My solar-assisted custom tricycle FOLLIES

I'm told this happens every ten years or so.
Anchovies gather in such large numbers they deplete the oxygen in the water and die off in huge numbers.
The last time this happened the port authority added oxygenaters to the harbor.
Obviously not enough were added.

Made a foray into Crescent City where I discovered their harbor lacked birds altogether.

But locally the birds: pelicans, gulls, murres, loons and (strangely) the occasional cormorant, have gathered in numbers I haven't witnessed since I was a mere child (before there was dirt).

Most pictures taken from the seat of MPdPM and why did I name my bike/trike creations?
-lots easier then typing their descriptions.no birdies.jpgbird convention continues with guest star anchovies.jpgso many birds.jpgcormmorant.jpg
 
Great posts, love all the pics. Riding an ebike on the coast sounds like my idea of heaven.
 
...about March of last year I replaced some 4S battery packs with 5S packs.
...then forgot about the 4S packs.

I may have mentioned that I'm amazed by the very low self-discharge of LiCo batteries (which is the only lithium battery chemistry I possess) but today I realized my error in judgement by leaving the 4S batteries just sit there for the last 14 months.
-They measured 3.9V per cell (except one cell out of 16 which measured 3.87V)

Bottom line: Don't try this with lead-acid cells because they'll be completely discharged after one month. Doorstops after a year's rest.

I have no idea what the 4S cell's status was at the time of 'forgetfulness' but they were likely charged to 4.15V as I (formerly) fully charged cells after each use.
-After recharging:
Capacity test showed the cells having 98% with a 2C load (73W average)> I purchased same cells in 2014 (according to This Thread and the cell's serial number)

Wolfeman said:
Great posts, love all the pics. Riding an ebike on the coast sounds like my idea of heaven.
Your avatar indicates you might live by the coast? Been there several times (grew up in Bay Area)
I Love it where I currently live on the Mighty 101, a couple of seconds above the 42 Latitude... previously lived in Nebraska for 30 years and I like rain and I hate snow and heat (which Nebraska offers both of)View attachment 2yellow balls.jpgready to pounce.jpg
Photography is my 'other' hobby.
 
...nother day in paradise. With the national weather service calling for "extreme heat" the temps have hovered around 70F (locals wear jackets at 60F). Because of wind chill I wear my "imitation vinyl sports jacket" while using the MT trike to do shopping. MT's baskets hold more groceries!

Having fun with quotation marks without citing whom the quoted is, is one of my other hobby's.

************************************************
Thousands of pelicans remain in the area but no sighting of sea lions in the local harbor. (I'm guessing because there's no room, given all the seabirds and fish)
The mouth of Smith River usually plays host to a couple hundred seals... but not this year!
My sister informs me that all the sea lions and seals are holding their own convention north of here.
-Animals holding conventions!
Who Knew?
******************************************************
I rarely watch sunsets, but it seems to be a local favorite pastime as one will find the beaches quite crowded around the time the sun dives into the ocean.watching the sun sink.jpgsinking sun.jpgsunken sun.jpgorange rush.jpg

The front motor of MPdPM has grown significantly weaker, formerly able to pull MPdPM up an 8% grade single-handedly without getting hot, it now overheats in just 20' of climb. Using both motors still provides the proper amount of magic to make the heat dissipate. (as fast as a geared-hub motor can dissipate the heat)
 
wall-to-wall fog the last week or so
sign of summer ending -the first rain of the seasonstages of decay.jpg
The bird convention is finally over but the dead fish smell remains
spotted a half dozen sealselusive seal.jpg

This particular species of sand dollar is found along certain areas of Northern CA and Venezuela -reminds me of something. sand dollar or wut.jpg

These flowers are found in a neighbor's garden
ok, I'm amazed....View attachment 1end of summer flowers1.jpgsomeones garden.jpg
I took lots of pictures of the garden but realized later I took none of the 'whole thing'
 
I wanna rename the NuVinci 171 "Maybellene"
...as in:
"Oh "Maybellene",
Why can't you be true...
You done started back doin' those things you used to do..." -Chuck Berry (RIP 2017)

...no matter where I fix the gearing control on the 171, it immediately drifts into its' highest gear -which it used to do before I determined that I had to lower the torque to it's input. I did this by reducing the crank arms' length to 3.5"... I could have just waited until I lost my abilities to push the cranks so hard!
Guess it's time to finally replace this POS.
I'm thinking Nexus 8-speed IGH
*****************************************************
here's a picture of that garden In the previous post. Glad I took most images yesterday, because many flowers have dropped today.whole thing almost.jpg


before/after images of "convention"
 
ddk said:
...no matter where I fix the gearing control on the 171, it immediately drifts into its' highest gear -which it used to do before I determined that I had to lower the torque to it's input. I did this by reducing the crank arms' length to 3.5"... I could have just waited until I lost my abilities to push the cranks so hard!
Guess it's time to finally replace this POS.
Does it also move the gearing control itself? Or is it just the internal stuff shifting?

I'm wondering if there's something in the shifter itself (or the cable reel/pulleys/etc at the hub end?) that might be allowing it to move?

I don't have a manual shifter here to look at to see exactly how it works/feels (just a hub minus rod/shifter/etc).
 
amberwolf said:
Does it also move the gearing control itself? Or is it just the internal stuff shifting?
...
Definitely internal stuff shifting
...Shoulda shipped this thing out to you years ago! :lol:
 
State of Oregon in late June/early July:
"I know, why don't we let the wildfire burn out of control for over a month and see what happens?
I mean, what could go wrong?"

Currently: Evacuation orders for 10 miles east this morn and ash is falling like snow...

Who needs a lithium fire when human mismanagement can do it better!wildfire gets closer.jpgwho needs an eclipse.jpgterrible imaging in smoke or fog.jpg
 
After a fresh fill of the tires and a check on the bearings and brakes I set a new, personal record for going shopping. 15 Watts... so the range of power usage to go shopping has varied between 15-100 Watts for the same distance traveled on the same route under different conditions so the next time someone asks "how far will it go?" I'll answer "far enough to get there and back"

Well how 'bout that eclipse?!
Actually the local sky was smoke and fogged to the point where I just barely discerned a change in the brightness... which wasn't very bright to begin with and I couldn't see any trace of a sun.
Wild fires still winning the war.
My sister and bil had to evacuate and are living at the drummer for _____'s house on the coastline.
My ______ ________ is completely out of control, but life continues. New drugs on the horizon, or, in the mail as I type this.
Speaking of drugs... as you might know, Oregon has completely decriminalized, even made state-legal, the use of a particular felony-inducing smoke-em-if-you-got-em drug which I've found to completely control my tremors to the point where I can build things once more.
Unfortunately or fortunately (depends on your personal point-of-view) I don't get loosey goosey from using it, as I only use a tiny amount to effect my hands and neck.precarious perch.jpg

And speaking of "loosey goosey...
Time is a funny thing, in that it seems flexible: As in, time flows differently from one location to the next, yet the absolute flow of time remains the same.
I had one of those "moments" (not drug-induced) where I completely understood the relationships between relativity of moments where a point resides on multiple planes each plain referenced to a different location.
If I wanted to move from point A to point B I only had to move the point B plain to me (whats-is-name and mountain comes to mind)
... and as I was looking over the process everything went "poof". Moment over. Probably a dream of sorts.

But one thing I did retain from this 'moment' is my "new" (new to me) concept of past, present, future.
...and that is: we never experience the present. i.e we always live in the past, while we Can Anticipate the future, the present is never really known to us as our perspective is warped by the passage of time. (it takes time to process the reflections of light photons (from the past, natch) that takes time to travel to our eye(s) which takes time to process the image in our brain while filling in the black holes we all have (and lots of other steps) and this takes time. Our other senses take a similar unrelated paths. The "present" happened well before* we actually experience it.( *well before, as in being a fraction, indeed, a very small fraction, of a second) but how much time doesn't matter. It's the fact that time has flowed at all.
And what does this have to do with ebikes? who knows?
...but let's talk reaction time. And about me because it's always about mememe.

When I was In my mid 20s I started working in areas where my reaction time had to be quick (supposedly - more later)
I tested between 3-4 frames from the moment of an 'incident' to pressing a switch to stop the measuring clock (a frame is 1/30 of a second so my reaction time was between 90-120 milliseconds).
Now, the average 20-something year old will have a reaction time approaching 10 frames (300 milliseconds), and as we age our reaction times slows further.
How did I achieve such good results?
Because I 'anticipated' the future' in that I knew what the incident would be and correctly guessed when it would happen. Later in life I learned to delay my action (press the button) by a fixed amount of time (10 frames -living in the past) and advancing (pushing the past into the future) whatever I was working with by that 10 frame delay, so that the moment I 'marked' an event (by pressing a switch) would be closer to the actual event. (the "incidents" was marking points on media playback to make edits)

Note: At my current stage of life I'm guessing my reaction time is too close to a full second or two.
Which leads me to the joys of using a motor for a brake on an ebike/trike. By the time I react to an incident that requires the use of brakes, the motor's full braking force happens instantly, compensating my "getting around to doing something" ...somewhat.
...and now back to planet earth.yellow dots.jpgwilt we must.jpg
 
this is smoke.jpg

Wildfires still winning!
I just noticed the tent city south of me while riding an unusual route (too much traffic) but since I avoid taking pictures of people I didn't take any photos of the hundreds of tents housing the firefighters.
Locally it's getting hard to breath...
 
a few days of fog and the breathing is easy
...needs more rain!eeeew a worm.jpgalter reality.jpgcat house.jpgdroopy.jpg
 
who knew
...a new game the whole family can play
as in:
who knew that applying 5X it's rated power of a geared-hub motor over a 5-year period 'might' not be such a great idea
as in:
it's gears are almost, yet not quite completely shredded
MPdPM is sad... (not really)

So it's time for me to make another decision. I'd like to use a DD hub so I can use it's braking effect so as to not have to readjust or replace the pads of the disk brakes every month. But a conundrum once again appears to has arisen. Aotema has changed it's DD motor so it might not work in a 16" rim, and I'd like to not use a magic pie ever again.
That pretty much leafs me the, not great options of a leaf motor or one of those clyt thingies. Not being a fan of paypal limits my options to neither of these, or so it seems.
(paypal's motto: we lie first then we lie second because we likes lies)

I'll call about the aotema tomorrow, but in the meantime if anyone was wondering how close the wildfires came to my abode, well, several areas of the hills just behind me look like this:too dam close.jpg

oh, and that flower with the catapilla is known as a pink whirl, or a whilygig, an African osteomum (spellin is not my favorite subjekt) that originates from, as if the name didn't provide the spoiler, Africa; but I like to think of it as being the Slurpee Straw Flower.

fun with edit-ting
 
Would this one work?
http://www.ebikes.ca/shop/electric-bicycle-parts/motors/msnm13f16.html
it already comes in a 16" wheel, though the dropout width is only 75mm and flats are only 8mm (not 10mm) (might not fit your fork).

This one has the same limitations
http://www.ebikes.ca/shop/electric-bicycle-parts/motors/msaw20f16-bromp.html

If one of them would work, I'd guess you can arrange whatever payment method you prefer with Grin, although none of them are cheap. :(


If I had any I could guarantee would stay working, I could send you an old 9C 280x type for the cost of shipping, but I'm not sure of the status of any of them except the one already on CrazyBike2's front wheel. A 9C would require very short spokes for a 16" wheel (I think I used something between 70 and 80mm on a 20", for radial lacing).

If a 9C would work, there are also HS35xx motors on Grin's site that would work (same diameter but heavier, wider magnets/etc capable of more torque), though they don't come in a wheel of the size you need, so you'd have to either order unlaced and build your own, or have them build one for you.
 
amberwolf said:
Would this one work?
http://www.ebikes.ca/shop/electric-bicycle-parts/motors/msnm13f16.html
it already comes in a 16" wheel, though the dropout width is only 75mm and flats are only 8mm (not 10mm) (might not fit your fork).

This one has the same limitations
http://www.ebikes.ca/shop/electric-bicycle-parts/motors/msaw20f16-bromp.html
neither motor would work, as the spacing for these trikes' forks are 100mm, with MPdPM's fork being 106mm, but thanks for looking. I already perused the grin site and saw that maybe the saw might work but spacing was an issue.
In the end Terry @ hightechbikes still has some of the older Aotema motors and can at least provide me with wheels. He labeled them on his website today as "version 3" lol. I'm ordering two motor wheels as someone just recently asked me for a motor for their Sun SX recumbent trike. (16" front wheel)
The difference between 'old' and 'new' is 8" diameter and 10" diameter where the 10" is too 2 to big for a 16" rim with spokes. (pick yer favorite version of two)
And his wheel builds have always served me well, requiring no re-truing. I've procured about a half-dozen wheels from him over the years.
Unfortunately for me he has no regen controllers in stock so I might have to order from Grin
amberwolf said:
If one of them would work, I'd guess you can arrange whatever payment method you prefer with Grin, although none of them are cheap. :(
and neither are Grin's controllers it seems...
amberwolf said:
If I had any I could guarantee would stay working, I could send you an old 9C 280x type for the cost of shipping, but I'm not sure of the status of any of them except the one already on CrazyBike2's front wheel. A 9C would require very short spokes for a 16" wheel (I think I used something between 70 and 80mm on a 20", for radial lacing).

If a 9C would work, there are also HS35xx motors on Grin's site that would work (same diameter but heavier, wider magnets/etc capable of more torque), though they don't come in a wheel of the size you need, so you'd have to either order unlaced and build your own, or have them build one for you.
...as usual, thanks for your input and kind offer!

And Also As usual, issues of the bad types like this seem to prop up in series of odd numbers:
-N171 breaks again (5 years old)
-electric toothbrush dies (22 years old)
-Precision voltmeter dies (25 years old)
-MPdPM's front motor dies (5 years old)
-I can't lift my right leg due to foot pain (hoping it's tendonitis and I'm older than dirt)

I'm not saying I'm just superstitious but maybe I'm just superstitious...
 
welp, still have yet to order the motors but life sometimes gets in the way of getting things done...
Need to call about my order again before ordering.
Got an email from goldenmotors I didn't bother reading, because if I were to answer them it would be in this forum and I've already written about my issues about them previously.
If they insist, I will repeat those issues yet again. Which they might not want to read about on a public forum.turkey vulture.jpg
 
more 'issues' issues shoulda been my middle name
-Computerfailure=hard to do anything without one so in the meanwhile I procured a win10 machine and I'm unfortunately ignorant about this version of blot. So far- hateit
-thisandthat and the other monetary moments and eventually I'll have a DD for the front wheel of MPdPM
...and my very old voltmeter didn't actually die. Silly me, I didn't check the freshly re-charged one-year old lithium 9V battery. Today I did and the battery was dead dead dead as lithium batteries are sometimes wont to do.
The meter still lives!
...which is probably why the computer died. The fates likes balances.
 
I guess I'll be receiving a new front motor/controller for MPdPM soon. DD and the controller provides regen, I'm told.
Now I have to devise new axle clamps for it.
As it stands the front fork's dropouts are fairly beefy at around 6mm and made of steel, so I might be able to weld a angle iron clamp thingy like I've used before directly on it.
We'll see...wonderful weather too change.jpg
 
I apparently just received a Leaf motor today.
I'll be talking to welderfella about adding clamps to the 5mm dropouts tomorrow.
(ok I guessed wrong OK?) :pancake:
 

weldafella closes shop even earlier than previously. He left the trike outside because I guess he trusts me to pay him eventually... as if I wouldn't!
strike that- he probably didn't want to contaminate his work area :pancake:
 
Bob's your uncle- your message was garbled and the number you called from has no voicemail...

The controller is probably programmed for 48V (13s) Nothing works ATM but I have older, manually set-up sensor/sensorless controllers laying about but it's foggy outside, where I don't care for working in foggy conditions. It's like, The Big Chill.
 
Interesting to see if those clamps really work. Is that a 16" front wheel? If yes the torque will be humongous.
otherDoc
 
docnjoj said:
Interesting to see if those clamps really work. Is that a 16" front wheel? If yes the torque will be humongous.
otherDoc
Yep,16" wheel.
The fixed clamps are welded front/back to the dropouts and I have full confidence in it working much better than an axle nut/torque arm combination. Which works good enough for the usual but this method is easier to do!
This is more like a motorcycle than a bike setup for the front wheel, where I used this same combo fixed piece/clamping piece on motorcycles back in the day of being a stupid kid, doing stupid things stupidly (but some of those stupid things actually worked better than expected) (this stupid thing being one of the unexpected, works-better-than-the-original-thingy)
********************************************************************************************
I found my error with the (new) controller.
Had the throttle wires for signal/negative wired backa**wards due to the usual we-use-any-color-we-have-on-hand mentality so common with China! (the throttle was the offender)
Good thing this 12-FET controller disassembles easier than the 6-FET controllers. (It has a "lid" and isn't just a one-piece extruded aluminum box) :wink:
The controller is a KT36 that was delivered sans LCD panel, which I guess I best purchase so as to be able to program the controller.
I'm assuming (which is always wrong for me, and everyone else prone to assumptions) that I can disconnect the LCD after programming the controller; the assumption being the controller will remember its' setup after being programmed by the now-disconnected LCD.
 
...and the trike works with the new controller. Better than expected, slghtly faster, but I'll never know, as there's currently no way to attach a spoke magnet for the speed sensor to the solid forks of this new wheel (yet! But I has a cunning plan, sans the cunning part as I usually 'brute force' solutions)

Gotta admit (again) the torque of the MXUS geared-hub motor is significantly stronger than the Leaf DD motor.
However, as I've written elsewhere, because of the gears in a geared-hub motor, the amplified torque of the motor is initially weaker than an equivalent DD motor (accidentally hilariously tested many times) (also very lucky to never having a DD hub motor's wiring damaged by my antics)
But, as mentioned in an earlier post, the MXUS motor might have gear damage, so it needed replacement where I wanted regen braking in the front wheel to alleviate the constant brake adjustments MPdPM has required. And motor brakes require the use of a DD hub motor, because geared hub motors usually contain an internal freewheel. (writing that for the unbitten)
********************************************************************************************
For the cost of shipping (almost free) one MXUS Amped Bike's Geared Hub motor mounted in a 16" rim. May need new gears and I have no idea where to get replacement gears!
 
My wife has the Ebikekit MXUS on her front 20" wheel for her trike and it significantly out pulls my rear Q100H. It is also a lot noisier.
otherDoc
 
Back
Top