Dee Jay said:
Thanks for the info and the pics. I just scanned through your page..the starter motor is farkin brilliant, must climb like a mountain goat... does it engage only when accelerating? or is that a robot motor? It's actually more silent on your vid than I anticipated.
Almost all the noise is from the bike frame amplifying the chain noise. I'm working on ways to dampen that.
It's actually a (~350W) wheelchair/powerchair motor with it's own gearbox, reducing it's output to around 120RPM at 24V, and at the 36V I'm using it at becomes a max of 180RPM, with a 24T:52T reduction after that to go straight into my regular bike drivetrain, along with the pedals that go into it at the same point, both around 80-90RPM typical (so I don't have to windmill my feet to keep up).
EDIT, to add: Forgot to answer part of your question. I'm not sure how well it climbs, but with the motor's small wattage it probably won't do very well for very long before overheating.
Got a better one to try to fix that with but no mount for it yet.
It is intended to be pedal-assist only, once I complete it, with throttle controlled by the tension on the pedal chain, but for now it is hand-throttle controlled, and runs all the time; primarily to help me startup from a dead stop, but also to keep going in the super-hot Phoenix Arizona summers. This *is* my transportation, so with my failing knees I need the motor to do what I used to do by leg power alone.
END EDIT
My project will be a tandem, with rear steering also.
You could adapt the way I'm doing it to add a third frame if you want a REALLY long bike.
That'd make it easy to do a tandem and still have all the steering like mine. Except you would need to use a somewhat different arrangement for the rear steering tie-rod, to keep it out of the way of the front rider.
I've been having a hell of a time searching for a particular swingarm, one with the BB built into it for tandem use.
I've never seen one, but I came up with a way to put the BB as the center of the pivot for a rear suspension swingarm, so the chainline doesn't change length, for my first CrazyBike idea (cleverly named "ReCycle", that I never finished for a few reasons, mostly not having the right parts yet).
View attachment 4
This lets me use any old rear triangle for the swingarm, along with whatever suspension spring/etc I have, to make the swingarm pivot and whatnot.
Only welding needed is to put a flat plate to bolt the U-bolts to, on the rear end of the frame the swingarm will connect to, and whatever mounts are needed for the springs/suspension points.
Now, the real problem I have is that I don't have any nylon rings I can use for the U-bolt-to-BB-shell bearings, so I'd need to find some nylon wheels I could lathe down, or something similar. I had found *one* absolutely perfect ring (the one you see in the images) made of black nylon, from some conduit hanger or other, but can't find who made them or anywhere that I can get more of them at. (and I think I asked *everywhere* that deals in construction supplies, contracting, etc, to no avail--they never heard of it, of the ones that would answer me at all).
But if you have nylon blocks or discs you could easily machine your own on a lathe (even a drill-based homemade jury-rigged lathe would be good enough for this).
And I need disc brake mounts. V-brakes won't cut it riding in the pouring rain with two kids. A swingarm with V and disc combo would be ideal... or is that overkill?
Not really. It would let you stop even if one or the other fails.
If you don't freewheel the motor, and have regen braking or plug braking ability in the controller, you can use THAT to stop you PDQ, too.
I'm working on altering my drivetrain to do that, but have to finish working out the pedal freewheel first, and a clutch for the motor or the rear wheel to disengage it for coasting.
I'm beginning to see that swingarms just aren't sold by itself. I'll have to buy the entire frame, it seems.. used bicycles are hard to come by in Japan and not cheap.I might have to buy used from the US. We'll see..
Seem strange--the acquaintances I've known that have visited Japan have seen bikes of many kinds simply tossed onto the garbage-pickup-piles, usually seeing several during any particular two-week trip. Mostly that's in bigger cities, and I don't know where you're located specifically, so it might not be true where you are.
Nice blog, I'll have to read up on it soon.
Good luck with that--it's kinda long and rambling.
I need to build an index page of some type, with links to various projects and types of posts.
Anyway, cheers and please stop by my abandoned podcast here on ES!
http://www.endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=2997&p=190350#p190350
I'm looking thru that thread now.
BTW, if you're interested, some of my music is here:
http://soundclick.com/amberwolf/ (just music)
http://members.cox.net/opporknockitytunes/ (includes Q&A about what I do and how I make the music, a bit dated)
I wonder what a remix of it would sound like.
: evil :does something about the nuclear crisis 