the inductance of the motor windings that has more than enough voltage to put charge into the battery. The short is done by FETs at the switching frequency of the controller and the duty cycle determines the braking current.

With the right electronics, you can have a constant braking force independent of speed. I had a setup like this on one of my scooters. The braking was activated by a switch on the brake lever. The braking current limit was set to a level where it worked without damaging anything. The braking force would stay steady until it got down to walking speed, then taper off.

It would be possible to make a separate braking controller and add it to the existing motor controller. They would be very similar in construction. In practice, the tricky part is interfacing the two so you can't apply braking when the throttle is on or vice versa.

A much more low-tech approach is simply a big braking resistor across the motor. This will be dependent on speed, so not as nice. More force at higher speed. If you're going too fast when you activate it, something could be damaged. I did a few of these too. No energy is recovered, but you save wear on the brakes and don't have fading issues on long hills. Braking resistors were just long pieces of wire wrapped around the frame to dissipate the heat. You can have more than one tap, giving multiple levels of braking force.
 
Back
Top