Large homemade scooter

Mr. Dui, ni shuo de dui, you just made my day sir. Thank you for the comment and I am a huge fan of yours brother. There is so much to read here on ES I have only gotten to a little of it, but I have skimmed your three builds and they are awesome. You have great style and unbelievable skills! Your current bike rear light is amazing and your first scooter is off the charts. Also someone was bitching about another guys build and you handled it so cool brother and said “let’s not feed the trolls “ That was awesome. I get tired of guys being so critical of others hard work and big risks it takes to build something. I really appreciate you sir so when you say well done it really means a lot.
As far as the power of this beast, you could handle it. Just like no first time motorcyclist should try and ride a super bike or big Harley, this beast is not probably not a good first scooter! I just added a new video you can see at the link above and it is short, but you can see how stable it is coming down the street. I know it may look really dangerous, but it doesn’t feel or act that way at all. It feels very safe to to me because it has some very real safety advantages. Number one is VISION! I can see so much more riding the beast because my eyes are about 7 ft in the air. It is so awesome to see over the cars and small trucks on the road brother. I had a close call as a young motorcyclist when I was almost wiped out by a car coming from the side I could not see. Also running two fat rear tires gives a big contact area for monster BRAKES. Just like all bikes it will stop way faster than cars, but this thing stops very fast. The POWER is the thing that in untrained hands could be insanely dangerous. Not just the amount, but how differently it handles in 2wd. As you know mid motor is better in many ways for bikes because hub motors add weight where we don’t like it, and also a lot of gyroscopic effect. Not so bad on a scooter though, weight stabilizes the deck , and wheels are small so gyroscopic effect is easily overcome and helps stabilize small wheels.
So the biggest difference I feel between my beast and a bike is the weight and gyroscopic effect of a front wheel with a big hub motor. It is very different and definitely takes some getting used to. I am just learning how to use it brother, but it I really like. I got to ride the biggest, fastest Dualtron scooter and absolutely fell in love with the feel and handling of 2wd. I just built my first ebike and made it 2wd also! After living with it for a few months I could not go back to 1wd. It is not perfect, especially with hub motors, but I find the overall handling is far superior to 1wd, at least for a commuter bike. I read a guy say he tried a 2wd bike and he didn’t like it because it ‘pulled him right off the path’ and I am sure he’s right. I found, once I got the skill to adjust to the difference, my front wheel could often pull me back onto the path. I think you have to get past the steep part of the learning curve and that can be painful or at least boring to most. I got pulled off the path a few times at first, but now I have more control on my bike as 2wd vs 1wd. Now it is charge, ride, repeat as much as possible to try learn how to ride this baby! You can tell a good rider who has put in the time and miles , like you Mr. Dui, because they become one with the machine. They make a huge mega heavy, mega powerful super bike look light and nimble as a feather. You could easily do that with my big beast and feel really safe and secure on it like I am starting to now, if you just practiced on it. Best regards brother and thank you again. :thumb:
Heavy

Promise us you'll tell us if the fork breaks off (if you can).

Man Chalo I hoped you would leave me alone, but I guess that’s you. I was just saying how you were bitching at someone else’s build and here you are bitching at mine. Seems you were too tempted when I said out loud it bugged me a lot. I have learned a lot from you here, how to lace a hub motor, how trikes work, and lots from your extensive bike and ebike experience and I thank you for that. I don’t like your attitude and I respectfully ask you not to comment on my projects and I will not comment on anything you post. If we can’t be civil, just tell me and I won’t come here anymore. Seems a shame to be so smart and use it to, so smartly and oh so cleverly, to put people down. I couldn’t tell, are you rooting for or against Rivian? Daniel Burnham.

I don't want your creation to lose; I want it to win. But from where I stand, all the blanks that haven't been filled in by your photos have to be very much in your favor to offset some of the challenges that are obvious.

One of my Seattle bike clubmates built a tall chopper from a garment rack hoop, with a fork something like five feet long. It was cool, but it made me wince to see it. On its maiden voyage (the annual downhill race through the streets), he made it most of the way to the finish... but not quite all the way. The fork broke off and he broke an arm. I wanted him to pull it off, but that's not how it worked out on the day.

In your case, I'm hoping the ingenuity we don't see outweighs the problems that we do see. Please tell us if it works out, but also please tell us if it doesn't.

Thanks for the very nice comment mate, made my day too!
Main reason I say it looks insanely dangerous is because of the gigantic amount of power this powertrain could deliver.... Right now you're still gently cruising at low power, but if you were to tune both APT controllers to their max ratings I don't see how it would be physically possible to remain on the thing, and 'm not even joking cuz you'll have way, wayyyy more than 1G of acceleration

Anyway, sounds fun (and I wish I could try that), but when you crank up the power don't forget to wear proper motorcycle gear, just in case. Talking from experience there :wink:

I Like the tub frame that you've made, is it still plywood or did you replace it with some other material? I'd be interested to see how its been made, it looks clean :thumb:
Also a bit more pictures of the front fork assembly and some explanation about how you built it would be awesome!
Just one thing disturbed me on the pictures: is your steering column an aluminum rod? I suppose not, but the pictures make it appear so, at least on my screen.

Chalo said:

Promise us you'll tell us if the fork breaks off (if you can).

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Would be more productive to explain where and why you believe the fork should break and how you suggest to fix it. :wink:

You are the man Dui. Yes I agree even an experienced rider might not be able to handle these motors maxed out, but it has never been my plan to do that. I am more after a capable luxury cruiser than any kind of race machine. I really only want a max speed of about 75mph for this scoot. As you know these motors/controllers could easily take this beast over 100 with the right battery, but not with me on it! Today I got just under 50mph with my 72v 100a battery, so really I think I might settle around a 96v 300a battery. That should be plenty snappy and still, just barely!, be safely controllable. I just hope I can keep the super quiet ness and awesome sound of these motors. I really love riding virtually silent. Good advice on the riding gear. That always goes with big speed for us old guys. My dad used to say when you see someone on a motorcycle with a t shirt and sandals it means they haven’t really fallen, yet. I have been a little reluctant to post many pics here anymore because some guys just seem to want to snipe what I do. People that don’t even know what my scoot is made of, much less how it is made, insinuating it will fail? I would happily go over every detail of how I made every little part and help anyone who wanted to build one. I just think I am all done posting here in public, but I will, hopefully, still come here to read stuff. If anyone really wants info on my scoot feel free to private message me. Thanks all.

haha, just ignore the haters man, it's a cool build so it would be a shame not to see more of it.

Dui said:

haha, just ignore the haters man, it's a cool build so it would be a shame not to see more of it.

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+1!

To make it a little bit more controllable you could always add a seat. Making it more like those fat wheel scoots you see sometimes:

Dui said:

Chalo said:

Promise us you'll tell us if the fork breaks off (if you can).

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Would be more productive to explain where and why you believe the fork should break and how you suggest to fix it. :wink:

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You did see that the forks are held onto the steer tube with glue and pieces of plastic, yes?

Here's one of the ways I joined fork blades to an incompatible frame:



I suppose I could have made a steer tube, then glued the entire fork (including its steer tube) to the bottom end of it, but that's not how I did it.

Chalo said:

You did see that the forks are held onto the steer tube with glue and pieces of plastic, yes?

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No, I did not.
On the picture"2280D56B-4230-419D-8393-9A592AD1B3AD.jpeg" you can see what looks like welds between the steering colum, the transversal part and the bike forks. But I agree the pictures aren't super clear. Personnally I assumed the yellow color came from bondo, to smooth it a little, same way I did on my frames, but that it's welded metal under that. I do hope it's steel though, forks and steering column are under tremendous forces, especially when meeting potholes or under strong braking. Breaking the fork is probably the worst failure that can happen on a bike :?

But I guess even pictures are up to interpretation, better let the OP explain his building method before telling him he's wrong and you're right.
Thing is, right now I don't know how it's been built and I don't believe anyone knows yet aside from the OP.

https://youtube.com/channel/UCvTLuu3y0VRnxlLN5Az9dGw. I am loving putting a few miles on this beast. Thank you ES guys for so much good info..

Thanks Dui and Slowco. I do have some perspective designs for removable seat and cargo racks down the road. I actually feel with this monster, a seat may be more comfortable, but I have more control of the vehicle when standing. If you see the riding videos I think you will see what I mean. I totally concur with you Dui on the critical nature of the front forks on any cycle. That is really scary so I always try to overbuild those parts. Please note these pics of my battle axe 2wd ebike I just finished. I obviously rebuilt the forks, which originally featured ‘shocks’. I had to make them stronger than stock because I was adding a hub motor and dual brakes. Of course, like most, I stress test all I built and ride on before I ride on it. I gave these forks lot’s of test before I would trust my life with them at 33mph. Now they have almost 300 miles, and lots of unexpected pot holes on them and they are rock solid. Amazing what you can build with tissue paper and Elmers glue! Also I really fear speed wobble. I am old enough I might not have been able to bounce right back from the crash you suffered Dui. Both my bike and my monster scoot are anti speed wobble vehicles. They are both like riding two big gyroscopes! It takes some getting used to the difference, but I will never go back. I just want more batteries, and more glue! The monster scoot is begging to go faster.

I am so happy with my electric vehicle. I feel so lucky I just wanted to give a little update and try to share some EV love. I hoped to build a comfortable daily driver and it has totally exceeded my expectations. I have over 700 miles on her so far and I use it for almost all my errands and travel. Today I got parts for a job from Home Depot. I installed hooks on the front for my grocery bags too. I have encountered at least 20 different Police on the streets, and to my amazement, I have not been stopped. They usually just give me a big smile, like most do! Our bike lanes here are virtually empty and I take full advantage to fly along, safely, next to amazed and amused drivers at 40-45mph. It is still like the Wild West out here for ebikes and vehicles like mine as far as law enforcement, at least for now. I could go on for hours telling you guys about the awesome reactions and cool things people say. Today alone an someone told me it was genius, another said it was beautiful, an older lady went out of her way to tell me how much she liked it. A group of three teenage boys even ran to the street to video me going by. That felt amazing, so of course I had to loop back around and ride past them again at about 35mph with no hands. They went nuts! It has been so much fun. I am not trying to brag here people. I know a lot of you here are focused on advancement thru racing, and have skills and knowledge I may never attain. If I was rich and could talk them into it I would have Mr Dui, or Mr larsb build me a scoot like this so I could learn how the real big boy builders might do it! My focus for now has been advancement through utility, something I can use almost every day. I wish I could say, like some of you here, that I had burned up so many controllers and rims and batteries that I couldn’t even remember them all! :lol: I haven’t let anyone ride it yet, but I would love to let larsb, or Amberwolf, or Luke, or especially Mr Dui ride it and see how different it is. I find it so comfortable and fast and very stable. We have great food here too guys! I am starting to plan my next battery now so I will be asking for a little expert help with that next. Thank you all for your help.

Scootdan said:

I am so happy with my electric vehicle. I feel so lucky I just wanted to give a little update and try to share some EV love. I hoped to build a comfortable daily driver and it has totally exceeded my expectations. I have over 700 miles on her so far and I use it for almost all my errands and travel. Today I got parts for a job from Home Depot. I installed hooks on the front for my grocery bags too. I have encountered at least 20 different Police on the streets, and to my amazement, I have not been stopped. They usually just give me a big smile, like most do! Our bike lanes here are virtually empty and I take full advantage to fly along, safely, next to amazed and amused drivers at 40-45mph. It is still like the Wild West out here for ebikes and vehicles like mine as far as law enforcement, at least for now. I could go on for hours telling you guys about the awesome reactions and cool things people say. Today alone an someone told me it was genius, another said it was beautiful, an older lady went out of her way to tell me how much she liked it. A group of three teenage boys even ran to the street to video me going by. That felt amazing, so of course I had to loop back around and ride past them again at about 35mph with no hands. They went nuts! It has been so much fun. I am not trying to brag here people. I know a lot of you here are focused on advancement thru racing, and have skills and knowledge I may never attain. If I was rich and could talk them into it I would have Mr Dui, or Mr larsb build me a scoot like this so I could learn how the real big boy builders might do it! My focus for now has been advancement through utility, something I can use almost every day. I wish I could say, like some of you here, that I had burned up so many controllers and rims and batteries that I couldn’t even remember them all! :lol: I haven’t let anyone ride it yet, but I would love to let larsb, or Amberwolf, or Luke, or especially Mr Dui ride it and see how different it is. I find it so comfortable and fast and very stable. We have great food here too guys! I am starting to plan my next battery now so I will be asking for a little expert help with that next. Thank you all for your help.

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Hey that’s great you’re enjoying the scooter! At the end of the day that’s what it’s all about is having fun! Stay safe out there and watch out for those crazy drivers!

Wow, pretty brutal design!

How much does it weigh?

Damm! My scoot is reborn! I just tried my new Far driver controllers and I am absolutely amazed! I went from slowly gaining speed to full on hang on very tight beast mode! I am sure I didn’t have my APT 96800 controllers adjusted properly, but these little Far drivers controllers ROCK! With the same battery my scoot is now Hella fast like crushing all but the fastest cars fast. Like blowing my old Dualtron scoot, which was fast, off the road and almost 20mph more top speed. I would love to race a really fast scooter now! I need to adjust the power now, because the rear controller is shutting down when I push it too hard. These FarDrivers pull way more power than the APTs did under hard acceleration. Even when I baby the throttle and adjust to keep the volts from sagging too low the acceleration is seriously awesome and so fun! I think the hill climbing will amazing. I hope to order lots of big lipo batteries soon, for this scoot and one more, and I am even more excited to see what this sled will do with that kind of power. Now I just want to ride and ride! :thumb:

I bet the APT controllers were seriously out of calibration/tuning, because just one single APT should actually be more powerful than those two Fardriver combined.
Did you try to adjust the settings on the APT? what was the issue?

Anyway, I guess it is a lot lighter now, those things weighted a ton!

Glad you like the fardriver anyway, I just installed one on my bike also and I can confirm it's pretty awesome (once it works). :thumb:
Nice to see some updates!

Thanks Dui and yes the APTs must have been seriously out of whack, because I rode another quick 20miles this morning and even with the amps adjusted down on the FarDrivers my huge scoot is a BEAST!!! The 1st issue with the APTs was they are designed as you know for big power, but I wanted to test them with a smaller, and cheaper, 72v 35ah battery first. The seller told me it could damage my battery to run TWO APTs , which call for up to300A each, off my little 100A battery. So they helped me adjust the APTs form 300A to 100A each. But they also adjusted some other things I could not remember and I had trouble learning how to program a very technical software, to me, so I thought I would deal with it more when I needed to adjust them back up for a future huge battery. So for about 1400 miles they ran slowly but steadily up to a great top speed, but very little torque. Then the rear motor started running glitchy sometimes. It got worse and worse so I switched the controllers and now the front wheel did it, so I knew it was one of the controllers. When I hooked them up to the laptop they looked exactly the same. I know larsb and others have had trouble with their software being unstable and that is just how this acted, so if anyone wants two APTs they can have these cheap! But now Oh my higher power this scoot is FUN! Even with this ‘little’ 72v 100A 6000w battery spinning two big motors it has POWER like I have only felt on big motorcycles. And it is crazy because I am just getting started. I will eventually be getting two FarDriver 72850 controllers and a huge lipo battery for this scoot, and this battery and little FarDriver 72360s will be going to this monsters little brother scoot. I am excited to see if I can get at least a little gravel double burn out now, because it really feels like it could, even with the little battery. I really can’t wait to get some much faster charging times with some big lipo batteries also and maybe swap able battery packs with big Ah ratings. Loving it.

Ah ok that makes perfect sense now. :lol:
Your seller was right to tune down the APTs then, if your battery can only safely provide 100Amps I understand why the APT were set up at such low power. You could easily blow up the battery otherwise.

Right now the battery is still your limit, it is a 100Amps unit but each controller can theoretically draw 190 amps, so you need a battery capable of at least 400 amps without too much voltage sag if you keep these controllers.
I'm not sure how much space you got in there, liPo packs a lot of power but they aren't exactly easy to manage for daily use, plus they usually don't last very long. I would look for automotive cells if possible, but they tend to take a lot of space so it will all depend on what you can physically fit under the deck. 8)

OMG Dui! You didn’t tell me to plug in the high/low speed plugs on the FarDrivers! I thought they were high speed without the plugs, so I plugged them both in and HANG ON! This thing is stupid fast right now brother and I have no idea how. It seems like l stumbled on crazy power and torque combination that just rips. How can a 100A battery move so much weight so fast? I know that it will move a ‘light’ big ebike and rider at a good clip, but the sled and I weigh a little more and it now flies with me on it. I think my 0 to 40mph with the APTs was around at least 10 seconds and now I think it is under four seconds! Two powered wheels rocks gentlemen. This big heavy sled feels suddenly featherweight an super nimble with the new massive power and low end torque- from the same battery! I have started to experiment with the amp settings from the factory 190A settings. I set both controllers all the way down to 30A and it is still hella fast. I can hardly notice any difference so far. I also changed the phase amps down to 250A but again didn’t notice much difference. It feels like the throttle is too sensitive so I changed the factory LINE setting to the ECO setting on both controllers and BIG difference, way faster! Ok I tried SPORT throttle settings and, of course, even faster still! With a full battery this machine is officially beastly. Of course I might be destroying my equipment and not know it by running two, or more, controllers, too small batteries, or too big motors, etc but that’s no reason to not try. The sled is far from perfect and needs refinement, but I can now confidently say that if you ever tried it Mr Dui you would fully see how fun and unique a ride it is. Two high powered wheels are really more than twice as much fun as one on a cycle, in my humble opinion! Speaking of fun Dui your bike looks AWESOME. Man you do wonderful work sir, I am really in awe of your skills. I would let you ride the sled if I could please ( very carefully) try your awesome machine sometime! Stay cool sir

Haha, that's great!
I didn't know about the plug thing, I just got my Fardriver a few weeks ago, still learning how to use it. I think I plugged mine, but I'll check again just in case.

Now imagine how crazy that would be with the two APT controllers... That's why I said it would be impossible to stay on the scooter with the APTs if tuned at full power, you'd just flap in the wind like a flag on the handlebars, it is really next level insanity :lol: :lol:

Stay safe though, with great power comes great responsibility. Make sure the brakes are up to the task and wear proper motorcycle gear. Also, never let anyone ride it unless you have limited a lot the power, I had inexperienced people trying my scooter and they crashed, it wasn't fun.
If you're coming to Shanghai sometime I'd gladly let you try the bike, for sure. But with covid and stuff it's been ridiculously difficult to get there... let's hope it'll get better soon.

Anyway, keep building crazy stuff!

Great result.
But I fear for the front motor to spin its axle when really using all the power the hub is capable of. Which can result in serious injury or worse...
When you use a battery and controller that can get this motor hot on acceleration, you'll only need the rear motor to scare yourself (and be even quicker then the 2wd now).

Ok brother SlowCo, I keep thinking about your post because I know many would agree with your view on 2wd. I humbly beg to differ and here are a few reasons why. Super scooters. No seriously powerful scooters you can buy are 1wd. Why? POWER ! Most super scoots let you turn off your front motor so you can go farther by using 1/2 the power. Ask any super scoot pilot and they will tell you when you turn on both motors you very quickly go to serious POWER! A little more speed, but WAY more power and GRIP. Doesn’t it make sense two powered wheels could more efficiently transfer power to the ground than one powered wheel pushing the other wheel and 100% of the weight? I have felt for myself that 2wd has a HUGE advantage in quickness and power. I know many people seek speed above all but I love power, like super scooter instant torque and a tons of grip. Like intense hill climbing no 1wd will ever match. My scoot is quite heavy so I was amazed on my morning ride to hit 52mph! That was on only about eighty percent battery too. My speedometer isn’t working with my new controllers, so this ride I had my phone to give me gps speed. 52 mph! And it gets there in about 6 seconds! I am telling you guys this scoot is officially fast. Even the motorcycles I have owned didn’t pull as hard as this big scoot with BOTH wheels trying to rip the handlebars out of my grip! It truly eats all but the fastest cars for lunch, and that is with a little 72v. 100A ebike battery. I can imagine what 2wd would do with a battery like in a Zero motorcycle. I tried to drag race a Zero too, but my controllers kept cutting out! I know he can beat me bad now, but for 72v I can give him a run for his money. So by the time I got to our fast traffic street I held her solid as a rock, in pretty thick traffic, pegged at 51mph for about a half mile. Awesome! The big tires are so stable and smooth 50mph feels like 20mph. I noticed all major scooter manufacturers are slowly but surely going to bigger and bigger tires too, and with good reason. Anyway this morning was my best riding session ever. So I charged up again to ride tonight. Tonight I went straight to a speed run with a full battery and 54 mph gentlemen! 54mph! And I was still gaining speed, but again shut down one of the controllers. I will be so grateful when I can push this much power with no shut downs, hopefully soon. I also met a guy near here with a very fast Nambi Burn scooter, so hopefully we can drag race soon and I can tell you guys how they rate. I think his scooter is also 72v, so that would be really interesting. I am ready to try all comers because I can officially say again my scoot is very quick. So that’s my 2 cents on the subject, all wheel drive rocks! 8)

When you would have a controller and battery pack that are able to push the maximum phase amps into the rear motor up to saturation point for the windings and stator, there would be nearly no grip for the front wheel to put any power down. Your scoot would wheelie or break traction on take off :lol: