About two minutes after buying an a2b ebike, I decided to try building my own. That was seven weeks ago, and I am finally at a point where I have something that rolls. (I started with very close to zero bike knowledge, resulting in all sorts of time wasted and erroneous purchases , confusing bb spindles with bb shells, etc.)
The picture below overstates my progress a bit. Brakes still need to be aligned, battery needs to be mounted in the frame somehow, everything needs to be wired together, etc..
But.. it finally is looking like a bike.
I should explain what I'm hoping to end up with. First, a bike for getting around downtown san francisco, often at night. (Hence the heated grips, shown.) Performance matters more to me than range, but ideal stats would be a 40mph top speed and 10 mile range. (My sense is those are achievable, but stretch goals.)
But I'm also very interested in messing around with "bike++" -- new abilities enabled by motors and sensors. Hence, the dual motor setup. I'd like to play with the bike equivalent of torque vectoring (when you detect a person wants to turn, shift the power to the front motor), launch control, electronic stability, etc.
Of course, for now I'm starting much smaller. I'm hacking ultegra di2 so I can have automated shifting. And I just started exploring the Recon mod live heads up display sdk for my bike hmi.
S.
(Oh, and credit where it's due: Ilia built the wheels. Mike helped with all the bike wrenching. Stupid shit, courtesy of me.)
The picture below overstates my progress a bit. Brakes still need to be aligned, battery needs to be mounted in the frame somehow, everything needs to be wired together, etc..
But.. it finally is looking like a bike.
I should explain what I'm hoping to end up with. First, a bike for getting around downtown san francisco, often at night. (Hence the heated grips, shown.) Performance matters more to me than range, but ideal stats would be a 40mph top speed and 10 mile range. (My sense is those are achievable, but stretch goals.)
But I'm also very interested in messing around with "bike++" -- new abilities enabled by motors and sensors. Hence, the dual motor setup. I'd like to play with the bike equivalent of torque vectoring (when you detect a person wants to turn, shift the power to the front motor), launch control, electronic stability, etc.
Of course, for now I'm starting much smaller. I'm hacking ultegra di2 so I can have automated shifting. And I just started exploring the Recon mod live heads up display sdk for my bike hmi.
S.
(Oh, and credit where it's due: Ilia built the wheels. Mike helped with all the bike wrenching. Stupid shit, courtesy of me.)