Peugeot Canyon Express Commuter

My first mountain bike was a Peugeot Canyon Express, from the 80's. A bit unusual, with triple butted cromoly tubes and brazed lugs, Shimano Deore BioPace chainrings and components and Suntour Roller-Cam brakes. Specialized Crossroads II tires. Eventually I gifted it to my son and he used it for transportation. Crashed, ignored, etc.

So it is sitting here in the garage, barely functional, and the pile of e-bike components that I've taken off my bike has grown to the point that we have pretty near a complete kit.

So it is time to make another ebike, right?



There are a bunch more photos in the album here:

https://picasaweb.google.com/Alan.Biocca/PeugeotMTNBikeEbikeProject?authkey=Gv1sRgCLO794SaztCdLg&feat=directlink

So this afternoon we drug out the parts and did a little fitting. The main thing fitted was the 9C 9x7 hubmotor. This JUST fit into the dropouts. Very small but STEEL. On the derailleur side I had to tap the axle in with a mallet and plastic rod. I doubt if a torque arm is needed, but I will fit one anyway on the other side. I put NordLock washers on the derailleur side, since that was easy. On the wiring side the connectors are in the way, so it will get a regular washer setup for now. This axle is really tight on the derailleur side. The derailleur hanger is one piece steel, not removable. Changing tires is going to be an at-home deal. There is a Marathon plus tire on the wheel so perhaps it won't be soon that we'll be fixing flats. I hope.



A friend gifted me a Crystalyte battery box without the mounting bracket. Nice box, have to find or make a mount for it. It will hold 4x5S 5AH Lipo or 2x5S plus 2x6S for 10S or 11S by 10AH. Not a huge pack, essentially 36V 10AH, but quite nice, and very easy. My son doesn't want a speed demon, and with these brakes and his experience level now I'm not planning to push the speed up too high. The controller is 36/48 volt 35 amp, and the battery compartment won't hold more than 11S of the 5AH batteries anyway. So later we can up the voltage a bit, but it will require a different battery setup. Could reduce the amp hour capacity perhaps and find another combination that fits in the box. I actually already have 10S 10AH batteries (4x 5S 5AH) already so we'll go with that for now.



My son already put the thumb throttle and grips on. I guess those are the important things.



The roller cam brakes are in need of minor overhaul (cleaning and adjustment) or replacement. There are no disc brake mount tabs on the frame or forks. The shifter was already 6 speed, and it almost works. It probably needs new cables and a bit more adjustment. I'm not sure it is going to make the super-low first gear though, when it goes there the derailleur scrapes the motor housing. But at least the indexed shifting lines up fine, unlike my bike (even after purchasing shifters mine still doesn't quite line up).



Some of My Other Threads:

http://www.endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=34929 My Commuter GreyBorg with Cromotor
http://www.endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=21390 My Commuter Mountain Ebike, an REI Novara/9C
http://www.endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=35954 My Long Distance Comfort Recumbent, a BikeE/BMC

990 brakes!

I love old steel lugged bikes. Such nice rides.

I have not weighed it yet, but it is pretty darn light, with no suspension, etc and the thin tubes. Should be quite strong, also.

Anybody have an extra mounting bracket for the Crystalyte battery box? That would be helpful on this build!

Nice. Regular v brakes should fit fine on those bosses. Might be able to ebay those historic brakes for more than you think.

sometimes the best bet with the derailur is to limit it to the higher gears. Just set the screw so it can't get on that big rear gear.

dogman said:

Nice. Regular v brakes should fit fine on those bosses. Might be able to ebay those historic brakes for more than you think.

sometimes the best bet with the derailur is to limit it to the higher gears. Just set the screw so it can't get on that big rear gear.

Click to expand...

I agree on the derailleur. On the brakes, I think the bosses are in the wrong place for Vbrakes.

Vbrakes on my other bike:

So they are. I just assumed it was an odd version of a canti brake.

I don't think it'll be hard to make the roller-cam brakes work. They work well, if kept clean and adjusted. Not the best thing for someone who wants to ignore maintenance, however.

Strapped a pair of 5S 5AH Lipos on the rear rack of this bike today, and the controller, and installed the cables. Had to swap yellow/blue lines in both motor and hall cables before it would run right.

Son and I went for a short maiden run and both bikes worked well. He used 1.8AH for about 12 watt hours per mile on this bike. Some hills in there, some slow and some full throttle running. Speed not measured this time, probably around 25 mph top.

Now he has the ebike grin, and I renewed mine (has been a few months away).

My son took his bike out for his first solo run a few days ago and nearly damaged the battery. He used 90% of the 10S 5AH pack with no low voltage or integrated current instrumentation. He was very happy with how it performed. Probably did a 15 mile loop, maybe more.

I need to get the old CA off my ebike and put it on his. Perhaps this weekend.

We were fortunate this time.

At least get a lv beeper on at least one of the packs.

dogman said:

At least get a lv beeper on at least one of the packs.

Click to expand...

Great idea. Haven't tried any beepers.

Did the CA upgrade today. So now this rig has a CA set for 36V. That should do it.

Took a ride to lunch, charging now, used 2.5 AH. Will fine tune the CA shunt setting when the other bank finishes charging.

Need to make a 10S charging hookup for this bike. Now charging 5S twice.

The bikes ran well. Also need to put a bar end mirror on this one.

Still to go is a more permanent mounting setup and doubling the battery. Running the temporary setup on the rear rack, 10S 5AH. Very light and easy. Amazing what you can do with two batteries!

Son took this for a spin yesterday.

7.5 miles
25 watt hours per mile
4.7 amp hours
36.9 volts
27 mph top speed

Unfortunately his trip was about 20 miles, so he had to pedal most of the way (he unplugged the power so the CA did not record the rest of the trip).

The low voltage cutoff at 36 volts did not trip. He watched the amp-hours, and knowing the battery has a 5.0 amp hour capacity he stopped short of that.

It did help him a lot since there is a good climb in the first couple miles of the trip.

It appears he just max'ed the throttle and didn't pedal much until the battery was done.

I may have to set the CA for a lower max speed to help him get better economy.

This is still with the 10S2P 10AH 40V Turnigy pack. We have another 10S2P to add to it. However we may need to leave room to add more battery as this trip to BART (subway/train) is one he is likely to need capacity for.

20 miles * 25 watt-hours/mile = 500 watt-hours. Each of these batteries is 100 watt-hours, so he would need at least six of them to make this. We have four so two additional.

10S Charging Plan

I have a Cellpro 10S charger, so am planning to set this up:

My son crashed this bike today. I haven't seen it yet, have heard he was looking at the Cycle Analyst and hit a curb.

It is said to be not too bad. He scraped up his hands, wonder if he had his gloves on. Will find out more later. At least it looks good to have bloody hands on halloween. He is at work now, won't get off till late. Maybe it will help sales. Nobody likes to see their kids get hurt. I suppose in some way the electric part of the bike is contributory to this accident, too. Darn.

Have been working on upgrades for this ebike. Topeak Rack, Trunk arrived but not installed, Parallel wire harness coming soon, charging wiring to charge at 10S from the Cellpro all at once in design. Designed a PC board to bring out a pair of JST-XH's to a DB-15 at both the battery end and the charger end. Will work for 10S or 12S.

Also on this board is a quad FET solid state soft-on power switch (for a keyswitch or other master control switch), a Magura throttle interface with pots to adjust the throttle range, and input for Low Voltage Monitor that will cut off the throttle that will work with Methods or other Low Voltage Monitors.

There is a little room on the board, anything else that I should consider there?? Will get them made very soon. Anyone else have a use for something like this? Could have a few more made.

I am interested in your boards, Alan. I know what you mean about your son's bike. I built up a 12s3p with small Bafang hub for my 13 year old son. I intended it for use when I picked him up from sports after school. Not sure I trust him alone with lipo yet. Bike has to be normal looking to not be subject to peer issues! I have to be subtle about how I introduce it to him.

Well, it is not too bad. He scraped his palms a bit, one of them is a slightly injured. Bike has a few scrapes, hard to tell with the others it already has. It is a tough setup.

He noted some loss of power climbing a hill so he stopped and switched to the second battery set. Right now we have it set up for "left" and "right" battery. Each is 10S1P 5AH. While we wait for the rest of the wiring and some more batteries.

So the one side was probably cutting out due to the CA low battery setting. So he removed his gloves, changed to the other side, and tossed the gloves in his pack. Later he was looking at the CA, waiting for it to alternate between miles and amp hours, and he ran into the curb.

Lots of mistakes and contributory factors here.



Worked on the circuit board design. Added a bulk charger cutoff circuit for Methods HVC. If any cell goes over voltage, the HVC on Methods boards trigger the charger cutoff. This FET opens the current path and prevents further charging. This should work well with the various bulk charging systems. Methods has the high voltage set at about 4.28 so this won't trigger on a normal charge cycle, only when things get unbalanced. Most of the other HVC circuits should work with this cutoff as well.

So the PC Board is about full now. I'll review it for a few days before sending it. Measure twice, cut once.

Board Layout Update



There are three boards combined on this one, which I will cut apart later. The two small boards combine the balance leads into the DB15 connector. One is for the battery side, the other is for the charger side. It is set up for 10S or 12S and can be populated with JST-XH sockets for either. The DB15 connectors are much more robust for repeated charging cycles and the JST-XH connectors are hooked up once when the battery is configured and not disturbed until pack maintenance is required.

The bottom 2/3 of the board is the interesting part, the Ebike Master Switch board. The soft switch has four TO220 FETs in parallel which can handle power up to a 24 FET controller level. The switch is controlled by a remote switch or keyswitch. The HVCLVC is set up for Methods HVC LVC boards to plug in directly, or other types with optical isolators can be used as well. The throttle circuit is clamped on low voltage cutout, and it provides adjustments to allow either resistive or hall throttles to be used. There is a throttle in, out and extension. The extension is for those cases where more than one battery pack (and Master Switch board) is configured to control the throttle.

There is a charge control input circuit that is controlled by the HVC, so if a cell goes overvoltage it will shut off the bulk charging input. That is the fifth TO220.

Okay, enough tweaking. Load tube 1. Flood tube. Open outer doors. Fire. Order is away.

1 business day to make PCB.

2 business days to ship.

Should have by middle of next week.

Won't have all the parts that fast, but I have many of them.

The boards arrived and look good. Collecting parts.

Last friday I reworked the battery pack and reconfigured it to 10S4P 20AH in a Topeak trunk bag. Used geoff's SMD LVC boards and icecube's discharge harness. I'll add photos later. I'm not thrilled with all that weight there on the rear rack, but my son is quite happy with it. Maybe we'll try something else later, but he is using the bike every day or two and really appreciates the range.

So he made about 5 trips totalling about 30 miles over the last week plus on the one charge and when I recharged the pack today it took just about 19 amp hours. It never tripped the CA low voltage warning, so that right there is an improvement over running the smaller packs. The geoff cell level SMD LVC is not yet cabled up. So we're relying on the CA pack voltage protection which is set pretty high, 36 volts as I recall.

So he is getting about 16 miles per 10 amp hours. Not too bad. He doesn't pedal much. It has been somewhat cool lately so the battery doesn't put out quite as much. Much of this was in the dark.

The pack is sized for a longer trip than his commute. Here to the BART train is 10 miles, so 20 round trip, plus some range at the other end, so this is what 4P is needed for. He doesn't do this often now with his new job being close to home - about 3 or 4 miles out. But when he does it gives him some flexibility. If he runs out of battery the last part of the homeward trip is downhill so not too bad to pedal. For commuting to his new job he can go half a week between charges which is nice.

I also got him a MagicShine 900 headlight to augment his 100 lumen handlebar mount weak-light. That 900 is a nice light. It worked well for a week and then developed a connection problem in the cable so GeoManGear is going to replace it. Good folks to deal with.

Alan, you're one nice Dad. Nice job getting your son set up...

Thanks Tony.

Made some more progress today. Cut apart the PC boards on the mill using a carbide PCB rasp bit:



Soldered the parts on:





The whole charging system with Mean Well PS, Cellpro 10S Balancing Charger, and most of the cabling:



Testing the charging system on the bike. This test is with short cabling, setting the charger on the battery pack. Later the charger will remain on the shelf and the six foot cabling will reach to the battery pack:



A week ago I upgraded the pack to 10S4P. I need to take more photos, but here is one of half the pack. 3M Vet-Wrap was used to tie the batteries together, that is NOT DUCT TAPE.



With this setup we can charge at 7 amps, so a total charge would take about 3 hours. Each charge is a balance charge.

Did a charge cycle at 5 amps, worked great! Really nice to charge the whole pack at once, one connector (DB-15) for all the balance leads, and one for the main charge current (PowerPole).

Happy Thanksgiving all!

My son has a seasonal job now and he's getting a lot of use from his ebike mostly for commuting. In the dark, cold or rain. Occasionally like today it is pretty nice but he went in at 5AM and it was dark and cold then. Today he returned home complaining about the battery running out on the way home. Apparently it started throttling back on the hill less than a mile from home. After that one good hump it is pretty easy sailing, so he nursed it home.

I've been ignoring it a bit lately, so it has not been charged since 11/27. I have not finished the cabling so he can charge it himself so I have to do it. Looks like he has gone 31.5 miles on this charge and consumed 19.89 amp hours on the 10S4P 20AH Turnigy pack. Good thing we balance charge each time, that's a pretty good drain. We'll have to be more careful about that. The Cycle Analyst is cutting it off at 36 volts, and it shows 36.2 now before charging, so that is working nicely and is a good cutoff value. Would not want to go lower than 36V for that.

So here's the whole data set:

36.2 V resting (36V cutoff via CA) 10S 4P pack 42 V max
19.89 AH of 20
31.5 miles
24.0 WH/mi
44.7 Amax
34.9 Vmin
26.6 maxS mph (prob downhill)
15.3 avS mph

I believe this represents 5 commute round trips. I suspect the mileage is slightly low based on how long this commute is, I suspect the tire circumference calibration needs to be refined. We will see what the charger puts back to compare the capacity. I did not check the cell voltages. Maybe I'll do that now after a few minutes of charging. Well, with 1.8AH already put back in the cells are incredibly well balanced, so if they were out I didn't get to see it.