Amberwolf's Raine Trike

Next up was swapping out the front tire, as the new CST City (same tire I use on my SB CRuiser and CrazyBIke2 front wheels) Raine ordered arrived, along with some other bits like LED strips in white and red for downlighting and tail/brake lighting, and some master links, and a new chaintool to replace the one that siezed up last week.

Tire shouldve been easy, just pull the old one off, and put the new one on with the old tube and tire liner made from an old tube.

However, teh tire was a lot harder to get off than expected, and in the process I slipped with the levers, and mustve pinched the tube on the inner circumference opposite the valve stem. I tried to patch the holes (6 little snakebite types), but the ParkTool patch kit patches wouldnt stay stuck to it. After the first ones came off as I inflated the tube, after the normal cleaning/sanding of surface, I tried degreaser, which made them stick for a bit longer before they began to leak and then come off, but not by much. A third try with more pre-sanding didnt change a thing, so I gave up at that point and used a tube out of another wheel I had built up as a spare for the big trailer.

Traction (and thus braking) on the front is much better with the softer stickier CST City vs the old harder-compound Kenda Kross, and its also a bigger tire so it absorbs bumps a bit better.


Before, itd skid the wheel easily, now its hard to skid the wheel because traction is better.


Then I installed the new KoolStop ebike compound pads (in place of the worn KS salmon) and it brakes a bit worse--the cause appears to be the fork itself.

The KS salmon pads are a different kind/shape, and are already worn flat / broken in from a previous bike (probably CB2 or SBC, dont recall). They also have full rounded washers on both sides for adjustment, while the new KS pads only have those on the wheel side of the brake arms--the other side is flat.

So tehy dont adjust as much as the other KS pads, and so when tightened down, the brake arm angles and pivot make much more of a difference than with the others.

Since both pads are off in the opposite ends from each other, it is likely that the bosses on the fork are mounted just ever so slightly not straight, in the same direction, pointing just a hair off to the left at their front ends.

I have a different fork I may swap out to see if this fixes it, but first I may try different washers off old pads to see if they help. Otherwise, the misalighnment of pads to rim means either the brake lever has to be pulled enough to hit the grip before it fully brakes (and still wont lockup), or it has to be adjusted so it always seriously rubs the rim to start with to be able to lockup the brakes without the handle hitting the grip.

After this, I decided to take the controllers LCD off the bars, because it doesnt perform any adjustment function for the controller that affects its operation by throttle, AFAICT. The only reason I was using it was for the battery monitor, speedo, and power meter, and none of thsoe are reliable--often the display locks up, with no change in the readings, and may or may not restart displaying data when you stop the trike and then go again. Ive replaced the connections from it to the controller, to no avail.

Since the trike needs a way to monitor speed, and I already have an old mostly-working smallscreen CA 2.something in the seatbox for longterm system monitoring, though without a speedo attached, I moved the CA to the bars in place of the LCD, and added a speedo sensor to the front wheel.

The sensor operated correctly, and I had continuity from the sensor to the CA PCB pads, but the CA did not read any speed. I know this part worked before, when I used it on the SB Cruiser when I first built it, so this was confusing.

Then I noticed that current was reading negative, as I hadnt zeroed the amps in setup yet. I did that, and then the speedo worked.

I suppose that means that at least the old CA firmware stopped doing speedo readings whenever regen (negative) current was detected, which seems odd, but it might explain some of the slightly incorrect readings I got with this CA while in use on SBC, since I frequently use regen braking to slow (but not stop), and that would affect hte wh/mile and distance readings, not hugely but perhaps significantly enough to notice.

I verified this by swapping the shunt wire pair at the JST, causing normal current to be reverse, and the speedo would never read anything while using the motor, but would whenever just pedalling and no current was flowing. Swapped the wries back, and then it would read speed all the time.

Since this trike does not have regen (two geared motors), that wont be an issue, so it should read more correctly if that was the cause.

Raines LED strips also arrived, but I didnt get to installing those yet, or wiring them up.

So those are on the todo list, along with:

-lugs for cargo straps on the rear area

-rear brake bosses to add to the frame either side of each rear wheel.

-a lockable/foldable strut to prop the seatbox lid open during accesses, because the seat is quite heavy and due to its size it wont lean fully forward over the bars, especially with the mirrors in the way.

-A hinge at the stem of the tiller, so it can be lited up and forward to get out of the way of the seat so the box can be fully opened (and a strut wouldnt be needed then). I may have an adjustable stem, on DayGlo Avenger, that I can use for this; I think its steel so I could weld the tiller to it.

-A permanent cover for the canopy; Raine doesnt much like the dog-food-ad snuggie (cant blame him, neither do I, but it fit and was free), so a roll of rough canvas may get used for this, after he adds eyelets to the edges of it so it can be laced around the canopy frame.

--A real wiring harness, isntead of the scraps and bits taken from CB2 along with the lights. LIghts will also be replaced with LED strps and/or MC units.

--New handlebar controls for the lights (the old Honda stuff is worn out and coming apart)

--New mirrors that suit Raine better.


--other stuff I cant recall at the moment.

few days ago other stuff arrived, like the smv sign, slime, tubes. copule days back i thought id ust real quick get the slime into the existing tubes arleady in the tires ont eh trke before i headed of f to work, but everything went wrong.

front wasnot so bad but rear left the valve core came apart as i took it out, leaving part of the core inside the stem where i coudlnt get it out, so now there s no way to keep air in theat tube. since id dint have time to taket he wheel off and change the tube, etc i just put the rv vavle extender off my own trikes wheel onn the stem of this one to give it a valve till ihave time to deal with the root issue. also cuz of the piece still int ehre i couldnt get slime into the tube at all.

rogjt rear seemed to go ok but turned out the vlave stem failed right where ti goes into the tube, didt see that till the next day, so had to change tou the whole tube. i used the old on e asarmor over the new one since its trash anyway, taking the rest of the vlve stem off and slitting it along the inner side. took a cople hours to do cuz im so wiped out from stress at work i cant sleep until im exhausted.


yesterdy or today, i forget which, i screwed teh smv sign to the back o the seat. was gonna put it on a tee frame of 1/2 inc steel hanging from the back ofthe canompy but i couldnt find it, enven thugh i just used it on my own trike a week or two ago. ohw well, at leasts its there.

Haven't gotten to adding the strip lights and downlighting and stuff, mostly because Raine hasn't even used the trike at all, other than the test ride we took around the neighborhood previously.

It's just been sitting there waiting for him to ride it. Have tried to get him to go with me to various places, but no go on any of them so far, even before it got really hot.

Maybe when the weather is cooler, several months from now.

Probably not, though.


I'm going to try swapping out the Fusin controller for a different one, and see if it makes some difference to the motor juddering at startup.

I may have to add hall sensors to it to really fix that issue, though. :/

I also need to try a couple of other controllers with the Ezee motor on the left side, and see if either one will run it properly, where the ones I've tried so far don't.

If I can get it to accelerate properly and quickly from a stop, then it can at least be used as an emergency spare if the SB Cruiser is ever out of commission.

so almost two years later, he hasnt' even sat on it since the above. apparently there's nothing "wrong" with it that i can change or fix, so he probably just hasnt' got any use for it and would rather just stay at home, or use uber/etc to go places.

if i didn't maintain the battery it would have failed from the bms draining it dead (since it can't have the bms disconnected for "storage", as it has to be all ready to ride if he ever did decide to use it; he's not able to do much of anything besides plugging in an ac cord to start the charging process, unplug when done, and ride).

at this point i put it up on bricks under the frame so the tires wont' rot any more than they already have from sitting in one spot for so long, but setup the bricks so he could just easily push it off them by leaning against it in the extremely unlikely event he ever uses it.

i suppose it was still worth building for the learning experience, as it taught me a few things, including stuff *not* to do for the sb cruiser mark two, like cambering the wheels. :/