Aprilia RS50 with 4kW QS-motor 17" rim

[Manny]

this project started about 6 years ago. i wanted the same moped that i had when i whas 17 but electric of course. so i bought a somewhat tired secondhand aprillia RS50. it needs to pass single vehicle approval to be legale on the open road. original spec 50 kph top speed and 1.35 kw 50cc two-stroke engine.


not mine(mine one is in many pieces)

And i got a hobbyking Turnigy 80-100-A 180Kv Brushless Outrunner, and have the crankcase machined to make it fit.



and for testing purposes i use three flooded lead acid battery, and starten building my own controller. the first controller i build ended as a fireball. the second attempt worked better and is still in one piece. then live got in the way, got my bachelor's degree and stared working full time.

the project stopped for 2 or 3 years, i build a e-bike and a e-longboard and i got inspiration to revive the project. i whas browsing this website off and on for years. one day i saw the QS motor 17" rim and it whas a perfect fit for the aprillia. so i ordered a 4kW one and a sabvoton svmc96080 controller. by making use of the hub motor there is more space for the batteries and no more chain drive an gearbox.



the lead acid batteries had to go, way too heavy and insufficient capacity. so the hunt is on for some lithium. a massive 18650 build is too much work and awkward to mount. one day i whas looking online for second hand electric car prices, i came across a totaled Peugeot ion with the battery for sale. i buy it

easy to connect big powerful lithium. the 8S packs are 1.44 kWh 50Ah planning to use 3 packs in series. maybe will add a 4s pack. tomorrow i will start to build the battery mounting rack.

 

[-UP-]

Nice find that iOn battery and cool project, I'll be following!

 

[beetbocks]

nice... i'm thinking of doing the same thing - with the RS 50 --ill be watching with interest.
Did you purchase the charger at the same time?

 

[Manny]

nice... i'm thinking of doing the same thing - with the RS 50 --ill be watching with interest.
Did you purchase the charger at the same time?

i found 2 Ascom FR-48 1200W powersupply's. they need to be modified to limit the output voltage(currently @ 54V).

somber note: i found out that the bike has to pass a EMC test to be roadlegal. and all components have to de EMC compliant as well. :?

 

[Manny]

Did some work on the battery rack and "torque plates" this weekend.

Started work on the battery rack. first roughly welded together a oversized frame. I will trim it down to fit bit by piece when i weld on the mounting brackets.



The battery pack fits nicely in the frame.



With the fairing back on the bike. It fits pretty good but it will need a new front panel a bit wider than the original.

Made some 3D printed test pieces to mount the motor in the swingarm. I will have a set milled out of steel when i am happy with the fit



I will need to cut a big slot in the swingarm to get the motor in.

 

[beetbocks]

nice..

 

[Manny]

Printed the final 3D models of the axle mounting blocks. next I will have to cut a big slot in the swing arm to make the QS hub axle fit.



I love the 3D printer for this. pretty fast iteration to get to the final design.
Printing one block takes about 3 hours, but that's a lot better than ordering a steel part waiting 3 weeks and then find out its wrong.

in the final design i changed some thing to make the machining easier and possibly cheaper.
changed fillets to chamfers and made the slot for the cable square instead of round.

now I need to find some one to make these blocks.

 

[Manny]

I tried to get the the axle mounting blocks machined. but that was to expensive. then I found a lokal waterjet cutting company.

had to changed the design. split the the axle mounting block in to two parts the axle block and a fill plate

 

[whereswally606]

love your idea of the plastic printed mockups. Thought the same thing the other day for making for torque arm inserts to fit scott ransom ids dropouts. Hav not needed torque arms so far but I plan to up the power soon and don't plan on ruining the dropout.

 

[craiggor]

No need for type approval,if you have the bikes v5c.Its just a engine swop.See Sparta's thread on here Honda Mt 50 road legal conversion.

Sent from my D101 using Tapatalk

 

[marcexec]

No need for type approval,if you have the bikes v5c.Its just a engine swop.See Sparta's thread on here Honda Mt 50 road legal conversion.

Sent from my D101 using Tapatalk

+1 on that. EMV testing is only for vehicles built from scratch. Some countries in the EU have a cutoff date, though. I'd contact a few of your fellow Dutch converters via evalbum.com for specifics for the Netherlands.

BTW, I think your video
[youtube]5sPNl6ZWYms[/youtube]
got me started with my mess back in the day. Bedankt!

 

[Manny]

Thanks for the reply's

love your idea of the plastic printed mockups. Thought the same thing the other day for making for torque arm inserts to fit scott ransom ids dropouts.

The 3d printed mockups saved me a ton of money and time. It took 3 prototypes to get it right, and the parts i got water cut fit snug after an hour of careful filing.

No need for type approval,if you have the bikes v5c.Its just a engine swop.See Sparta's thread on here Honda Mt 50 road legal conversion.

+1 on that. EMV testing is only for vehicles built from scratch. Some countries in the EU have a cutoff date, though. I'd contact a few of your fellow Dutch converters via evalbum.com for specifics for the Netherlands.

BTW, I think your video

got me started with my mess back in the day. Bedankt!

I wish it were that simple. In het Netherlands you need a individual vehicle approval. For a one of vehicle you need to prove that all electrical components meet European guideline 97/24/EG.

And yes thats my video. graag gedaan

 

[macribs]

*subscribed*

 

[Manny]

I have made some progress, not as much as I would have liked. I am in the prosses of moving to a new (for me) home, with more space.

Before I needed to move, I was working on the swing arm. It was badly corroded so I removed it from the bike an cleaned it with a steel brush. After the steel brush I coated it in a rust dissolver for a couple of days. That removed almost all of the rust, a few layers of primer will protect it for now. I still need to add a mounting bracket for the brake.



I reassembled the wheel and swingarm and put it back in to the rest of the frame. a lot easyer to move with two wheels



I ordered 25mm2 cable and ring terminals for the battery connections.



The work on the frame for the battery box is almost done. to mount the covers to the frame, I tig welded a lot of small pieces of M4 allthread on the frame.



Ordered a lot of other stuff. dc/dc converter, main fuse and holder, two small relay and holders and some crimp connectors.

can't wait to connect the battery and give it a go!

 

[E-Chopper]

Cool Project.
Still lot work to do !
I'm envious of your happiness :wink: ......for me it is always a great Moment to start the Controller first time and turn the throttle .

Greetings
Martin

 

[Manny]

It has been a long time sins my last post. In that time a lot has happend.

Inrush limiter

this board/circuit "slowly" charges the capacitors in the controller and the dc-dc converter. I used this instead of a resistor because this circuit after charging the caps turns on the MOSFET fully, so when the main contractor takes over there is little to no voltage across it. more info at: https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=40142&start=571

Electronics

View attachment 5

this board sits in het battery housing. it consists of main and control relays, fuses, inrush limiter and the dc-dc converter.
when the key is turned on the positive relay contact and the pre charge contact switch on. and after that the start button can be pressed, this will latch a relay on and connects the main relay on the negative connects the dc-dc converter output to 12v and switches a relay to send power to the e-lock connector on the controller and disables the precharge.

View attachment 4
R1 is replaced by the inrush limiter.

Throttle




because i wand to keep the original look to the bike, i didn't want to change the throttle to a simple electronic one. So i kept the original cable operated throttle. therefor i had to make a cable operated electronic throttle. i used the guts out of a cheap e-throttle and 3d printed so parts to make just that.

Main power cable




to connect the controller to the battery via the main contractors. i used 25mm2 orange cable(color is mandatory). the connectors at the controller did not fit because it is designed for 16mm2, some grinding fixed that

yesterday i had my first test run. it was great. controller limited to 40A butt still its quick.

 

[izeman]

maybe i'm missing something important here, but you use ONE FET w/o any cooling in your inrush limiter?
this may work for 40A for a short period of time, but it WILL fail if you crank up the amps. for 50A i use 2x 3077 in parallel bolted to the frame.
edit: sorry. i should have looked at the circuit scheme. all fine

 

[Manny]

inrush limiter:
When I whas doing some more testing i heard a sparking noise when switching on the bike.
so i disconnected the pre-charge circuit and inspect it.


What probably happened, the mosfet failed do to over stress 3300uF at 112V is a bit to much for the TO-220 mosfet, the next time I "started" the bike the inrush blew the track off the pcb. I wanted something better, a online search came up with the LTC4252 "hot swap controller" normally used in 48V systems,
but spec'd up to 500V so that's good. tested the chip in simulation "LTspice", in the simulation you can also measure the die temp of the mosfet.
small mosfets will be killed instantly in this application, so i went for the IRFP250 cheap high voltage and good soa graph.

The bonus of using the LTC4252 is that it times out if the charge takes to long, this saves the mosfet when the output is shorted.

BMS:
Build up the cell monitoring boards for all 28 cells. And started work on the code for the cell modules and the master unit. Doing the minimum at this point.
I want to be able to monitor the cell voltage during testing. The cell modules are sleeping most of the time, when the master sends a message
the cell modules will wake up and do what the master wants.


Battery box:
The frame is painted and the side panels are cut to size, will probably paint the aluminium end caps today.
And assemble the hole think after mounting the cell module pcbs.

Instrument cluster:
Because i want to keep a original look to the bike, i want to keep the original dials. To make them useful i ordered instrument cluster stepper motors. 3d printed some adapters to mount the motors to the original dials. A arduino will read data From the sabvoton and sets the steppers accordingly. The temp dial will become the battery indicator and the rev counter will become the power meter.

[youtube]u6ZrxvhsTb8[/youtube]

Rear break:
the rear-break whas badly corroded when I removed it from the bike. after a slow cleanup, paint and a set of new rubbers it looks like new.
I made a bracket to mount is to the swing arm, originally it is mounted to a aluminium plate that mounts on the shaft and a support.
with the hub motor there is no place and need of that, so I will mount it fixed to the swing arm.

 

[Dui ni shuo de dui]

Amazing skills here!

I'm pretty curious about how you plan to do this:
"A arduino will read data From the sabvoton and sets the steppers accordingly. The temp dial will become the battery indicator and the rev counter will become the power meter."

I get the Arduino to stepper part, but how do you plan to read the data from the sabvoton? I suppose you'll use the USB cable and connect it somehow to the Arduino, but then how do you actually decode the data?
I own a Sabvoton myself and would be absolutely thrilled to know how to do this!

 

[Manny]

i have bin playing with the sabvoton data port.

the usb connector is not "USB" its serial the data, and looks like modbus. in a modbus system the master asks the slave (sabvoton) to send a range of data.

this is what the pc does when it communicates with the controller.

i will probably write a post or topic about it, with some arduino sample code.

 

[whereswally606]

please do Manny, this is excellent work and has me intrigued too

 

[Dui ni shuo de dui]

i will probably write a post or topic about it, with some arduino sample code.

Please, please do it for us noobs!!
That would be some epic stuff to know, I have so many things I would like to display on my dashboard from the sabvoton...

 

[Manny]

I started a seperate topic for reading the data from the sabvoton.

https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=90240

 

[Scottydog]

I like this, gather the bike is still a work in progress?

 

[Manny]

I like this, gather the bike is still a work in progress?

eeuhe yes. I am busy renovating my house so this project is on hold for the moment. it will be finished one day