>W commuter

Been getting a little advice from you all here and decided to make my own build thread. I'm using a pretty cheap (was free with the purchase of an air compressor about 8/9 years ago and used for about a week then stored) schwinn high timber "mountain bike". Ordered a hub motor kit and accidentally 2 48v 14ah batteries. Works great to get me to and from work but want a little more range and needs to be spruced up a little bit.

Here she sits currently.


Battery on a rear rack that I made a little cover for real quick so my motorcycle tank bag would mount better on for the controller and some everyday storage.

Well last week I went ahead and chopped up the battery pack that was still new in the box and made a template of the box I wanted in the triangle out of some wooden flooring I have laying around. Both battery packs will easily fit in, but haven't taken the controller out of my bag yet to see if it will clear(doubt it, will figure something out). I have to admit the template actually looked pretty good and I may use some more of it I have as the side panels for my final box as its fairly light weight, waterproof and I think looks good, plus it should be pretty easy to shave the edges down to make it look more professional and not have sharp metal edges. I wanted to make my "final" box over the weekend but this little hurricane thing popped up so I wasn't able to (didn't want to get wet) get to work and make it.

Anyways, I was welding most of the day at work today and didn't really have anything to do after work so I stayed an hour or so and whipped this little baby up.
Came out pretty nice I think. Fits the triangle very well. Started out as 14g sheet that I sheared down and broke into u- channel then cut up and welded. Fck I hate stick welding that thin stuff. Well I made it 3 1/4" on the inside so my batteries will fit sideways in there and have a little over 1/2" for padding, if I need more room for padding ill just make it a little wider next time, plenty of room for another inch before I start to interfere with the pedals. 5/8" legs to make it easy to add side panels to, will probly weld some nuts in there to make panel removal easier.

That's all I've got for now, will probly need a little help with replacing the balance leads once I join the two battery packs into one unless I'm more thorough when I take the other battery pack apart. Hoping ill get a lot more done this week/ weekend.

Got the battery box in the triangle like I wanted. Thought I destroyed one of my battery packs but it was just a bad multimeter so making a 13s10p battery was put on hold til I figured that out but will be back to it this weekend. Pretty sure with such a big battery in there I won't be able to fit the controller in there like it is now so I need to figure out what to do with that situation, maybe an 13s8p to keep it in there (i do like all the electronics being hidden) or maybe just figure a way to to mount it underneath.

Space between seatpost and wheel. Extend battery box's sidecovers back there to hide it if you like, but I'd just leave it in the open air (cooling can be a problem; heat kills parts in controllers, especially capacitors and FETs).

I agree with Amberwolf about the Controller mounting location.
It appears from your photo there is room to fit it behind the seat post tube. I have used this exact location on my Fatbike, and in addition made a PVC rear Fender so the controller remains in the airflow, but along with the rider, stays free of road spray in wet conditions!

That looks nice. I thought mine might fit in that gap too but over the weekend when I joined the two battery packs into one I worked it out to leave enough room in my case for everything to fit. But it just barely fits. Was so wrapped up with designing it to fit everything in there i forgot to even measure it and try to locate it somewhere else once i found geometry that worked in my box. I've been concerned since I built the battery case and put it in there originally about it getting too warm in there with no air flow but haven't seen any problems yet. Yet being the key word, I really don't want to fry anything as I'm enjoying how much easier my commute is. Definitely going to make some stuff this week to mount it back there next weekend since my box is starting to show some rust and I need to take everything back apart to paint it anyways. I like the thought of using some pvc to make fenders with, been trying to think about how to make some and couldn't really think of an appealing way to do so out of metal so I hope no one minds when I use that idea.
Thanks.

Well over the weekend I broke down both batteries(13s5p) and put them both together into an 13s10p pack and was able to get everything into the triangle case I made but they barely fit. Pretty happy with my results.

My commute to work one way is 4.7 miles and I usually go pretty much full blast on the throttle. Usually about 60% of the way there (and over the only two hills in this commute; bridge over a bayou and bridge over railroad tracks, very steep) I'd notice on my display I get to 3/4 of battery and stay there until I reached work then returning to home I'd be at half. Well since I did the battery over the weekend (charged to full on Friday then broke them down and put them together, finished on Sunday no recharge) rode about a mile or so Sunday just to test, rode to work this morning 6.3 miles at work and all had all 4 bars. Right at 8 miles on the return this afternoon dropped down to 3/4, needed to go to Wal-Mart and return home 13.6 miles and dropped down to 1/2 way mark in my driveway but had considerable stop and go on the second half of my journey today and as always pretty much all full throttle. Reads 49.3v right now. Going to leave it off the charger tonight to try and see what my real range is for a good charge.

I'm by no means at all a knowledgeable bicyclist and over the weekend I changed out new v brakes (complete; cables, arms, pads, everything) and switched over to finger shifters from grip shifters (handlebars were crowded with twist throttle and grip shifters). Went pretty smoothly as I've already adjusted everything before i converted to electric when i got it out of storage.
But since combining the batteries it doesn't seem quite the same. Feels like it takes a little longer to get up to good speed (I always pedal and can feel when the motor overpowers me pedaling at about 17mph). Should this be expected? I know I added more weight but in the grand scheme of things (this was a pretty heavy bike after the conversion and I'm 185 lbs) I didn't think it would have been as noticeable.
Going to double check everything tonight and make sure nothing is dragging, it really doesn't feel like mechanical drag. Also trying to figure out some more about tire inflation, this whole time I've been riding at around 35 psi and have felt like every other day the tires feel a little flat and top them off to 35 but today before the store I did that and noticed the tire says 60-90 psi on the tire that came on my electric hub rim kit. Felt better at 40 but don't know how far to go with these slime filled tubes. Any advice on solid tires with heavy ebikes?

Hit 600 miles today. Wohoo