I made it to Cali in 48 hours. Probably could have gotten there soon, but it took me all day to pack up the van and to get some things done around the house since I was going to be gone so long. So I ended up having to take an extra 3 hour sleep stop that I probably wouldn't have needed if I started driving right when I woke up that morning. So I decided to not do the colossus motor on this build since I had one day to do it when I got to Cali. I had brought a 9c hubmotor with me, but it was laced in a 26" wheel. I took it down to a bike shop in SoCal and asked them to lace it into a 20" rim for me. The told me it would be done by 2pm, two hours. I was an hour away from any of the places that I needed to go to, so I figured I would just have to turn right around and come back if I left. So I hung out in the parking lot till 2. No phone call. But 4 I went in to see what was taking so long. They told me it couldn't be done.
Why wouldn't they tell me that at 2pm when they were supposed to be done??? But I knew that Tostino had put his 9c into a 20" rim, so I knew it could be done. After trying to convince the guy that it could be done, I called Tostino and confirmed that he had this setup, and how he laced it, I convinced the guy to lace them axial. By the time they got done, it was 5:30 and then I had to drive to Etard's house in rush hour SoCal traffic. So I didn't get to Etard's till after 6:30. Etard, Thud, and I thrashed on getting our builds done till 4am. I really need to thank those guys for the use of the space/tools and for the advice/help.
This is my bike progress at about 2 or 3 in the morning the day of the race. We woke up at about 8 am and got back to working on the bikes. We thought that the second heat was going to be at 2pm, so that is what we were shooting for. We definately missed the first heat. I still didn't have a controller, so I had to run up to the race to pick one up from Lyen at the track. Thanks Ed, really cool that you showed up and brought extra supplies. Turns out they ran the second heat early, so I had already missed that too by the time I got up there. When I got checked in, the ebike final was in about 12-20 minutes, so I missed that too. Finished up the last couple of details on the build 15 minutes before the Ultimate race, which was a combined gas/ebike race. This was supposed to be the top finishers from all the heat races, but Neil let me into the race. Thanks Neil. I had gone with a banana seat so that I could change my riding position to help with the bike handling. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a proper sissy bar to support the back. Etard scrounged up some aluminum stock that I used to make some braces for it. But the way I did it, it didn't give it enough lateral support, so during the race, the seat actually rotated out to the sides coming out of each corner. I had to use my legs to push it back into position. I would have been much better off just sticking with the stock seat and not having to worry about it, since I wasn't able to move around on the swinging seat anyways. Info for the rebuild. I really like the way that Thud did his support. I think I will try to incorporate that as well. The battery mount ended up being an achilles killer. When I pedaled my heel would hit the corners of the aluminum plate. So I quickly realized during the race that I had to keep the heels of my feet on the pedals. Need to redo that as well. I think I might end up trying to make smaller sub packs of these cells so they fit in more places on the bike and are not so over bearing. That will also help with weight distribution.
All in all, it was good to get the bike on the track for all the hecticness of racing across the country and the near all nighter the night before. The bike held together for the whole 12 lap race with an unventilated motor and no torque arms. The motor was pretty damn hot at the end, couldn't keep a hand on the cover for more than a few seconds, but it survived. gonna try and get that vented now to do some more testing with it. Now that I have more time, I need to look into getting a charger setup that can take my 22s pack up to their full voltage. I only had it charged to 84.5v at the start of the race so that was also putting a damper on my top speed.
After we let the motor cool down for a bit, I let me nephew try the bike out in the pits.
He got his first ev grin and now really wants to get one. He just moved to LA to become an actor, so he is still in the starving artist stage of his career, so I think I will try to put something cheap together for him to ride around LA with to go to his auditions and stuff. His parents let me live with them for a while when he was a baby when I was in the starving racer stage of my career, so I guess I owe him. :lol:
but basically it doesnt' matter--it's how much *current* can they take, which IIRC is from 40-60A depending on the winding version, before the current is causing saturation and just heating the motor.
