Currie Kick Scooter conversion

Nice bit of chequer plate underneath the box for ground out protection and sh be shinning like a diamond in a goats ass, That rear tyre on 20s be burning up like a dragster in the wet. 8)
 
I've been working on the down tube section today. It took a really long time to make these two pieces of plywood fit like this. I wanted to use a single piece of plywood, but there was no way to get it in place so I cut the board in half down the center and hold it together with a couple of pieces of wood.

This is the prototype parts. As you can see, I made some mistakes in getting the parts shaped right so I used the shapes I got from them to make final versions. The tear drop shaped hole is obviously misshaped and uneven. The two slots for the smaller down tubes were too far towards the center of each piece of wood so I kept removing more material until I got the slots right. Of course that made them misshaped and over sized.

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This looks so much better and more closely fits around the down tubes. Once the pieces are painted, I'll add some foam tape around the down tubes and the top of the frame to keep water and dirt out. I didn't notice until shaping the pieces of plywood, but the down tubes are not centered on the frame. You can see it in the pictures. The pieces of plywood are centered on the frame. It looks kind of weird, just having a wing shaped thing on the scooter. The old deck was 11" wide. This one will be 13". When I rode this scooter last, I found my feet would just barely fit side by side on the platform so I added a couple of inches to the width.
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Ianhill said:
Nice bit of chequer plate underneath the box for ground out protection and sh be shinning like a diamond in a goats ass, That rear tyre on 20s be burning up like a dragster in the wet. 8)

I might do 20S later, but for now 12S will be plenty fast and powerful on this motor. The controller can handle it either way. I have an adapter for the motor so that I can use 219 sprockets. I wont be snapping that flimsy chain that's currently on the scooter. I wish there wer better wheels for this size scooter, but I have never found any.

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A little more work on the down tube assembly. Everything is painted and the contactor is in place. I screwed up the placement a little so the hole is stretched to make it fit right, but the contactor is a perfect fit for the spot.

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The battery box needed a little more work. I wanted to make sure it didn't get water and dirt between the box and the aluminum so I sealed it up. The caulk I used is paintable so once it cures, I'll repaint the box.
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The 80-100 outrunner is definitely what I am using on this scooter. It has a couple of broken magnets in it. I found a Chinese company that is making me N52 magnets for it. I also will rewind it with 14 awg wire. The windings are damaged so I have to do something anyway. The goal is this motor will probably deliver about 4000 watts. On this 60 pound ride, that will be very fast.

I'll need to replace or adapt the existing motor mount plate to take the 80-100, but that should be pretty easy with a piece of aluminum. Wiring is coming along nicely. I have the two handlebar cables made up and I'm starting to get things hooked up. I have all the lights for it, but am still waiting for switch modules to arrive from China.
 
More development on the scooter...

The battery box and deck are complete. It's 13" wide and 17" long. That's a decent sized deck. There is foam weather stripping between every joint where the lid or box meets the frame. Then I sealed all the down tube joints with caulk. I seriously doubt I will be taking the down tube parts apart ever again so caulking it in is not a bad choice. I wish I had black caulk, but all I had was white so I used what I had. It's paintable caulk so that's a good thing. The front deck section is held down by 4 10-32 screws and of course with it all screwed together, it's trapped in between the down tubes. I was concerned for the down tube sections "wings" being too weak and easily broken, but with the 1.25" wide piece on there for mounting the hinge, there's little chance I will break off the front part. Also, via the hinge, the wings are supported by the deck. The deck is covered in grip tape after I painted it. Replacement magnets are on their way for the 80-100 and I need to rewind it too. This scooter is coming along nicely.

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A little more development...

I purchased some 60 volt mini DC-DC converters a while back. Each one is good for 2 amps continuous and cost a couple of dollars each. I took 5 of them and soldered the Vin pins together on all of them and the Vout pins on 4 of them together for 12 volts and the one left for 5 volts. 8 amps is a good start for this scooter for all the lights and horn. The 5 volts is for the temperature gauge and speedo. Next will be to make a mosfet switch tomorrow night. In the picture is one of the DC-DC converters that arrived bad and a 100 volt converter. Anyway, this stack of converters is pretty small. The single Deans T male connector is for battery power. The larger wires with a female deans connector is 12 volts out and the smaller wires are 5 volts out. The battery power connector will connect to the mosfet switch which will connect to the power buss. I'll use the 5 volts line for the halls to enable the mosfet switch. There's a rocker switch on the down tube that will act as the enable switch for the scooter.

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More work done...

I've been adding lights to the scooter. I drilled a 1/8" hole on either side of the battery box so the side light wires can get into the battery box. I also drilled a hole at the bottom of the main down tube so that the front lights and horn could exit the battery box in a convenient place. On my blue scooter, I have only one of these head lights and it's not enough light so I've added two of them to the Currie. Right above the head lights are two super bright red LEDs that I'll use as directional lights. I have another set of them for the back of the scooter too. I have a tail/brake light module that was originally on my blue scooter that I will use in back as well. On the main down tube I mounted a COB LED array that is both side lights and directional sections. I should be super visible with all the lights on this thing. Somewhere I have a 12 volt horn, but can't find it at the moment. It will get mounted on the brake bracket. I ran an 8 conductor cable up the main down tube that will feed the horn and lights. I'll open up another hole in the main down tube right at the top for the two cables that go to the handlebars. I can run the cables inside the steering tube once I get past that latch/folding section. I'll exit out the front of the handlebars for the left and right side clusters, watt meter, temp guage, speedo, etc. The back lights will get a single cable out the hole the phase and hall wires go out in the back right corner of the battery box.

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More development...

Some time ago I bought a 200 amp power distribution block. The plastic immediately started cracking...GRRR! Anyway, This scooter has limited space for things so I needed to reduce the size of the power block. I saved an inch in width and 1/4" in length. I covered the top with a couple of layers of electrical tape to minimize shorts. I also intend to put a cover on the top of the BUSS held down by a few small screws.

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I received flasher modules yesterday so I wired one up and tested it out. I also did some connecting into the wiring block. It's now set up for 5 and 12 volts and the flasher module. The various Deans connectors allow me to isolate the DC-DC converters from the rest of the electrical system.

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I built a mosfet switch out of 3 IRF4110 mosfets on a short piece of heat sink. At 48 volts it will handle 23 amps. That ought to be gracious plenty! My estimates are 6 or 7 amps so even with the smallish heatsink it wont get warm. The switch/heatsink is all of 1"x1.5"x.5". Once I had it all built and tested, I encased it in some heat shrink. I don't have it soldered on yet, but the small red enable wire will connect to +5 volts from the hall cable in the controller.

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Automotive relays can come with a economizer circuit built in sometimes or its easy enough to add one on, it is basically a resistor and capacitor that will lower the hold on watts of the coil so it triggers with one amp say then reduces down to 100ma or so depending on the design it uses the inductance of the coil in a closed loop, Its a very good way of turning circuits on and off while using very little power or waste heat.
Good work mind u like a busy beaver when it comes to these scooters your always got something new going on.
 
More work done...

The main wiring block is getting in place and wired up. I wired it to the front lights and horn tonight. I still don't know where that stupid horn is that I have somewhere.

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This is the front wiring block. The wires from the lights weren't long enough to make it into the battery bay so I had to do something to interconnect everything. I considered using an IP68 connector, but they are about 3" long so somewhat biggish while this little wiring block is all of an inch long. I'll wrap the whole thing in heat shrink once it's completely wired up.

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Ianhill said:
Automotive relays can come with a economizer circuit built in sometimes or its easy enough to add one on, it is basically a resistor and capacitor that will lower the hold on watts of the coil so it triggers with one amp say then reduces down to 100ma or so depending on the design it uses the inductance of the coil in a closed loop, Its a very good way of turning circuits on and off while using very little power or waste heat.
Good work mind u like a busy beaver when it comes to these scooters your always got something new going on.


I found this flasher module on ebay. It uses relays and a timer circuit, not a heating element and a bimetal strip like is commonly found is flashers that work with light bulbs. IE: It works independent of load. I have one in the blue scooter too. They work quite well and cost like $8 each. If there is a failing to this flasher module, it's the fact that they are quiet. On my blue scooter, I've gone a good long ways after having made a turn and then looked down at my directional lights and see them blinking away. In any battery powered ride, anything that uses current needlessly, is not a good thing. This module is a great LED light solution.

I've been at this thing most of the weekend. Wiring is a lot of work and time consuming! I've learned a lot from the blue scooter and wired this one exactly how I wanted from the start. I'm using hi temp wire everywhere I can. Where ever I need to connect multiple wires together, I have used wire nuts, but then I also zip tie the wires together so they can't move or break apart. On the blue scooter, I have multiple wires going into the wiring block. It's a point of failure and hard to get multiple wires into the same position on the block. With the Currie, I'm connecting the multiple wires together before the wiring block to eliminate this issue.
 
More work done...

All the switch clusters arrived...finally and so I opened up a couple of holes in the steering tube so I could run the cables inside the tube rather than zip tied to the outside of it. There's not enough room for the brake cables so they need to run on the outside of the down tube. The front brakes are hooked up again, but the back brake cable was in bad shape so I need to replace it. I might have a cable that will work.

The grey button on the throttle I intend to use for WYE/delta switching. I need to rewind the 80-100 anyway, so I can easily bring out all the wiring for switching between the two. For now, it will go down into the battery bay and I can connect it to a relay later for WYE/delta switching. I modified the throttle a little. I have several small LED voltage meters. This one is good for 100 volts. I don't need the display since the watt meter will show the same information, but I thought it was better than the lame 3 LED battery status.

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I'm not sure what I will do with all those switches, but I'll come up with something. The left set of switches will be used for horn, directionals and head/tail lights. Two of the inside switches will be used for the battery bay and down tube side lights. The slider switch will be wired into the battery bay and then I can use it for whatever later.

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This is the left and right electrical cables and the brake handles ready for wiring into the left cable. Each cable has 10 conductors and a shield wire in it. 22 wires ought to do whatever I could want on the handle bars. I will also be mounting an aluminum plate on top of the handlebars for mounting the temperature gauge, watt meter and speedo.

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This is the cables exiting the bottom of the steering tube and then entering the top of the main down tube. I should have just made the one down tube hole large enough to hold all the wires for the front end lights and horn, but wasn't thinking of that when I drilled the lower hole. Oh well...too late now. I doubt I'll ever need it, but I also added a string so that I can pull more wire through later.

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Wire has been purchased and will be here in a couple of days so I can rewind the 80-100 outrunner. I purchased 4 spools of 32 awg wire. Replacement magnets at N52 are also getting made. The old magnets are N45. I should have them soon too. This motor is going to be very strong once rewound. The stator teeth have a fair bit of free space on them. I will hopefully get a few more turns on each tooth to get the Kv down a little.
 
I think this will be a very power dense motor, I don't know why they don't use outrunners on electric cars it would make a very compact package help push the firewall forward make a small car feel massive like the original mini.
I've been waiting on my battery's still no sign I hate late post.
I'm very tempted to put my scooter up for sale and build an oset 16 with the spare motor and get a new controller use the new cells I've bought so I'd run it 20s gear it to 30mph and take it through the forests etc.
 
Originally I was planning for an 11 conductor and 8 conductor cables going to the handlebars. Now I have more conductors I can use for things. I need to redo my plans for how things are wired up to take that into account. I was rather tight on power wires before and now I have more to work with and of course with the greater number of switches on the left side, I can turn things on differntly too. I had originally intended to turn on all the side lights together, but now with two more switches, I'll turn on the down tube lights separate from the battery bay lights like I have done on the blue scooter.

I've only thought briefly about the back end area over the rear wheel. I would like to add a small platform over the wheel. Spray from riding through a puddle or because the roads are wet, generally sucks so I want to block that as a minimum. I'm thinking aluminum angle like I used on the blue scooter will work well. I also want to remove the existing stamped steel motor mount plate and replace it with something better. My thought was to make slots in a flat piece of aluminum so the motor can be slid closer or further away from the wheel sprocket to take up chain slack. If I integrate it into the back wheel platform, then the platform will reinforce the motor plate and the plate will reinforce the platform. The 80-100 is taller than the existing motor, but significantly smaller in diameter. I don't know if it will matter or not, but the Schwinn version of this scooter had a cage around the motor. I might want to protect the motor from getting bashed on things. There's not a lot of space in front of the wheel, but my other thought was to make a bracket so I could mount the motor in front of the back wheel, but then that gets in the way of the riding platform...so I probably won't go that route. It's that our mount the motor behind the back wheel. In either case it is going to get sprayed with water and road grunge all the time so not a great solution. On the side where the factory motor currently sits is probably the best place.

I'm already thinking how I will probably want a lot more amp hours of battery capacity. 10,000mah is probably enough for a single 10 mile trip, but not much more than that. So based on the math 10,000mah x 48 volts is 480 watts. The motor will do approximately 4000 watts max...anyway...that means a really short ride at full power. IF I assume 500 watts continuous...that's an hours worth of riding. It takes about 10-15 minutes to go the 5 miles from home to work so if I was really conservative about hitting the throttle, that 10,000mah could get me a couple of days of riding. However, knowing me...I won't be conservative on the throttle. I'll be sitting at a light and want to crank the throttle to get in front of the cars or be on an empty stretch of road and want to hit full speed which means a really short ride at 4000 watts. LOL...I need more batteries! At least another 10,000mah of them. Although that brings up an interesting point. I built the battery pack with the old battery bay in mind. Now I have lots more space. I might just as well get some 16 or 20 Ah packs and not use the 10,000mah pack at all. That or build a LION pack that fits the space. I have the cells and the battery holders...hmmmm.
 
If your sticking the 48v route and want new pack hobbyking got a cracking deal on the graphene 4s 10ah packs either way 6 of these and you have 48v 20ah or 96v 10ah, I like the 24s route it makes it easier to cable the battery for the same given watts of both pack configs and you get the bonus of high voltage top speeds but it can be used either way, what I need is a decent 24s bms hobbyking give me $20.00 discount so I will buy one more pack it be rude not to so I have 6 then and 888wh of juice and a cell that keeps the volts high till end of discharge for cracking performance even when nearing flat and should cycle 600+ if the jargon is to be believed.
 
Ianhill said:
If your sticking the 48v route and want new pack hobbyking got a cracking deal on the graphene 4s 10ah packs either way 6 of these and you have 48v 20ah or 96v 10ah, I like the 24s route it makes it easier to cable the battery for the same given watts of both pack configs and you get the bonus of high voltage top speeds but it can be used either way, what I need is a decent 24s bms hobbyking give me $20.00 discount so I will buy one more pack it be rude not to so I have 6 then and 888wh of juice and a cell that keeps the volts high till end of discharge for cracking performance even when nearing flat and should cycle 600+ if the jargon is to be believed.


I really hate HK...those idiots can't seem to figure out if they have stuff in stock or not or if they are ever getting more of whatever it is ever again. I try really hard to NOT buy from them. Right now HK doesn't have any hi-cap packs in the USA.

600 cycles on a LIPO...yeah...that's wishful thinking. I don't know about graphene packs...maybe the chemistry is astonishingly better than standard LIPO. The battery poles and chemistry give out which is why LIPOs are known for much shorter life spans than LION. I would say 200 cycles on a LIPO pack is pretty good.
 
I've got mixed feeling about hobbyking at the moment, I ordered my battery's last Sunday they were dispatched on Monday with 2 day delivery and 5 days later no sign of anything so I sent an email yesterday and today they have not been answered either so I'm concerned they are lost in the Xmas post, I had trouble ordering the packs so after a week of emails they gave me $20.00 gift for their shop after I'd spent £220 dirty buggers should have just discounted my order I'd placed so I got to chance buying another pack when I've received nothing or my recent emails got no reply tamping is not the word.
 
Ianhill said:
I've got mixed feeling about hobbyking at the moment, I ordered my battery's last Sunday they were dispatched on Monday with 2 day delivery and 5 days later no sign of anything so I sent an email yesterday and today they have not been answered either so I'm concerned they are lost in the Xmas post, I had trouble ordering the packs so after a week of emails they gave me $20.00 gift for their shop after I'd spent £220 dirty buggers should have just discounted my order I'd placed so I got to chance buying another pack when I've received nothing or my recent emails got no reply tamping is not the word.


Like I said...I really hate HK. This is typical of them. Shit customer service. Lies and and BS are their typical way of doing things.
 
The front end wiring is done. I made up a 24 position wiring block and terminated everything to it at the handlebars. I also documented everything as I went so if there is ever a problem, hopefully finding it will be straight forward. I will triple check the wiring once more before I power it up...I REALLY don't want a short or crossed wiring anywhere!

I just checked tracking on the motor wire. It should be here tomorrow. I will need to pull off the stator to make rewinding easier. I intend to bring all 6 ends out of the motor so I can switch from wye to delta via a relay.
 
This is the handle bar terminal block. Everything on the handle bars terminates here and the two 11 conductor cables terminate here too.

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And a pic of handle bar layout. I have a speedo coming, but it's a few days away.

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