Another RG250 with Colossus Motor

SplinterOz said:
jonescg said:
I need to learn how to do wiring harnesses neatly... Tantalisingly close mate!
Well don't learn from me... It is nowhere near as neat as I wanted it.

The project might have to park for another month as Dani goes in for surgery in two weeks..
Stringing all the wiring on one of theses is not an easy chore. You definitely have one of the nicest diy motorcycle conversions.
 
Arlo1 said:
Stringing all the wiring on one of theses is not an easy chore. You definitely have one of the nicest diy motorcycle conversions.

Thanks, I am very proud of the look and performance of the bike now
I agree, it was some serious time probably 3 times more than I thought. Also I would use some smaller gauge wire for some components if I did it again.
 
Sorry for the lack of updates... not been a good couple of months around my place... however some update.

Ok so all of the electronics are DONE!!!.
[youtube]yxX3pddjSDg[/youtube]

Some "final mounts" for the important stuff like contactors.

So I picked up a polycarbonate project box and using 3M VHB tape I have put the Contactors, SOC sender, precharge circuit and voltmeter relay in the box and will be on the bike. This will be a neat little "grey box" mounted on a plate behind the battery pack.

Control Box by Splinter, on Flickr


Contorl Box by Splinter, on Flickr


Contorl Box by Splinter, on Flickr


Contorl Box by Splinter, on Flickr

Now for a few small mechanical things for the engineer.
 
Ok a lot of things have been going on, however I am very close to getting the engineer over for the final time.

Things I have completed in the last three weeks.
- Box with all high voltage contactors and relays filled and mounted
- gauge cluster fully working with state of charge, speedo and ammeter
- Volt meter mounted and working
- Polycarbonate sheets over the outer edge of the battery pack
- Kill switch wired into the main contactor

I only have a few things to complete
- mounting plate for BMS, high volt fuses and DC/DC convter
- charge wires mounted
- radiators mounted
- motor number engraved into motor

The bike will then be ready for the engineer.

I have also weighed the bike and it is 71kg front wheel and 60kg rear (note this is without the tank shell and stuff above). 131kg
The original bike was 71kg front and 59kg rear. 130kg (Dry)
That is with no fuel and oil with an 18 litre fuel tank and 1.2 litre oil tanks the total wet weight should be an extra 14 - 16 kg, making the total weight 145 - 147 kg.
I should be well within that weight.
 
Ok so I finally got my ass into gear and got to the Dyno.
I did the run with a couple of settings.

Green run is my battery pack 100% motor current and 50% battery current.
Blue is another small A123 pack in parallel with my pack (to stop voltage sage) 100% motor current and 70% battery current. The controller cut out with "Internal Reset - May be caused by some transient fault condition like a temporary over-current, momentarily high or low battery voltage. This can happen during normal operation".
Red is with both packs 100% motor current and 50% battery current.

All up we did over 10 runs on the dyno.
Note it appears that the 50% battery current stops the internal reset.



Dyno Run - Electric Bike by Splinter, on Flickr

Green - 11.3kw (My bike standard setup)
Blue - 12.2 kw and cuts out
Red - 13.99 kw - 18.7 hp
 
Nice one Tony! 12-14 kW at the tread isn't too bad for that tiny little motor. Top speed is perfect for the ACTs numerous 80 zones :)
 
83.6% total system efficiency.... Thats pretty damn amazing. Is this a rear wheel dyno? Did you hook up the liquid cooling? How warm was the motor?
 
Arlo1 said:
83.6% total system efficiency.... Thats pretty damn amazing. Is this a rear wheel dyno? Did you hook up the liquid cooling? How warm was the motor?
Rear wheel dyno. No water cooling. About 75 centigrade showing on the touchless thermometer.

As you can imagine I am happy, not totally convinced on the efficiency, it is hard to align the numbers on my dash and for an ammeter to get an accurate reading.
 
Great to hear its all approved :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen:

Will be looking to get a engineer over to approve my bike soon, pretty sure i will pass on the electrics when i do it all, as its just tick the boxes and make sure it does the job. Only worry is with my bike i had to build a adapter plate to mount the hub motor slightly further down and back from the normal wheel mounting spots. If you don't mind me asking how many visits by the approved engineer did you actually need to get it approved?
 
Right... so this year has been a bit full. Wife has had surgery, we moved house, I have changed roles at work and my son had his appendix taken out last Monday at 1am in an emergency.

However I did get the certificate from the engineer and I did pay him a lot of money. This means I have paperwork and a sticker for the bike so I can take it and get it registered. He did state I needed a chain guard and a primary drive guard so two weeks ago I got those done.

Today I put it all together for the first time...


Final Fitting by Splinter, on Flickr

Note the bottom panel needs painting but I will do that after registration.
 
Tony it looks beautiful. You should leave it black - it looks good and breaks up the blue!

The motor and drive sprocket guard looks the goods too. Can't wait to see it with ACT plates!
 
jonescg said:
Tony it looks beautiful. You should leave it black - it looks good and breaks up the blue!

The motor and drive sprocket guard looks the goods too. Can't wait to see it with ACT plates!


I am planing to get some vinyl stickers to break up the blue... but you are right a black finish might look good. Still have to get them sanded and painted the gel coat is pretty awful.
 
Looks fantastic, well done.
Always satisfying reading the journey from the beginning. Hope the family is doing well.

Was the engineering approval expensive because he was consulting throughout or just a steep and time intensive curve at the end?
I like the black lower too.
 
Tinto said:
Was the engineering approval expensive because he was consultating throughout or just a steep and time intensive curve at the end?
...

Price seems standard. Another bike here has been charged the same with a few more visits to the engineer. A couple of he converted cars were about the same. Seems the bulk of their costs are the engineers liability insurance.
 
Great work mate! I had one of these bikes
in the late 80s i cut the lower fairing just in front of the kick stand
IMHO it looks better without that rearward piece, was there to cover the ICE
engines exhaust...

Nice job congrats on the engineer signing off on it too!

KiM
 
Lovely bike! Best of luck with your family health issues man, sounds like your plate is full. When you get some time however, don't forget to update us :mrgreen:
 
I did a huge amount of work this weekend to identify, isolate, remove and replace faulty cells in my battery pack. Since registering the bike I was only getting around 20km range from the bike before the battery low alert went off. Charging at that point only put around 18ah into the pack.

I knew something was up.

So after a quick run I put the cell monitors on the pack and saw that cell group 7 was very low voltage compared to the rest of the pack and mush have been the reason for the alarm.

Trying to disassemble the pack I found several cells where the anode just spun freely on the battery and were difficult to remove. So I hacked a tool out of a old pair of crimpers and removed all the offending batteries. 6 or 8 in all (not sure now as once out I tested all batteries from the pack and my spares) some were as low as 1.2 volts and others the voltage was ok but the resistance was over 100 milliohms instead of 7 - 16 milliohms. Two even had some corrosion from escaped electrolyte.


Bad Cells by Splinter, on Flickr
 
Since I have had it registered I have been doing some runs on the bike to try and find the limits of the bike.

The good.
  • The bike handles great. I am taking a little while to get use to how small it is however.
  • I love the quiet while riding it, it is so cool to be doing 90km/h and only hearing the wind.
  • The bike is only using just under 70 wh per Km over my commute (speeds from 60 to 80 km/h)
  • The motor is staying around 70 to 80 degrees C for the trip WITHOUT the water cooling fitted.
  • Keeping up with traffic is not problem and pulling ahead from the lights is ok even with the 80% motor current settings
  • Speedo is accurate to within 1%

The bad
  • I am only getting 33km range from the pack.
  • It is only accepting about 2.2kw hours from the charger rather than about 3.9kw if the pack was being fully discharged then charged
  • So I have about 3/5th of my available pack
  • Looks like I will have to track down some more damaged cells.
  • My charger is not very efficient showing about 87% while charging the bike.

I can get to and from work with a range of approx 34km from the pack as is which should give me a 56 to 60km range with the pack fully working (remember that is at commute speeds of approx 80km/h)
 
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