Scott RansomS x3 with magicpies plus a Genius LT

Joined
Jun 19, 2011
Messages
1,164
Location
Cheshire, UK
Thought that I would share my creation with you guys to see whether you like it or could give me some constructive critism. Cause a picture speaks a thousand words, I thought id do you a 2000 word essay.

photo es.JPG

photo es2.JPG

All the electric bits were bought as a single kit from golden motor. Im not great at the electronics side of building so I thought id get a bike working first to maintain my interest. This is actually my second bike build the first was on a hard tail GT aggressor and i learnt that I do not like pot holes and that fixing punctures on hub motor rims is not as much fun as riding. Anyway the shock spring is not strong enough on this one so that will be the next buy as it works for me but a couple of stone heavier and it bottoms out causing the rear wheel to rub on the battery box. Have been browsing the ES forum for a while getting really good ideas but hopefully someone will like what ive done with this bike. My one shortfall was the front forks but I figured funds permitting they can be updated at a later date.

Having seen the results of over volting and RC drives im already thing about bike number 3. I should also mention I have a 1st gen honda insight so unlike Lance its not all about the bike, although a lot of it is.

Thanks for reading my first ES post.

WW606
 
^^ Looks good...

whats your battery setup?

Is that an external controller? Lucky...when i bought my MP all Gary was offering was internals...that got chucked pretty quickly.

Get yourself a better controller, ALA Lyens 12fet and you'll be set for a long time...

as for RC builds....thats funny, cuz i got my interest peaked as well! MP at 75V is nice, but it still tops out at 60km/h :cry:

Ironically, HK has all the outrunner RC motors of any decent use to us on back order...
 
cool build,nice and clean.good battery mount bracket.
 
I bought the kit from the website about a year or so back, its a 8ah lifepo4 battery 48v but my fave bit which beast775 noted was the battery mount which used the steel plate from the battery pack box that usually fits onto a pannier rack and put it vertical onto the seat post via 4 plumbers pipe clips from a company called kiowa. 4 was really over kill but i like to over engineer, when you spend so much on the battery its nice to know it not going anywhere. I mounted a wooden frame into the triangle to house the magic pie controller. i like working with wood as its a very easy to work material and cheap when you get it wrong. side pannelling is this wierd metal laminated plastic which was left over from a shop front fitting. That too was easy to work but hard as nails. Yeah i really do want to get the controller upgraded but unfortunately there doesnt seem to be an easy way of getting the cells out of the battery box without wrecking what is quite a nice case. So no point in buying a controller when my battery wont support it. on bike 3 Im gonna do lipo, rc and decent controller but gonna have to save the monies. service on my insight cost £307 today and thats only half way through. But i did achieve or rather my car did today.



not as efficient as the bike but to be fair i cant cycle at 60mph, especially for this many miles
 
Now that's a beautiful battery mount. How much did the parts run you for the whole install? Where did you get everything?
 
How fast does it go? And what range you getting?
 
axi0m - thanks for the beautiful battery mount comment, i like the battery mount too except it very nearly bottoms out onto the rear stays when i ride and defo does if i take a small jump/drop off. Im not too heavy about 75-80kg but think i need to up rate the shock a little.

Haste - its probo going about 25mph but down hill with a tail wind ive had it over 30 not into the 40mph club yet but its only the stock 48v kit. The range i get off a full charge on the 8ah pack is about 16 miles and its horrible to ride without power. only tested using a iphone gps cyclemeter app.

BATFINK - I want panniers but cant fit them to this one i have however managed to fashion a rear mudguard from wood and cable ties and sprayed silver. Its from the amberwolf school of ebiking but it keeps my backside dry.

Will be doing a second ebike before the years out and this one will be 72 volt (hua tong) with a cyclone motor and Lipo. already got the full suss old sla ebike frame. lots of space for batteries.

Based in the UK and took the lady friend for a ebike on the giants in the electric bike network they are trying to get off the ground here. Was impressed with them actually and the reason i did it was to get her enthused about the bikes. She now is. We rode up and down snake pass and around derwent water (peak district reservoir) after 74 km and 4 hours we pretty much drained the batteries, infact mine only did about 70km but then i weigh a touch more than her.

anyway will keep posting now that ive managed to remember how to get logged on
 
yesterday I tried to install my ebay purchases onto the scott ransom. Those being a set of boxxer 2002 200mm travel forks. a sun single track rim with 20mm hope pro II hub and 185mm rotor and a clarks mech disc brake.

anyway what happened when i tried. i realised why i got the forks for so little. basically the pinch bolt m5s had stripped the cast thread internally on the fork as the chap before me had loctited the screws. He had also over tightened the bolt on the axle and flared the axle so that i couldnt get it past the bearings in the hub. It took me a while to realise these faults and so in the mean while i phoned hope about the hub thinking that the guy I bought them from had swapped out the bearing. Hope confirmed the serials on the bearing were the originals which meant that the most likely answer was that the axles end was flared from over tightening. I ordered another axle last night for £14 pounds but I was desperate to get the bike road worthy so today i went to see the mechanical engineering dept at uni. There was a retired chap in doing some work called Tex. Let me tell you, Tex is a legend. not only did he take down the high spots on the axle, he reamed the centre tube and gave me emory paper to clean the inner rim of the bearings. After repairing both the hub and the axle I got the parts home and assembled the wheel onto the forks. Unfortunately this was when i realised they were stripped threads due to the loctite and needed looking at. This time i took the bike back to the department to sort out the m5 bolts. first idea was to use a m5 tap and retap the thread, this worked for only one of the bolts. next we checked whether the head of the m6 bolt would fit in the recess on the fork. It was a winner. Next the old threads were drilled out, m6 thread tapped in using two different taps and then silcone greased m6 bolts were used. It worked like a charm and even Tex who has worked his whole life in engineering was surprised with the torque and the fit. I am over the moon with the bike now. its so much better than the girvin proflex forks i had before and the wheel spins so freely. Could not have got this working without the guy so im now wondering what is an appropriately well thought out present (he likes playing golf). also want to big up Phil at evolution cycles in Bangor, Wales who has helped me lots on this bike over the last couple of days.

Here is a pic of the bike as it looks now.
scott ransom with boxxer forks for ES.jpg
 
Ive been in correspondence with people working on Swiss power bike at Barino gmbh in Switzerland. I tracked them down through the picture on the golden motor main website. Anyway they gave me permission to show their bikes here on ES in a recent email so I thought it would be great to show you all some nice Scott bikes with Magical Pastry hubs.

72 volt Scott Ransom

Willy72V.jpg

a smaller Ransom

Pink2.jpg

a Scott Genius LT

GeniusLT5.5KW1.jpg

and they do custom torque plates with attached kick stands

Drehmomentabstützung.jpg

Just wanted to say thanks to Barino gmbh for being so helpful answering my emails. I hope this inspires a few more Scott conversions.
 
Just want to post about some recent successes

new diy lights made from energy saving led lights and powered by a 3s stick of zippy lipo.

IMG_0587_zps44e14ce3.jpg

on
IMG_0585_zps50b6c4ea.jpg

off

also I was having lots of problems with what i though was my freewheel. I thought it was the pawls not releasing causing the cog to not free wheel. Turns out it was the derailleur which i had put back together with a cog back to front. I hadn't realised both cog were not identical and symmetrical so let this be a warning to others who are having trouble like this. advice is check the derailleur.

So I did not spot the problem at first (the reversed cog) so my solution was to swap the derailleur off a bike that i use less often. I did this and the difference was like dark and light. Scott Ransom fixed.

Whilst the wrongly reassembled derailleur was off the bike i cleaned it up and got a better look at it. The problem was obvious then. I fixed it (turned the cog around) and put it back onto my norco team race (the bike i ride less often). I took the Norco for a ride to check it. On the Scott Ransom i have a gear cable and can select the rear gear, on the Norco i dont. The derailleur was not selecting the one gear i wanted. I tried screwing the adjustment screws but it was not lining up. Then i realised i needed a cable to tension the spring in the derailleur to line it up with the correct cog. I found an old brake cable in some drop handle bars in my junk pile. cut the cable with my angle grinder (i do not own decent cutters) and tensioned the derailleur spring up aligning the chain with the cog i wanted. Norco fixed

the result of all this tinkering is two bikes with no derailleur issues. so for today at least i'm quite contented.
 
Today I cycled back from chorlton to home, 10 miles approximately according to google maps. There was some mad head winds which mean my average top speed plummeted from 20mph to about 12 or less. The battery was fully charged before I left but i barely made it home on the supposed 12Ah. I was peddling all the way and thought that maybe its just the wind making it all harder work than it should be. Then i though what if the battery is developing a fault? Id had it open once before but never really to do anything apart from replace the faux anderson which had broke by remaking the bottom piece of the golden motor battery case to have a water proof grommet and the wires extending out the case to a 4mm bullet connector. this solution has always worked better than the original which use to hit the rear triangle and dislodge thus unpowering the bike.

anyway found this old thread on the GM help website

http://goldenmotor.com/SMF/index.php?topic=4204.0

whilst looking through google images to see if i could get any more info on my battery.

Im pretty sure at the time i bought the lifepo4 battery but it appears today when i disconnected the balance taps from the BMS and measured them with my Cell log 8s that they had 4.1volts each definately not lifepo4 more likely limn02, quite a let down cause think its gonna die alot sooner than i had intended.

Good news was all cells had only a 13mV difference according to the cell log. I am temped to make a switch to isolate the balance taps from the BMS and install a DB15 connector so that i could easily hook up a hyena isolated charger but it appears at the moment highly unnecessary. I did think about salvaging more liMn02 and maybe parralleling it with what is there on the battery already to increase the capacity, use the same BMS and charger too.
 
replaced my rear hookworm with another hookworm tyre, first is bald as a coot since it rubbed on the seatpost mounted battery case. anyway whilst replacing the tyre i made a space for the disc brake like the ones that justin sells but cheaper (read: free) but made of the same plastic metal laminated sheet i used for the controller cover.

when replacing the tyre i found an inch long thorn inside my inner tube, funny thing was the tyre showed no signs of deflating and i wasnt using a tyre sealant. glad i changed the tyre and fixed up the brakes cause it has proved silly over the last two week when my girlfriend and I have been on 5 seperate long ebike rides both in Dorset and the Lakes. riding down those long steep hills with only really regen breaking was asking for trouble.

other developments#
got a dcdc for the headlights which works a treat.

next Major advance will be to make the battery lighter or create a down tube mounted solution which will be tricky since the down tube is less of a tube more of a irregulare hexagonal cross section.

refurbed a magic pie 2 internal to replace my broken internal version one controller. means reversing lots of caps and passives to the other side of the pcb and drilling the case since the snubber caps on the phases are bigger on the internal version. still survived the holidays and is still going.

got whiplash at the moment from bailing of a horse. he was trying to climb a steep bank out of the paddock at the time. why dont animals have a kill switch?
 
So, Its a long time since ive ridden this bike as i spent lots of time doing cycling on my folding dahon cadenza (which is a brilliant bike). however I have a commute that by car takes minimum 40 mins and that varies considerably with the state of the traffic on the motorways and near the new building of the manchester airport tram link.

Anyway I asked my boss whether or not i could charge at work (not RC lipoly) and his response was as long as the chargers are kite marked. All the kit on my ransom is almost as it was when i bought it so there wont be any electrical compliance issues.

On problem i was worrying about was range. my battery at wot from top to bottom only ever took me 14 miles. (or near enough) that was with the controller, a magic mp1 external, set to 30A continuous and 50a peak. So i though about a second battery and going a touch slower.
The battery i managed to get 2nd hand from ebay for £160, its classed as 48v 10ah 250w bottle battery and it came with its own 2amp charger. So i set about fitting it to my scott ransom which already had the golden motor limn battery on the seat post.

This was the result
bike with 2 batteries.jpg
Full bike 2 batteries

scott frame with 2 batteries.jpg
a closer image of the frame

rear hose clip.jpg
The hose clip at the rear.

front hose clip.jpg
The hose clip at the front.

drain brain.jpg
drain brain to keep an eye on whats left

I also reprogrammed the controller down to 6 amp continuous and 10 amp peak. so hopefully i will be able to commute all next week. should save me about £30 a week easy.
 
I have to say that Scott Genius bike looks like the perfect package.

I've never owned a Pie(nor do i like the look) but people here say with an external controller they pack a punch. Do you happen to know the power output of that setup?
 
Hey skeetab, the pies are torquey, I ran a 72 volt hua tong controller, I guess it was 2 - 3kw but too fast to contribute pedalling. I might lighten mine with some holes in the covers but need to get some insulating varnish and deruster like kingfish did and then so phase wire upgrades like zappy. Anyway it's a long range commuter in the meanwhile. Hope the pictures have shown how easy it can be
 
Hah, just saved the picture to my hdd and realized the file name claims its 5kw. I wonder what type of battery it is?
 
Well the test run went well yesterday sort of. It's a 20 mile route and the new lead I made for my new (to me) broke via crimping itself in the suspension rocker arm whilst it wasn't plugged in. Fixed it now and the cleaner at work had a screw terminal handy to do an adhoc repair to get me home, he now has beers in return for a good deed. Anyway ride 3 has gone well and ride four is looking promising weather wise. Wanting some bum padding since 40 miles a day is starting to chaff
 
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