Endless Sphere

The accident rates and damage have more to do with the driver's skill, experience and care than the vehicle. For any given category of vehicle, sure. But try to cause as much damage with a pedal bike as with a dump truck and you'll notice a difference that no amount of skill and care can compensate...

...It's not about saving you from yourself. It's about protecting the rest of us from you... The rider is alway the one hurt in a crash and often, other users of the street are responsible. Since I am riding, I never did hurt anyone except for the sentiments that they had for their precious sheet m...

* Not looking for adjustable bulb load or whatever, just resistors. You understand that an incandescent light bulb is exactly a resistor, right? Even when it's used at lower than its intended voltage and thus doesn't emit light. It seems to me that no matter what you use as a resistive load, you co...

...License, Tag, Inspect, Insure It's no different from Fire Inspections. If you are going to play in the street, you are going to have to be an adult or require adult supervision Totally do able. Illusion of safety is typical of the modern society. No license, tag, inspection or insurance can save...

Run some thin lube (like Tri-flow) into the gap between the fixed and rotating parts of the freewheel. That should loosen up the gunky lubricant inside there and get the thing moving better. You'll need to keep an eye on chain and freewheel wear, because 11 tooth sprockets get beaten up much faster ...

The effects of speed on situational awareness and reaction time window both make accidents more likely as speed increases. For that, I agree. Yet, I find a crash much more acceptable when I do it by myself. Crashing is part of the riding game and I accepted it a long time ago. Yet, being a target f...

Wood is a renewable fuel. It's a waste of good material to burn it, but it's renewable and carbon-neutral.

When I replaced the socket in my battery, I found that the case insert containing the socket was easily removable upon opening the battery. I used an inline plug with leads and potted it into a lump of epoxy putty which I molded to fit the hole in the battery case. Then I soldered in a new plug on t...

Luke is quite wrong. The death statistics show motorcycles are much more dangerous than bicycles. That's why I made the very simple point that his "fewer cars passing" model is overly simplistic. My guess is that the significantly higher forces (four times) involved when there is an accident at 50 ...

Well, you said yourself, that motorcycles are much safer than bicycles on the street. Why is that, if not because they are fast enough that cars are not passing them all the time... Luke is right. Everytime a car is passing you is a risk you can’t control, and the reason why bicycles are at a highe...

For the possibility of "what if" at 50 kmh I installed 2 torque arms with the same setup you have Axles that are hollowed out for cables on one end can't transmit nearly as much torque through that end as they can through the solid end. So a good thick, tightly fitted, well anchored torque arm on t...

Your BMS is likely to be OK. Get a multimeter and figure out where the voltage is lurking. I use a barrel plug for my Luna/Hailong Shark pack, but I don't think it's the right plug for the job (and I have had to replace it due to spark erosion). I use XLR (microphone type) plugs on other batteries a...

spinningmagnets wrote: ↑

Oct 14, 2018 7:10 pm

I'm not sure I could explain the engineering reason a mid drive doesn't affect the drop-outs the same way.

Motor reaction torque is always transferred to the motor mounts. On a mid drive, that's the bottom bracket or some other part of the bike frame. On a hub motor, it's the axle ends.

Everytime a car passes you, it's a dice roll on whether they are texting and only notice you from the BUMP BUMP as they go under the tires. If cars don't pass you, or pass you less, your number of car death dice rolls reduces drastically. No prizes awarded for getting slaughtered by cars by riding ...

More kinetic energy means worse consequences when something goes wrong. And something always goes wrong, sooner or later. More often when it's all happening very quickly.

Can I cut a moderate size hole in my frame and route the wires through the frame???? Short answer: DON'T do that. There aren't any spare pieces of a traditional bike frame that don't need to be there or are much stronger than necessary. Punching big holes in a tube changes its stiffness and relocat...

My suggestion is to get a U-brake plate adapter (often called a "990 adapter" after the Dia Compe 990 U-brake) and attach it as you would a caliper brake. You can even put it down on the chainstays if you don't like the look of it. Get a front type U-brake that uses direct pull, and you won't have t...

I even still have a chart printed in 2001 that shows all the estimates of when we'd hit peak oil (somewhere between 2005 and 2025.) Then tight oil (a technological solution) came along, and suddenly we had more recoverable oil. Technology often solves problems that everyone assumes are insoluble. T...

Inside rim width is usually 6 to 7mm less than outside width.

markz wrote: ↑

Oct 02, 2018 11:31 am

First real snow of the season
October 2, 2018 Calgary, AB
first big dump

Good grief.

83F with 70% humidity in Austin right now. I'm all sweaty and I've only been lacing wheels.

Low melting point solder, dudes. Sometimes I use pure indium, MP about 300F. Its electrical and thermal conductivities are much better than lead-tin solder. Sometimes I use indium-bismuth alloy, MP about 165F. Both are expensive, but a little goes a long way.

The reason Tesla is so "overvalued" by conventional analysis is because investors understand that the heavy hitters of the industry have painted themselves into a shrinking corner, and they don't have the aptitude or the disposition to escape their old ways and save themselves. Tesla stands to pick ...

Matador wrote: ↑

Sep 30, 2018 7:23 pm

That looks great for conductivity but bad for brutalizing the cell with heat from soldering.

What kind of watts are you pulling through that 3220? And what final gearing? Cycle analyst is set to 6000 but what the peak phase amps are Ii couldn't be sure but probably up at about 8-10k for split seconds when off roading. Chainring 38 rear sprocket 17 tooth I think.... How is your hub holding ...

Having a multimeter to check continuity and voltage (+5V, battery resting voltage, voltage under load, and Hall sensor return voltage) is very useful for what you're doing). How do you check the signals under load? The best I've done is tape the multimeter to the frame and ride it. You can do that,...