BiGH's Ride!

Nice work BiGH !

Singlecell lifepo4 chargers came from voltfreaks. They were expensive at the time with currency conversion and postage from the States.

It sounds like a number of you are interested in cheap chargers. I'm tempted to get a 72v8a charger, maybe even a 72v12a... Who's interested in me organising a small group buy of chargers as Adrian_SM did with Ecitypower/BMSBattery ? PM me so as not to clog up BiGH's thread and if there is interest, I will start a new thread on it on the appropriate place.

Cheers!
 
im very interested in a group buy on chargers. I'd like to get a high amp charger for my headway pack.

Thinking about batteries etc. I realised my yesa packs still have a great bms on them. The yesa bms has been absolutely excellent :) now i'm thinking the next pack i make will be an A123 or PSI pack, but i was wondering... can i use the yesa bms on the correctly configured A123 pack? i'm fairly sure i can. the yesa pack allows for high amp draws, and i could make a 72v A123 battery pack using the two yesa bms'

ultimately though i think that 72v on the 5304 is too fast, and something along the lines of 60v would be the best. however as this is a nonstandard voltage it would need a custom charging solution. Maybe i could use a 36v of yesa, and an 18v custom pack... not sure though. I might just end up making a 48v a123 pack instead.These are all thoguhts.

At the moment i don't need a second pack. I tested teh bike the other day in an epic hour ten test, where i belted everywhere i could at full throttle. tackling massive hills, gravel tracks (i even got air on a jump). The bike is very well set up now (but needs a torque arm which i'm in the process of organising). The stats from the CA are:

18.36ah
32.57km
837 whrs
25.7wh/k
amax 68.17
vmin 35.6 vmax 58.6
average speed 36kph
ride time 54min17sec

This is really impressive, as i didn't drain the headway pack down to BMS cutoff. it was NEAR cutoff i could tell as there was a noticeable drop in speed and acceleration due to voltages going down. I'm not sure if i would have gotten a full extra ah out of the pack, but 18.36ah for a 20ah rated pack that's been sitting idle for 6 months makes me very happy. So i'm back to being EXTREMELY pleased with the headway pack.
 
I run 60v with a 48v Headway pack and the 4 booster cells. But a 36v and 24v pack would be the easier way.

74v off the charger.

I'd like an X5304, but I fear my rear triangle would not survive....I've broken two frames already. I get air everyday - I have a nice jump on the way home :)
 
FINALLY got the chance to put some DECENT pictures up. Was playing with the 50mm lens my g/f gave me for my birthday:) so DOF might be a bit narrow :p

i love the side on pic. it has an old worldly feel to it :)

I also got a new jacket for riding to work in.

Also got TORQUE ARMS fitted to the bike. custom made by john of stealthelectricbikes, they screw into the rack eyelets. fit perfectly, and are hardly visible! :) (thanks John)


edit: and i've got a maxis hookworm in the garage for the front rim, but i've got TWO of the specalized armadilo nimbus tyres AND a cheap chinese one (off albie's first bike) that I'm trying to force myself to use before i put the hookworm on.

If anyone local wants the chinese cheapie, they're more than welcome to it for free (i highly doubt that anyone will take it)

I'm hoping it will wear faster than the specalized, which has lasted about 6 years so far (its spent some time hanging on the wall), but was the commuting tyre on my first bike i did long distance commutes on, back in 2003.
 

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Awesome! Looks great with that super short focal length on the camera :)

Do you have any close up shots of the torque arms?

I'll PM you about chargers, no one else has expressed interest but I want a phat charger for my Headway pack so we might be able to halves on postage if you want a high current charger too.
 
No fair. You got the 50mm F1.4. I could only afford the f1.8. :cry:
 
voicecoils said:
Awesome! Looks great with that super short focal length on the camera :)

Do you have any close up shots of the torque arms?

I'll PM you about chargers, no one else has expressed interest but I want a phat charger for my Headway pack so we might be able to halves on postage if you want a high current charger too.

Awesome :) i've got a 5a on order from John but i want a backup charger for the right price :)


I knew there was something i was forgetting! So i ran out to the garage and took some pix of the torque arm. sorry they're not the best quality, and the bike is dirty.
 

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adrian_sm said:
No fair. You got the 50mm F1.4. I could only afford the f1.8. :cry:
I fully lucked out. my girlfriend gave it to me for my 30th! i can't believe how generous she is, and how lucky i am to have her :)

my next project is a bike for her :)
 
Ok so i've got 2x 48 chargers right, but one of them is having massive overheating issues. I need the bike to recharge tonight, so i opened it up and found that it wasn't cooling right. Somehow the fan only works when the charging circuit is enabled, but the thermal protection is kicking in, which kills the charging circuit.

Not to mention that the fan doesn't cover most of the heat sink. You'd think these things would have some decent fannage running through it. but alas no.

Attached is my temporary solution! :p

ps i'm not sure if i've mentioned this before, but the charger overheated so badly that the bottom began to bubble from melting when the fan failed. I'm going to try and make a 240v to 12v source, and repurpose some old computer fans. to make a tunnel system - one push fan one
 

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<BIG PROPS>

I haven't said this enough, but John (e-MTB) is EXCELLENT. I cannot recommend him enough. He is exactly what the Ebikes need in Melbourne.

He's replaced BOTH chargers of mine (one was having overheating issues, the other went pop) without a second thought. The service i get from John makes me never want to buy from anyone else. Keep up the good work. Ok sometimes he takes a while to respond to emails, but his service is second to none.

</BIG PROPS>
 
so i had kind of a bad day yesterday - my engineer said he wouldn't be able to engineer a post 1997 electric conversion due to ADR crash regulations, and a pair of cells in my headway pack are on their last legs. Riding into work i got 8.6ah out of the pack. coming home 5.8. So a pair of cells are dying fast. this effectively takes my bike off the road.

Tip to all ebike riders - MAKE SURE YOU CAN EASILY REPLACE CELLS IN YOUR BATTERY PACK.

I think i'll also invest in a cell log for the ebike :)
 
it's been a really really long time since I've posted here, clearing the backlog of projects out. The next one on the list is to fix the bike battery, and get the bike back on the road / path.

There are two aspects to this that I want to do. First is to make a new battery box, and the second is to wire up two new cells to my existing pack to replace the dead ones. I choose screw terminal cells to replace the existing two dead ones, as they're just easier to attach, and I'm fairly sure I've nuked the previous two cells due to overheating when I was soldering them in. So I'm going to cheat at doing it, by using the screw terminal cells :)

I may turn this into a duct tape pack, while I build the proper box - just so I can start e-biking again (I miss the tracks quite a lot!)

edit: I bought the two cell logs however never attached them.
 
I have a bunch of loose tabbed headway cells recovered from abused packs if you need any. Testing so far suggests most are in good nick. Actually better than the cells I have in my main headway pack.

Mark_A_W has also built a tab welder that you may find useful.
 
adrian_sm said:
I have a bunch of loose tabbed headway cells recovered from abused packs if you need any. Testing so far suggests most are in good nick. Actually better than the cells I have in my main headway pack.

Mark_A_W has also built a tab welder that you may find useful.

ahh lol Thanks for the offer anyways. I should have posted previously then. No dramas. I've already got the 2 x screw term cells from e-MTB. And I want to move to a screw terminal pack eventually.
I'm just hoping I didn't blow up my BMS (I had a spark when attempting the repair the first time round). I'm very tempted to just scrap this pack and go straight to screw-terms (or use it as a backup pack). (I give $10 a day to Metro every time I don't ride to work)

I'll have a think about it though, I may still take you up on your offer. What area of Melbourne are you from?
 
We all work near Monash. I can weld a couple of cells in whenever you need.
 
Mark_A_W said:
We all work near Monash. I can weld a couple of cells in whenever you need.
Awesome. Thanks. That's right I met you once a long time back mark.

I think I need to get a new conductor between the cells too though. Do you know where I can buy one?
 
I have nickel shim as well.
 
Mark_A_W said:
I have nickel shim as well.
oh now ur just turning me on :) lol. :)

that would be absolutely magical,

What beer do you guys like btw?
 
ok so I've been really flat out and haven't had a chance to work on the bike. I'm starting to look at ways to mount a screw terminal headway pack into the triangle. I really want to start riding the trails to work again, and have been riding the road bike 20k each way. I'm looking at buying a 3rd peddle bike to ride the trails and getting this back on the road asap :) but I may just use this bike :)

Having it offline is really disappointing me....
 
Come around to my place sometime and we'll fit a cell.

Or drop the pack off at my work one day (Mt Waverley) and pick it up again when it's done.

I have lots of cells, and some shim.
 
hey Gents,
not sure if you are on here these days - but I have put an event up for an Ebike ride in melb on December 10th. You may want to come along? Cheers..
http://www.endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=33806
 
Samd said:
hey Gents,
not sure if you are on here these days - but I have put an event up for an Ebike ride in melb on December 10th. You may want to come along? Cheers..
http://www.endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=33806
Hey my bike is currently offline, I still haven't fixed the battery pack (been focused on other things). I'm actually thinking of selling the beast (fixing it first) as I'm now riding 136k+ per week on my road bike :) (being fit is wonderful!)
 
Thought I'd jump back on here and say hi to everyone and let you all know what happened.

Well it was a long time coming, but I ended up selling all my e-gear.

After having the bike sit idle for too long, riding the Avanti Giro everywhere (I had added a few other nice bits including a Wahoo Ant+ iphone case (can't recommend these enough) and Shimano WH-RS80-C50 wheels).

I got to the point over summer that I was doing 100-200k a week comfortably and looking at longer rides... then


Under full power travelling at around 40kph standing I skipped a gear, my knee hit the handlebar with enough force to lift the whole bike sideways and land me on Yarra Blvd at speed. (certainly freaked out the guy next to me). Nothing broken on me or the bike, but was caused by worn out running gear. It was clearly time to either repair the bike or sell it (it was then 6 years old). The decision was to sell it, and the ebike parts to fund a new bike. Ebayed next to everything (except my seat and wheels) and put that to a new bike.

Upgraded to a Giant TCR Advanced 2. Threw on the RS80s and Wahoo ANT+ sensor (which interfaced to the giant ridesense sensor) and had a dream of a bike.

For the moment I'm quite happy pushing my limits of fitness, and have no desire to return to the electric side of things (however I am still interested in them). If my circumstances change I'll definitely return to ebiking.
I'd definitely build an ebike again, however I would definitely use screw terminal batteries. The more user serviceable parts the better.
 

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Nice ride BigH ! Looks like it should be a nice efficient bike.

I stupidly signed up for road the bay this year, so the limitted time I get to ride these days is on my road bike too. Trying to coax my body back into some sort of shape.

Are the fancy wheels worth the cash. I only have cheap wheels on mine, and never ridden anything worth much.

Also like the ANT+ kit. I have been using a cheap heart rate monitor to make sure I train properly, and found it really useful. I also threw a cheap bike computer on the cranks to check my cadence. But would be great to have everything in one unit. What sort of data can the app collect? Can it log elevation, heart rate, etc. as well?

- Adrian
 
adrian_sm said:
Nice ride BigH ! Looks like it should be a nice efficient bike.

I stupidly signed up for road the bay this year, so the limitted time I get to ride these days is on my road bike too. Trying to coax my body back into some sort of shape.

Are the fancy wheels worth the cash. I only have cheap wheels on mine, and never ridden anything worth much.

Also like the ANT+ kit. I have been using a cheap heart rate monitor to make sure I train properly, and found it really useful. I also threw a cheap bike computer on the cranks to check my cadence. But would be great to have everything in one unit. What sort of data can the app collect? Can it log elevation, heart rate, etc. as well?

- Adrian
Thanks - yeah the wheels were quite good. they're more an aero wheel, so being as heavy as the previous wheels I had spin up the same rate, but tend to make it easier to hold the higher speeds. Honestly though... not sure I'd go the fancy wheels again. They're nice, but require a lot more adjustment than the old trusty ones. Seriously consider test riding a new bike to compare it to what you have, when I did that, I realised that it wasn't worth fixing my old one. better to get new everything vs new groupset :)

The Wahoo kit I can't highly recommend enough. I got the heart rate too so was logging HR, speed, dist,cadence, fairly sure it does climb values for post training (depending on the software) but I never really used it for that. Definitely love having it. I use MapMyFitness, which is ok.... none of the apps are perfect though. There are quite a lot of options for apps for the phone. Also wanted to say the case is excellent, has protected my iphone in heavy rain, from impacts, and I got the extended battery too - makes going for a ride a breeze as u can charge on the bike :) it is DEFINITELY worth the money. I'm happier with this than I was with my old polar 725x (I never used all the features).

Also I'm a bit naughty and like to listen to music while training. It's good that I if I get a phone call, the music fades out and u can take the calll easily. and having a gps based map / phone at your fingertips is AWESOME
 
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