YZF600R Thundercat EV

The bike is alive again, I received my new Kelly 72601, slapped it in and away it went. I am now working on the throttle response. Currently it is set to Torque and pulling away from stopped is very sluggish. I will try the speed setting to see if it makes a difference.I have a video to upload so watch this space.
 
Good news, I kept the control mode in Torque and changed the Throttle up/down rate to 1, this gave me comparable response to the ICE engined version. Now off to get some LED's for remote controller indication and book the bike in for an MOT.
 
Good news, the bike passed its MOT today with a few advisories, the rear shock, a common problem with the YZF600R, front brake discs pitted where the brake pads have been resting while the bike has been stood still, rear tyre valve beginning to perish and the front sprocket needs a guard. I have managed to get the insurance sorted and Bikes, Trikes n Stuff have provided a cover letter for evidence to the DVLA. I now need to get to the DVLA office with all these documents, a V10 and my V5 with a change to the fuel type submitted. I will keep you all posted as to my progress, I am hoping to have this all sorted by Friday the 19th this week. Here are some pictures taken for the insurance company.front.jpglhs.JPGrear.JPGrhs.JPG

The Daytime Running Light will come on when I press the start button and turn off when the side lights and main lights are on. I currently have a 20S2P battery configuration of LIPO cells at 5000mAh, this gives me 10Ah, the battery box will hold a total of 32 of these 21V 5S LIPO batteries which will give me 40Ah capacity.

I did a test run and reached 40mph with only 1800rpm indicated, this seems to confirm the top speed of around 80 mph. It was a hot day, no wind, fully charged at 80V.

I will post some video footage once I have got the bike re-registered as an Electric vehicle.
 
I carried out a quick road test today, here are the results.

Starting voltage 80 V
Battery Configuration 20S2P
Pack Capacity 10 Ah
Miles covered 3.8 miles

At Full throttle
Speed 55 mph
Motor rpm 2000 rpm
Current 60% (360 A)
End Voltage 71.8 V

I am using a 68 V to 84 V voltmeter from Kelly Controls, it's not very accurate but I have ordered a digital gauge to replace it, I want to know what the voltage sag is. The voltage readings were taken with my fluke, I might gaffer tape it to the bike and redo the test though.
I will carry out a similar test when I add a further 10 Ah to the battery pack.
 
You need a Cycle Analyst. One of the normal data points is Minimum Voltage for that trip, so it records voltage sag for you, which will be substantial with just 10ah of battery.
 
John in CR said:
You need a Cycle Analyst. One of the normal data points is Minimum Voltage for that trip, so it records voltage sag for you, which will be substantial with just 10ah of battery.

Hi John,
The CA is on my list of things to buy just got to stump up the cash. Thanks for taking an interest, in the meantime I shall be gathering as much real world data as possible as I build the pack up.
 
pendragon8000 said:
I agree with John about the CA. You can easily extend the range by limiting the power with the different program able modes.
Pulling 100s of amps from a 10ah battery wouldn't last long hey?

Hey pendragon8000, thanks for your comments. I am going to play around with the controller settings to gather data as well. I have a nice little circuit of roads I can use to get real world data.

I have an onboard video camera now so should be able to start showing those.

What I want to achieve is good acceleration and distance, this bike will be used for a 50 mile return commute over flat terrain.
 
The bike is now taxed, after two trips to my local DVLA office and one call to DVLA Swansea it was all sorted and I received my tax disc over the counter. I needed to bring my V5 log book with the fuel type changed to Electric, photos of the bike including a good picture with the licence plate, a letter from the garage that carried out the MOT confirming it is an electric bike, receipts from my purchases of the electric equipment I have put on the bike, the MOT and insurance and the V10. I gave them the motor, controller and DC/DC converter receipts which they copied.tax disc.JPG
 
Hi folks, I have been a bit busy with work hence the lack of posts until now. A lot has happened since the last post, I had to replace the controller under warranty. Kelly were very good. I also had delivery issues with a Hobby K£$g who failed to deliver my batteries. Fortunately I was able to recover my money through PayPal.

Any way I managed to source 50 Lipo batteries direct from China at half the cost from the major online retailers and began building the pack up. I was all set up for 20s8p but the new batteries were slightly wider so now I am 20s7p.

While my battery box was out of the bike I realised I could configure the batteries in a different way ala Ripperton R1 and Jonescg VoltronII. I will probably do the change in the summer, it's freezing here now 6 degrees C.

Any way here are some pictures of my battery installation.
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P1030097.JPG
View attachment 1

Tomorrow I will be making a few changes to the controller tray, the new controller has the J1 and j2 sockets at one end and the HV terminals at the other. The contactor is too close.
P1030099.JPG
 
I have put the bike back together and now it has 35Ah pack and carried out a real world road tests. With my 10Ah Turnigy Lipo pack I was averaging 7.4 miles before the pack voltage got too low. With my 35Ah pack I achieved 15.4 miles. The test was town riding at 30 to 40 mph with a quick stint to 60mph. The pack voltage was up at 77.8V before I started and died at 57.8V, that's 2.89 volts per cell. I am using Methods HVC/LVC boards and they are working really well. Ambient temperature was 10 degrees Celsius and the motor temperature got up to 70 degrees Celsius, the controller reached 30 degrees Celsius.

I had the battery and motor current set at 100% and regen current at 25%. Acceleration was good enough to out drag most cars and I achieved 60 mph without much effort. I will repeat the same journey with 50% regen and compare the results until the optimum regen setting is achieved then play about with the motor current. Regen works off the brake switch I am not using a pot.

My aim is to be able to commute to work which is a 50 mile round trip, fortunately I work at a Power Station and I am able to charge the bike up there. It is clear that I will need at least 60Ah to get to work and top up the charge to return home and more voltage. My charger cuts out at 80V and there is another 4V available if I get the charger reprogrammed. I don't want to get too close to the 4.2V so I will probably reconfigure the pack and go up to 96V. This means orienting the battery pack from across the frame to upright in the frame similar to Ripperton's R1 and Chris Jones' Voltron II. I have 30 Lipo batteries spare so the design starts now.


I will feedback more as the tests and designs progress.

Bernel
 
Another road test today; I limited the motor current to 75%(450A) and reduced the regen to 25%. I covered 20.8 miles using 11.3 Volts up, I only stopped because my fingers started to get numb, the ambient temperature was 9 degrees C! The motor temperature reached 60 degrees C and the battery and controller reached 17 degrees C.

Reducing the battery current did not produce any noticeable difference in performance but I will carry out back to back tests to confirm my findings.

I will video my next ride from a helmet cam and drop the battery current to 350A (58%) and check the performance and range again.
 
Bernel said:
Another road test today; I limited the motor current to 75%(450A) and reduced the regen to 25%. I covered 20.8 miles using 11.3 Volts up, I only stopped because my fingers started to get numb, the ambient temperature was 9 degrees C! The motor temperature reached 60 degrees C and the battery and controller reached 17 degrees C.

Reducing the battery current did not produce any noticeable difference in performance but I will carry out back to back tests to confirm my findings.

I will video my next ride from a helmet cam and drop the battery current to 350A (58%) and check the performance and range again.

Good project!

No worrie The actual temp outdoor today is -24 celsius!! :lol: That's FREEEZING !!

Doc
 
Hi,

I like your electric thundercat, you have done a good job 8)

I have similar setup as you. ME913 motor, KHB12601 controller and 36S3P A123 cells (118V). Gear ratio is 5:1 and weight of the bike is 170kg.
I can hit only 110km/h and 0-100km/h in 10s...it really sux :evil: Every time I set more than 20% throotle, controller cuts out :cry: I went from 100% motor current to 70% and still same shit :oops:
I think something must be wrong with the controller :roll:
 
Not much to report, it's a bit too cold to be working in the garage. Meanwhile now I have a YouTube account I can upload some videos. Here is a video I shot last summer during my bike build. It is a walk-round of the bike showing the motor mounting brackets. The quality is not as good as the above video because I shot it from my mobile phone.
[youtube]pkpFUpVDaWA[/youtube]
The brackets are made from 6mm and 8mm aluminium plate, inspiration was taken from Podolefsky over on Elmoto and Rippertons R1. It came out very well and I have the drawings on hard copy. I will get the sprocket side mount redone with ventilation holes to improve cooling for the motor. The mount definitely gets hot to the touch, I will be getting the sprocket cover made shortly out of aluminium and this will help conduct heat away from the motor. I will carry out thermal tests and consider getting fins welded on if necessary, the summer months should be interesting.
 
Here is the nice aluminium sprocket coverfront sprocket 2.jpg. A nice job by a local firm in my village. More work coming there way me thinks.

I have been carrying out some real world tests. The data is given below.
data.jpg

What I have found with my 13 Stone of weight on the bike my top speed is 60 mph, the motor rpm is at 2500 and battery voltage at 68V from a nominal 74V. I want to increase my range to 40 miles and up the top speed to 70mph. I have a 15 tooth front sprocket and the standard 47 tooth rear sprocket. I have fifty 5S 5000mAh Lipo batteries at my disposal. I am thinking of modifying the current battery pack from 20S7P to 25S10P, this would give me a nominal voltage of 92.5V and 50Ah. The battery pack weight would increase from 22.6kg to 33.35kg.

Can any EV'ers see any problems with this?
 
After a series of road tests I noticed my controller would cut out and display an undervoltage, then it would not power on at all. I bought a DC/DC booster to bring the controller input voltage up to 24V. This was the recommended supply, I was previously running at 12V. This cured the fault and improved performance and response.

I have fitted the front sprocket cover View attachment 1and modified the instrument cluster..

The current meter is below the speedo, I have taken the output from the Kelly Controller and now trying to scale it to read 600A max. I will be off to Maplin shortly to buy some resistors and capacitors.

I did another test ride today, bike still is really smooth. I have a further 28 batteries to fit to the bike and I have decided to keep the current voltage at 72V and increase the number of batteries in parallel. I will end up with a configuration of 20S12P, I currently have 20S7P.


I am working on my next build, the specs will be a nominal voltage of 111V and I will be using the DLC-28 BLDC from Electric Motorsport. My aim is to build a more sporty electric bike which is comparable to the ICE YZF600R Thundercat.

If you have any views on this I would love to hear them.


Bernel
 
You can not use DLC-28 motor with Kelly controller, because this motor has sine/cosine encoder and Kelly supports only Hall sensors. So Sevcon is the way to go. You cen get complete power train here http://www.evdrive.com/products/evd-motor-controller/
 
Hi Tomaj,
Yes I see that from the description on the website, I will have to wait and see what is available.

Latest update, my front sprocket started slipping and almost damaged my rpm sensor. The grub screws are not enough to secure the sprocket so I have ordered a 15T 51-15 taper lock sprocket with 1210 taper bush from Wych bearings here in the UK. This will take care of the problem.

I am currently redesigning my battery pack, I will stay with the 20S but will be increasing capacity to 12P, this will give me 60Ah and enough range to get me to work which is 25miles. I will be able to recharge there and get back quite easily. There are no hills on my commute so wind will be the main obstruction to performance.

I have been trying to get the LED panel meter to work off the Kelly controller meter output but not having much success. If anyone out there has any ideas I would live to hear it. I will be buying a Hall current sensor for battery amps and configuring the output to my Arduino temperature. The LCD screen will eventually replace the temperature gauge on my instrument cluster and I will put the motor temperature back on the LCD as well. This will return my handlebars to normal.

Big respect to Chris Jones on Voltron II, that bike is going to be very impressive!


Bernel.
 
Nice work, Bernel! Wish mine was usable already... ;)
I noticed you only get ~2 times the range from going from 10Ah to 15 Ah (differenct cells of course) - did that hold up/scale the same way?

Also I'm quite interested in how you connected the tachometer to the motor (hall?) output, please elaborate.
BTW I totally second the call fot the CA - wouldn't want to miss it!
 
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