El Escalador De Montaña Grises - Season 4

Time for another ebike build! 8) Didn't have a build for the 2011 summer season due to many life changes, but it's time to get back in the saddle again. This summer I'm opting to try and keep things more simple compared to previous Rube Goldberg experimental builds.

Season 1: http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4716
Season 2: http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=9691
Season 3: http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=18722

New bike will be a cheapo Costco North Rock XC6. Nice looking triangle is what caught my eye... and the price. And front shock (even if it's a sucky one). And disc brakes. Etc. Will be the most modern bike I've ever ridden that's for sure. Hah.

http://www.northrockbikes.com/mountain-xc6.php


Ordered 26 Makita packs from Doc. After looking at various other battery options I kept coming back to my beloved konions. I live in an apartment again so opted out of Lipo, but it was tempting. Having mistakenly taken konions to 4.35v+ before without incident I don't trust myself with Lipo. Ha! 18s10p will be the build this time. Going to mount in the big North Rock triangle. Should fit a peach. I already have a 75.6v charger. Tab welded with my little 1.5 farad 16v welder and nickel stripping just like years past. Works well enough. Will be running a measly 2-2.5C full bore with a likely 50% DoD most days. Should help cycle life etc.

Got a little Lyen 9fet from ambroseliao (thanks!) that I plan to start with. Looking forward to playing with the programming. Will be running it ~72v and 30A max most of the time. Should be fine with the 4310s in there. From what I've read the little 9fets run efficiently and stay pretty cool. We'll see. Price was right and it has the Cycle Analyst connector so that's cool too.



Going to start with a rear 26" 2810 from MethTek. I run 2kw+ for 15-18 minutes sustained climbing up to work and I'm not convinced that a 2810 will be up to that, but I'm tired of the uber heavy Clytes I've run in the past. If it's too close I can opt to aircool drilled or try the newer oil bath treatment others are doing. Hoping to sustain at least 16-20mph up the 8-10% slopes with minimal pedal assist. We'll see. I've got a quote in to Cell Man for a 12T MAC, but have yet to hear back from him. If the 2810 doesn't cut it I'll slap it on the girlfriend's bike.

More to come... it's just beginning again...

Things are shaping up... 18s12p of konions showed up today...



And I got the cheapo Costco bike frame...



9C 2810/6x10 should be here Monday/Tuesday... could be riding by next weekend!

Build #4 Cost Break Down:

$350 - Mountain Bike
$425 - Batteries
$80 - Controller
$185 - Motor
= $1,040

Still have throttle/CA/plug brake from previous builds so that save a few pennies, but this is going to far & away be the cheapest setup I've ever done. Prices for motors/controllers have dropped in the last few years. Batteries are still too expensive... even used konions... will end up about $0.39 wh. Would love to see prices in the $0.25 wh range at some point. Someday.

Been spending a lot of time (as usual) on battery building. I've played with konions a lot over the years and this build is no different. They are just so bloody easy to deal with and at around $0.35-$0.40wh are cheap enough.

Been making 1s10p packs keeping the exiting factory tab welds and cell casings.


Using a 1.5 farad homemade tab welder again based on that $100 Tab Welder thread... 16.2v into the cap and I use a dumb old 4.2v Lipo charger to activate the SCR. Works very well, but I still would like better penetration (that's what she said ).


I made a very generic mockup of available space in my triangle. The goal was 18s10p.


This is going to work out nicely I think (hope).




Here is the end result and it fits into the frame dimensions. Tomorrow I add a bit of foam padding, a small hard shell case and then duct tape it all up. In theory it'll be good for 1kw+, but since I never use more than 5-600wh on my commute it should last awhile. It ain't pretty, but it'll work.

Starting to get everything hooked up. Have an old v2 Cycle Analyst that maxes at 14 poles, but thanks to this forum I found out I can do a little math trickery with wheel diameters to get the right setup for the 23 pole 9C.



Got the triangle pack mounted with some help from foam padding, water bottle mounts and a little wood for rigidity.



An homage to the early days of DIY ebiking. Duck tape. Black. I considered flame styled tape, but wanted to be at least a tiny bit inconspicuous... which I pretty much failed at.



Once I hack my throttle to the Infineon's weird connector I should be able to go for a test ride. Waiting on my Grin Cyclery torque arm as well since this Costco aluminum frame's dropouts are worse than pathetic.

Nice job! I'm not a fan of tab-welds or trying to pass current through nickel strips, but I think you did quite a nice job with it, and I expect it will be a great commuter for you at a very reasonable price to make. Everything is getting run at very reasonable levels, seems like it should last for years of solid commuter duty.

Thanks LFP. Just looking to ride not get too fancy.

Getting really close, but having motor issues. Brand new 9C and I've got it all hooked up finally, but it feels very coggy/pulsing/not smooth and when I let off the throttle it stops fast, which I don't recall previous motors I've owned doing. Too much resistance going on. Halls? Motor phases? Hmm. What to try...

Ignore wheel wobble... the dropouts are barely hanging out. Crap frame. Ebike.ca torque arms to the rescue.
[youtube]ZCjwG3a2nyQ[/youtube]

Well I got the motor to spin smoothly... backwards. Progress sort of... going to keep playing with motor phase combinations as I think I'm on the right track and if that doesn't work I'll dive into the hall patterns... but...

...more frustrating is that my wheel keeps coming off. The tighter I try to lock it down to more the axle just gets spit out of the dropouts. Cheap crap frame, cheap crap washers... cheap CRAP. I have torque arms, but what's the point if the f-ing dropout won't even hold the axle in the first place. *sigh* Going to try and remove the washers and see if that helps. Soooooo annoying... I mean I know I shouldn't be using aluminum dropouts, but c'mon tons of people here do just fine with aluminum and torque arms. It's not like I'm going to be throwing 10kw pulses through this thing. Grrr. OKay rant over. Phew.

I finally found the correct combination of phase and halls for smooth forward spinning. I'm now just hoping it's not the "high current" way because even just sitting there for half an hour not running my controller is warm to the touch. Hmm.



Unfortunately I don't think this bike frame is going to be viable. I can literally spin the dropouts just by hand even with my Grin Cyclery torque arm on the one side. It's like butter this metal. *sigh* Pathetic. Thinking of getting some Doc torque arms now and epoxying them, but I don't know if that will work. Really frustrating. At least I'll be able to have it as a regular mountain bike for trail riding. The hunt for a steel framed bike now begins. *sigh*

Being the impatient, stubborn Taurus I am and wanting to f-ing ride I just Rube Goldberged the dropouts for now. First ride complete!!! 1.18 miles... and it started to rain really hard so I went home. :lol:

First impressions on the rear 9C 2810... *yawn*... shoulda got a faster wind or thrown 24s at it instead of 18s. Topped out at around 24mph at ~280lbs gross weight at ~72v. I was hoping it was going to be around 30mph. I do have knobby mtn bike tires so that doesn't help. Oh well. I found a small hill around the same grade as my work climb and slurped around 2,300w at about 18mph for a few hundred yards. That'll work if a bit underwhelming. Lyen 9fet maxed 42A at 67v so that's inline with what I was expecting. Like I said... *yawn*, but at least it'll force me to be conservative, which is oh so hard when ebiking. Having wrecked before at 30mph+ I don't need that experience again.

Wrench and Grin torque arm. :lol:


Added one to the other side as well. :lol: 8)


Ready to ride!

Finally got a break in the weather and also finally got my DocBass T-As epoxied on with DP-420 and went for a "test ride". Decided to see what this little 2810 could do with my 75v30A setup. Removed the chain as my freewheel is currently screwed up and not freewheeling so I did zero pedaling over the course of 10 miles. We have pretty great little trail system in town here ( http://whitefishlegacy.org/recreation.php ) that makes a great test bed with single track and very, very steep little sections.

The 2810 did well with climbing albeit slower than I like, which I knew was going to happen at only 68-70v sagged. Think I'll go ahead with my plan to add 4S for a 22S setup. Should help. 2.5kw peaks, lots of 2kw sustained and no stalls even up 20%+ sections, but it did get hot of course. Trail riding is FUN.

Next step is to see if it can climb 1,600ft @ 8-10% without burning up. My Raytek IR should be here in a couple days and will help me determine if I need to do any air/oil cooling moving forward.

Doc's torque arms are burly and great... let sit for 2 days at room temp (no hair dryer for me 8) ) and she's good to go.

Did my first real test with my new 9C 2810 ebike this afternoon. Tried to take it up my 1,600ft 8-10% commute climb... without pedals. 8) Things were going swimmingly until I noticed I was hitting LVC on my controller of 63v after about 5ah... WTF? I should have at least 12-15ah depending on how good these used konion packs are... oh well. Since I was stopped anyway I laser temped the side covers at 150f so probably couldn't have gone much further anyway. Pedaling will help. Active cooling more. Cromotor even more! Anyway... got home to discover that my positive end 10p subpack was 2.1v. Going on vacation for a week so when I get back I'm going to swap that bad pack out and also tap + & - from the other end of the pack too so it's not all dumping through one pack. Amateur forgetfulness there as that's how I used to build my packs. Anyway... still a fun ride and all the other packs were 3.92v resting so that's good.

Probably add more padding too even though all tab welds holding strong even after single track riding etc...

Finally got to start commuting to work again. Did some repairs to my battery pack last weekend replacing a weak 1s10p subpack and re-welded some weak points with my new 2 cap welder. Added a scosche cap to my exisiting crap cap and the welds are much better now. Charges to 16.5v in about 3-4 seconds. KA-ZAP! Good stuff. 8)



Rode up my 1,670ft climb with the 9C & 9FET setup. Everything is pretty underpowered even compared to my old 4011 @ 84v, but it still did great... until... about a mile from the top the voltage started to plummet. Was cruising along WOT at about 17-18mph up 8-9% grade at ~1200 watts & about 69-70 volts pedaling moderately as well when it started going south... 68v... 67v... 66v... 63v... LVC trip... damn. WTF?? Waited a minute until the voltage recovered a bit above LVC and limped up the last mile at 64-65v & 600-700 watts about 8-9mph & pedaling a lot. At least there was only a mile or so left. Oye.

Got to the office and the 9c was... warmish.



Found the dud subpack easily as it was considerably hotter than the other packs. Was the last 1s10p in the pack on the negative output side. Grrr. Luckily I have 4-5 more subpacks ready to swap out, but I'm hoping this is the last weak one. I should have done more testing of these used konions instead of just trusting them. They still power me up mountains though even with duds so I can't complain too much.

A good commute... MapMyRide.com does a good job with mapping etc. Liking it.

Two days in a row commuting... not bad for Montana. I'll be dodging thunderstorms on the way home though that's for sure. Fixed my battery (again). Turns out a 2p positive connection wasn't made on a pair of cells. Uhm... oops. I never claimed to pay attention in class. Too many beers over the decades. The brain is fading. Anyway... battery worked MUCH better than yesterday and I made it up the mountain in 27 minutes with moderate pedaling. I only used 5.2ah and had a resting 18s voltage of 70.5v afterward... seems low to me. I should be seeing at least 12-13ah from this pack. If I'm resting at 3.92v/cell after only 5.2ah I think there is still something going on with this pack. Though... I've only cycled it a couple times and think there is still one weak sub-pack in there on the end positive side that never seems to get over 4.07v while the rest get to 4.16v or so.

I never saw more than 1,300 watt sustained this morning climbing the mountain (max 9C cover temp 137f), which seemed weird to me. I contribute about 150watts sustained at most. Good exercise, but not too punishing. My Wuxing Methtek full handle throttle doesn't even turn on until "3" and then kicks on strong until "5" WOT. Maybe something to do with the Infineon 9FET I have not talking to the throttle properly. Would like better low throttle control. My throttle hand falls asleep still climbing the mountain even with a full twist. Did also with half-twist. Maybe a thumb throttle. *sigh* It's annoying me enough to do something about it.

I tried hooking up the regen two wire button from the Wuxing to the Infineon, but... nothing. Gonna assume I need to hook up the programming cable to activate regen. Now if only I wasn't a Mac user. Darn PCs. If not I'll just re-install my plug brake.

Noting that my negative output on the battery is heating up that 1s10p subpack about 10 degrees more than any other pack in the lot. Wonder what that's all about.

Yesterday was the third day in a row commuting... getting in the groove again finally now that the weather and battery pack are playing along. One nice thing about this 9C 2810 is that it really won't let itself overheat with the Lyen 9FET controller I have at 30A max. I'm not seeing anything over about 1.5-1.7kw sustained up the steep stuff WOT and haven't seen a temp over 140f on the side covers yet. Good news. I do wish I had more power again, but isn't that just the way of it with ebiking.

Compressed my ~30min commute into a little under 8min. Climb starts around 2min in and the "woods" part around 4min in. There are definitely some steep 15% or even higher sections that the 9C slows to about 11-13mph with heavy pedaling, but it maintains and get's me to work. Video starts 18 seconds in... can't embed with a &t=20 for example. Oh well.

[youtube]HlPiAksxPU4[/youtube]

Well I figured out why I wasn't seeing the speeds/power I thought I would and it's to do with an early model Cycle Analyst that I have. Since I have a CA 2.0 and a 9C motor with 23 poles there are some revisions that need to happen in order to have accurate figures. 2.0 CA's can only recognize 14 poles max, which I knew and had adjusted my wheel diameter accordingly to 14/23rd the real size for correct speeds. What I didn't know is that by having a 30mph speed limit in my CA (as per Montana ebike stature max speed limits... in case I ever got stopped) I was only seeing 14/23rd my potential speed... or around 18-21mph.

Basically I removed the CA speed and amp limits and now am seeing around 30-32mph at around 72-74v on my 9C 2810 as I initially thought I would. I decided to bomb up the mountain with more power this morning and shaved over 2 minutes off my best time. I sustained around 1.8-2kw for about 10 minutes to see how the motor would take it and the max side cover temp was 135f, which is actually lower than when I was dumping just ~1-1.2kw into the motor. I only used a few more watt hrs also. Sooo... I'm starting to learn the sweet spot of efficiency for this 9C. It actually makes more sense for me to go faster at higher powers with much more efficiency than to just bog along slower dumping heat. I'm glad I unlocked the power restrictions because for awhile there I thought my old Clyte 4011 was a better motor, but now I'm definitely seeing how much better this 9C is... provided it doesn't mind getting to 135-150f every day. Time will tell.

Fun experiment on the way home from work during the ~1,700ft descent. I wanted to find the no load/regen speed of the 9C 2810. It started to regen just above 35mph and was kicking out about 250-300 watts at 38mph. I got it up to 41mph very briefly about 500 watts and slurped back in a quick .1ah before chickening out and slowing back down to my normal 25-30mph. I don't know how people can sustain day in-day out 40mph+ on a mountain bike. That's way too sketchy for me. Even 30mph feels fast.

CRASH! Hit some unexpected deep gravel and went down hard on my side this morning dislocating my left shoulder and adding to the myriad existing road rash scars. Watch out people! Thankfully I'll only be out 7-10 days with a sling. Dislocations hurt. :lol:

You bet they hurt.
During my road racing days, I sustain numerous dis-locations to both shoulders, enough times that the ligaments are stretched and my shoulders "pop out" at the most awkward times(no need to elaborate here, suffice to say during times of intimacy ). Sometimes while sleeping, my arm with fall off the side of the bed and I am rudely awakened by intense pain.
I have found over the years, that the best way to get the socket back in, is to lay on your stomach on the bed or a low wall, with the offending arm hanging down and have someone grab the wrist and pull sharply straight down. If no one is available, you will need to reach across, grasp the arm above the elbow and pull. Hurts like heck, but it works.
File this info away, as you will probably need to use it.
Or course, it's best not to dis-locate again, as every time stretches the ligaments a bit more.
There is no easy fix.