Re: HT Norko Aline - version mid drive, adaptto+rv100pro

heathyoung said:
The D8 is what full-throttle used for one of his builds IIRC.

Nice frame, and weldable. Bit of a bugger about the spokes though :(

yea im thinking ill just order a mx rim, ive found some around the 1.5kg mark, witch is heaver than i'd like, but they're solid as a rock and reasonably cheap. having a slightly smaller wheel + thicker rubber should help compinsate for the extra weight... will hopefully be a 23-24" wheel. I almost never go top speed anyhow. almost... :twisted:

Not much news to report on this bike, apart from the spokes its been going great. I've been getting <15wh/km on a regular basis, sometimes lower than 10wh/km, with pealing. Its good fun on well surfaced trails/roads but offroad I have to take it so easy to aviod snaping spokes that its not as fun... so hopefully the mx rim and some 12g spokes will help.

Only thing ive changed is to upgrade the wireing for the balance leads. They were too long, and too thin, (some about 80cm long, and all about 32g or so) now its all 22g, and about 25cm at the most, using a 9pin vga plug for each 8s subpack.


Something that will be changing soon though is the side covers. Summers 'ere, its hot as hell, and I dont want to limit the power if I can help it... Thanks to 'oldhaq' im the proud owner of his burnt and fried HT motor. He really did a number on it, the windings are black as night and there is a number of shorts to the body of the motor. not to worry, I only wanted it for the 'spare' sidecovers and the chance to pull one open while still having one to ride.

Forced air is the plan, with a ring of little alluminium heat sinks that I got from DX (http://www.dealextreme.com/p/alumin...am-memory-w-type-8-piece-set-35816?r=79543430 right around the inside of the stator. I'm thinking ill use a disk of alluminium to help hold 'em against the stator + some thermal glue, and then mount the fans onto the disk. i found some pretty low profile blower fans on the bay that still throw out a fair bit of wind. should help keep things cool.

on another point ive started recieving parts for the d8 build - the thread can be found 'ere...
http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=33657&start=45
So far I have the motors, and the lyen controller. sill need to get the gearbox, a ~1:1.2 belt drive for the 1st stage and the other usual parts that are needed before I can start putting it together. fortunately my old 5s packs from when I was running 20s are sill in good nick, so that'll do for a 10s20ah pack to start with!

Im also going to try my hand at fabing a magnetic torque limiter. I built a crude one out of timber as a test peice, and with a handfull of weak magnets and a hastily made build I got about .8nm breaking torque... I've got ideas now for a bit larger and higher quality alloy peice, that should be about 9cm in diamiter and 3cm wide, that should break at about 8-9nm, asuming ive calculated it right. It'll be interesting even if it doesn't work...

Ill try and rememver to get some photos/vids up soon too. its weird with the chesty mount gopro... I think I can hear my heart beat!!! :shock:
 
Finally!
[youtube]ejh_9UWomGg[/youtube]
http://youtu.be/ejh_9UWomGg
still uploading at the moment... about 2 hours to go. hopefully works out, its my first vid ive made, so just kinda hacked and thrown together.

1st scene is the old motor/rim setup. In hindsight I should have destroyed the tyre/tube, but at the time I wasnt sure if I was going to stick with the MX rim. That and the tyre got so tacky that doing a burnout became bloody hard... the bike just gripped and leapt forward! ah well... next time :twisted: . The rest is all local riding with the MX rim and a mx knobby tire. Music by 3 inches of blood.


let me know what you think...




PS
Riding today it sounds like the barings are pretty much stuffed. anyone recommend where to get good quality replacements? pref in aus?






edit
a few quick shots of the 'new' setup... sorry for the crap quality, they're just pulled off the video. will get some good-er ones up later.
vlcsnap-2012-02-16-02h15m40s0.jpg

looks a bit weird with the 26" front, going to have to get a 24" i think...
 
Don't sweat the rear dia. Just looks like a 21in front 17in rear road trail bike.
 
Good job!!! I like it!!! I cant wait to get mine up and running!!!
 
Nice vid. your trails are smooth.
You wouldn't like that small rear wheel here in the rough.
 
deepfraught said:
Don't sweat the rear dia. Just looks like a 21in front 17in rear road trail bike.

yea im trying to keep it looking as much like a normal push-bike as possible (cops :evil: )... though thats getting harder and harder.


MadRhino said:
Nice vid. your trails are smooth.
You wouldn't like that small rear wheel here in the rough.

its surprisingly not too bad... rock gardens and similar would be a different story but short of that it does fine so far (its effectively a 23"). pedal clearance is a bit of an issue though.
 
Re: push bike and cops, I kept mine to look like a normal bicycle with dorky panniers, but wouldn't suit your style of riding with no front weight for speed and too much rear for drop offs.
I know a local traffic cop M/C rider who has dealt with some local petrol powered bikes. They don't know power ratings etc. but when you're not pedalling and doing 60kph (because you removed the pedals), it shouts against the "primary drive by pedalling" rule for motor assist and then becomes an unregistered motor vehicle which he's confident in seizing etc. The dumb redneck attitude of "pig defiance" didn't help that guy's case either. Riding style correct for time and place, and a humble attitude in worst case should steer you safe. Don't do a runner, the fines system is an option, often anything that attracts a fine can also attract a court order, for when someone earns a pineapple =P
 
:evil:
I can honestly say I am sick of hubs. To big, too heavy, to much maintenance. I think it'd be better if I could afford a way bigger/stronger shock than the current fox, or if I put some big effort/$ into weight reduction and hardcore mx rims... but with my budget its not really on the cards, and even if i did, the performance still couldn't match a non-hub (at least in outright suspension performance).

It was the last ride I had that finally got me to say 'enough'. I rode to uni, and before heading home had a little tear around the campus, which has plenty of stars/small drops etc to play with. Nothing too exciting, but I still managed to bash my rim so far out of true in just a few min of tearing around that it was almost unrideable. On the limp home after, one corner that I took at no more than 20km'h almost had me loosing the rear end the wobble was so bad... The whole ride home was like sitting on a giant vibrator. I'm not one to get motion sickness but I was feeling queezy within about 5 minutes. I'll freely admit some of this is due to the cheap ass mx rim I got, which seems to kink WAY to easily, but still... its more than a little annoying, and the lack of suspension performance is a constant dissapointment. it no longer glides down stairs, but bangs and bounces down them.

Needless to say, after exams there's going to be a big push to get both my D8 and my norko both running with mid drives. the D8 will likely get a BB drive, and the norko a left side 2 speed. hopefully I can make a more reliable system this way.
 
that totally sucks! I'm going to have to read a bit more on mid drives, I know nothing about them. Are you using the stock rear shock that came with the A-line (Fox DHX 3.0). What does it say on the spring? it should say : ... X 3.25. If it says 300 X 3.25, then maybe the coil is too soft????
 
fractal said:
that totally sucks! I'm going to have to read a bit more on mid drives, I know nothing about them. Are you using the stock rear shock that came with the A-line (Fox DHX 3.0). What does it say on the spring? it should say : ... X 3.25. If it says 300 X 3.25, then maybe the coil is too soft????

yea still stock. ill check the spring, it probably is a bit soft... Like i was saying though im sure there's stuff I could do to improve things, but significant changes would probably require significant $$... and then I'd still be dreaming of a mid drive. I'd love to have a go on Madrino's or keyne's, or a stealth, they all seem to perform pretty well offroad. I doubt however that they'd outperform a well setup mid drive.

Truth be told I always wanted to do a mid drive, but due to lack of experience went with the hub... They are easier to setup, particularly when you want more than 2kw (though having to build custom dropouts for the aline closed that work gap a bit). I'm glad I did, it was a great learning experience. I'll still use the hub on a tadpole trike that i'll probably start towards the end of the year, particularly since finding a friend at uni has been making them for racing for a couple of years now! she managed to make a 2 person trike that hit 90km'h... and the cops pulled them over and started looking for the motor! hehe. shows how much lowering your drag helps!
 
airtime said:
Mind I ask how much did this setup cost

its hard to put an exact # on it, since there was a bit of wastage due to this being my 1st build, plus buying extra parts for future builds... but all up about $4.5k, 2.5 of which is the bike. If I was to do it again I'd probably use a cheaper 2nd hand bike and be able to come in around the 2.5k all up. The electrics on their own would be about 12-1500.
 
nice vids, what camera did you use for the videos??
 
rui_fujino said:
nice vids, what camera did you use for the videos??
the usual... a gopro.
ive got a heap more footage but need time to edit out the crap, so maybe another vid next week once finals are done.
 
FINALLY!! after what seems like an eternity, exams are done! That means I'm ditching the MX rim in the short term, going back to the bike rim. I blew a tire the other day, and I suspect its because the spokes have stretched so much that they punctured the tube, so chaning tubes is out. I'm going to cut out the eyelets in the rim in the hope that will extend the life of the 14g spokes on the bike rim.

Hopefully though I'll be able to make a quick transition to mid drive on the norko, as well as my D8. The kit for the d8 is nearly finished, hopefully next week, and then I'll start on a kit for the norko, possibly using 2 6374's. As usual im probably over ambitious and wont get enough done in the holidays, but I'm hoping I'll get close to having both running by the end, since i've got 95% of the stuff I need either in the air or in my hands already.

I've also just recieved some neat materials that I'll be testing out for battery cases. If it works out half as well as I hope it should make for a easy, strong and very organic way of building battery cases, at very low cost. Win win huh? :p

Got a bucket of vids that I'll try and sort crudely to get some highlights posted asap. can't wait for monday so I can get in the workshop!
 
sn0wchyld said:
I've also just recieved some neat materials that I'll be testing out for battery cases. If it works out half as well as I hope it should make for a easy, strong and very organic way of building battery cases, at very low cost.

Composite carbon / glass fibre with epoxy rasin?
 
So ive been meaning to post some pics for ages of the cooling mods I did, so here they are... I'll try and remember to take some more soon when I crack it open after about 1000km of hard offroad riding...

b25.JPG

sealing up the holes that arn't gonna have fans on 'em... just using some high temp sillicone. I wanted a good seal but something that could be removed easily in the future. This stuffs rated to 200C and is cheap as chips.

b21.JPG

You can also see the 'bling' red LEDS I've added.

b27.JPG

Fans are the 'blower' or 'radial' type, held in place with a combination of the silicone (its an adheasive type) and zip ties. Those puppies aint going anywhere! more LEDS on this side too.


b24.JPG

Heat probe installed, glued in with the silicone, and with some thermal cement to provide a better heat connection to the windings.


b20.JPG

b19.JPG

The battery case got a bit of an upgrade too, with permenantly attached cell logs, all switched on with a single switch (and modded to make their drain more 'even' - more on this later).


b16.JPG

Wheel mounted up. Given this was going to be going offroad, I added some flyscreen, held on with the same silicone from before. originally I added it to the inside of the side covers, but it eventually came loose, and ripped out the temp probe IC. after that, I moved it to the outside, where it proceded to pick up allot of dust, but still did the job, with no more worries about scraping the guts of the motor.

b14.JPG

leds on... kinda hard to see on a camera, but shows up nicely IRL... particularly when its moving.

The cell log mod only worked to an extent. After initially being worried that my cells were not holding charge well/going into a early death, it became clear that the drain was only on the bottom 4 cells (1-4). I found that my cells were going about 20mv out every week or so. a bit of a pita when you're mainly relying on BM's to do your balancing.

The bike ran well for about 1k km, but the spokes were constantly streching more and more, and the rim I bought was, well, crap. I also think I've ordered spokes that were just a tad too long, as I eventually ended up with a puncture, which I suspect is due to the spokes goign too far through. So the bikes been up on bricks for a month or so now... waiting for me to either strap on the old mtb rim, or do a mid drive. I'll get round to one of 'em eventually, when uni stops making such a demand on my time. till then I'll just keep dreaming of the time 3 odd years from now when I have a nice, well paid job, and no 'homework' to worry about, when I can spend all the time I like on my toys!



and my next project...
http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=43143
 
pendragon8000 said:
Hi, looks great. Im about to build a 2012 scott spark comp 29"with crstalyte hs3540.

if you haven't bought the HS already, I'd strongly suggest geting a HT. a HS will be hard pressed to run well in a 29" rim.
 
pendragon8000 said:
Thanks, good point. I have thought about the big wheel with the lower torque motor. Jay from hyena said the HT will max out @50kph, so i decided to go with HS. I guess ill have to pedal a fair bit off the line. If i have to i can allways have a HS and a HT.

what voltage are you running? this one maxes out at about 60-65 on 24s lipo - thats in a 26" rim.
 
sn0wchyld said:
what voltage are you running? this one maxes out at about 60-65 on 24s lipo - thats in a 26" rim.

so you have 26" rim with the ht motor getting 60 - 65
the 29" rim ads about 10% speed (friction may outway speed due to stressing motor)
the hs motor adds about 40% speed, the peak acceleration on the simulator looks to be about 35-40 kph

your bike must be a monster.
btw im totally thinking of copying your red leds on the frame, looks rad.
also i live in adelaide to, was looking at the australian rolcall thread. im in western suberbs.
 
Is Norko a killer krusty kickass version of the Norco?

One year on from properly departing motorcycles with this as my substitute, still at first stage, but returning now to finish it and start clocking up some hours usage.

Gearing, versatile battery storage, field wheel change ease remain top issues for it as a commuting deviation discovery toy on long way home.
 
pendragon8000 said:
sn0wchyld said:
what voltage are you running? this one maxes out at about 60-65 on 24s lipo - thats in a 26" rim.

so you have 26" rim with the ht motor getting 60 - 65
the 29" rim ads about 10% speed (friction may outway speed due to stressing motor)
the hs motor adds about 40% speed, the peak acceleration on the simulator looks to be about 35-40 kph

your bike must be a monster.
btw im totally thinking of copying your red leds on the frame, looks rad.
also i live in adelaide to, was looking at the australian rolcall thread. im in western suberbs.


yea, not bad... or maybe I'm just used to it already. I've pulled it to bits again - moving away from hubs due to the unsprung weight having too much of a -ve effect on suspension performance and spoke/rim durability. I'll be starting a mid drive for the norko over the next couple of monthis, probably DD to the rear wheel via a slipper clutch, or just maybe, using a hub for a mid drive.

If you drill holes in your motor (which I'd highly recommend) then you should add red leds to the inside of your motor too!

Give us a shout mate, im down south adelaide. be good to meet another ebike enthusiast!


deepfraught said:
Is Norko a killer krusty kickass version of the Norco?

One year on from properly departing motorcycles with this as my substitute, still at first stage, but returning now to finish it and start clocking up some hours usage.

Gearing, versatile battery storage, field wheel change ease remain top issues for it as a commuting deviation discovery toy on long way home.

errr.....what?
 
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