Chuleo's BMCv4 Cruiser feat. glassfibre battery Box

[Chuleo]

Some time ago I found this forum and i was very pleased with the stuff other people built.
I used to go to work by train or by motorcycle but both means of transport are more or less shitty...
The trains are always full, connections are bad...sometimes I miss a connecting train because an idiot is blocking the door. It really pisses me off sometimes
If i go by motorcycle...I get usually stuck in traffic and I'm only 15mins faster and it costs me about a hundred franks (approx 100USD) a month... not really cheap .

But whining about everything doesn't solve anything . So I got to do something about this... Self do, self have.

I bought a a new mountain bike... but riding 25km with a 2km 15% hill climb is pretty hard.. a motor would perfecly fill my needs. This is my first build, my first time working with fibre glass and epoxy. Had some issues but nothing not solvable.
Here's the bike with just the controller attached as a test..

So i have to build a battery box. Started with the blue stuff

View attachment 10
Some sanding.. works pretty well.

Does it fti? Yes, it does!

Almost finished sanding...

Still fits in

So..what yre you going to do if you haven't got any seperating agent? Bron plastic tape works very well (only for epoxy) don't use it with anything containing solvents. Brown tape has some significant advantages..(we'll come to that). The brown tape gives a very smooth surface... too bad it is inside after putting the laminates.

Now the first layer glass fibre.. (took me 3 days for all layers..its about 7 layers thick)

 

[Chuleo]

Removing the blue stuff is not a very enjoyable work. It is messy...very messy.
First i cut a hole with a proxxon cutting disk. It goes trough the glass fibre compound like a knife trough butter. Better wear a breathing mask as the dust is not very healthy.

View attachment 9
Finally done after 90mins..

Now the brown tape still sticks to the blue stuff... but it also sticks to my fingers. Better just remove it in a single piece.

Done.

Ok. the battery box still fits in but it looks ugly as f***

Now to the bad part: applying filling paste and sanding... about 1000 times the same procedure, very annoying.

I had to make the hole bigger so one part of the 20AH ping battery fits in.

 

[Chuleo]

Fortunately the controller fits very well into the bike rack.

The I put some hard PVC on the rack. Secured with hot glue. (We'll see how long it takes to brake it )

View attachment 6
Mounted bike rack.

Here's the first impression how the bike will look when finished.

Applying som spray filler..

I remanaged the cables, looks better than before doesn't it?

Now painting...not perfect but doesn't look too bad to me.

 

[Chuleo]

The cap of the box has to be thin and very well fitting. So i took clear plastic foil and stretched it over the battery box.
View attachment 6

Some drops of epoxy managed to go on the colored surface...now it's ruined Could have thougt of that happening.

Again polyester filler..

It finally looks like an ebike, success!

This is my charger connector. I like the rigid style of these powercon connectors

On off Switch.


I'm not yet finished with the build...(I hope so in one or two weeks). I dont know if I leave it white.. I will come up with some new pictures later. Hope you enjoy this thread. If you have questions... feel free to ask.

 

[gm6046]

Nice work on the fibreglassing there. It looks very neat