Etek Project: Bike to Trike

[Ben]

Yeah, it's confusing because both efficiency and RPM are measured on the y-axis.

 

[geoff57]

buy the cycle analyst from the makers themselves

ebike.ca

you'll probably want the stand alone version.

hi if the etek is brushed or brushless but using a controller nobody has worked out the connections for, get the stand alone version.

you will have one bit of fun trying to find a place to put it, on the frame to the pedals seems logical you may find that too far away numbers too small, handlebar end might work me i want to use the handlbars for controls, I desided to go for a diffrent idea I have mine straped to my leg when peddling fast I can't read the CA but for most of the time we go at either slow pedal speeds or so fast that I keep my legs still, sounds stupid but it works if you want to try it then when you get your CA and have fitted the shunt and speed sensor when you next go for a ride and need to find a place to put the CA try what I did first I just taped it on with elecrical tape making sure to run the cable off the ground and away from anything. try it you may be suprised it works for me.

geoff

 

[paultrafalgar]

Pure gut reaction, but:
Do you REALLY want all the power from the battery delivered via your leg!?
What if you fall off and get a short?

 

[voicecoils]

Pure gut reaction, but:
Do you REALLY want all the power from the battery delivered via your leg!?
What if you fall off and get a short?

CA does not carry high power (like the wattsup does).

 

[paultrafalgar]

Whoops! Sorry!

 

[geoff57]

Pure gut reaction, but:
Do you REALLY want all the power from the battery delivered via your leg!?
What if you fall off and get a short?

CA does not carry high power (like the wattsup does).

i did use somthing like a wattsup to start with had four 30A wires going to the unit, red and black from the battery to the unit then red and black back to the controller, thesetup was 1 meter in length it worked fine no problems I put a set of andersons near the device so if somthing went wrong it would come off, the whole thing was wraped in spiral wrap for protection, never failed once. As for falling off from your avatar you ride a trike falling off is not that easy, I also have over 10 years of recumbent riding under my belt both on two and three wheels, all the three wheel work was on tadpoles two front one rear.
having all those power cables around was never the best thing though changing to a CA was a good change no high current no current drop gowing to and from my thigh, I still cover the cable with spiral wrap now it's just as protection not to prevent a short or anything.

geoff

 

[VRdublove]

Hey guys,

I finally got my idler sprocket situation all figured out. I ended up mounting it directly to the motor mount, so it doesn't flex at all, and the chain can run at high speeds with out skipping or making much noise. I also finally got the battery pack mounted sturdily. I used 4 hose clamps to go around the tubes in the pack and around the main frame rail, and then a used some scotch extreme packing tape on the underside of the pack to make it one unit. It's really sturdy now, I'll have to get some pics up.


Here's something I found really interesting, when originally choosing the gearing for the trike, it was mainly guesswork, and I bought and ran a 20T front and 48T rear sprocket. I finally got around to putting this gearing in excel and mounting a speedometer on the trike, and here's what I came up with:

Top speed at 44.5V, w/ 20T sprocket:

64.9mph! (keep in mind this is a no load test, but this is not ideal for acceleration!)


So I calculated what sprocket would put me at a top speed of 45mph @44.5V, and the 15T sprocket comes out at 48.4 mph (no load), a much better top speed for acceleration.

The video I posted was with the super tall gear, I'm excited to see what it will do with the 15T sprocket I have on it now! I'm about to take it out for a ride.

If my calculations are correct, I my real world top speed should be 45mph on my ride with the nominal voltage of 40.7V. I wish I could get a simple 2 speed transmission on this thing.

My next plans are to add 3 more battery tubes to the pack, boosting me to 40.7V nominal and 20 amp hours, so I can turn the current up from 100 amps to 200 amps.


I'm taking her out for a ride, I'll check in later!



As expected, my Christmas wish list revolves around the trike

 

[VRdublove]

Here are some more recent pictures of how I fixed the tensioner, and my recently acquired batteries, I now have enough to make a 45V, 28ah pack.

There has been salt on the roads, I have since cleaned the trike and installed a lexan shield between the tire and the motor.

I tried to make a video the other day, but failed miserably, my helmet cam was pointing at the ground for my 20 minute ride.


I am loving this thing, driving it very hard, stop and go, with speeds from 20-40 mph, I am getting 15 miles per charge on a 700 wh pack and 100 amps. Acceleration is awesome, I'm going to add another 4 ah to the pack for 21 ah, and I might turn up the current a bit and take a good video.

Merry Christmas!

 

[AussieJester]

Anychance marking a 100meter straight out and timing from standing start over the 100 meters? I thin
you might have Doc beat with that setup some how ...7.8 seconds i think Docs time is?


Nice work anywayz mate look forward to next vid

 

[VRdublove]

Yeah I can definitely do that, I might find a 100 lb rider first! :wink:

 

[Doctorbass]

Hummm ! I like how that turn out!!

It seems that the 0-100m race addiction is just beginning!!

With the delta/wye shift winding on my motor i should be able to ameliorate my previous score of 7.8sec to around 6.5 with peak power of 9.5kW

Doc

 

[etard]

Dub,
Do you have a total system weight, and range yet? Updates, great, now I want a KMX

 

[VRdublove]

The total system weight right now is 110 lbs. As for range, I haven't had the will power to do anything but drive it hard for the last week, accelerating from stop to 40 mph multiple times throughout the ride, and with this style of driving, I put 15 miles on it before putting it away with probably 1/3 of the battery left.

However, the pack isn't done yet, it is a 17 ah pack, and I'm adding another 5 tubes and that will put me at about 25 ah. Also, I finally installed the cycle analyst last night, so I can get some hard numbers on what this thing is doing now. I'm loving it, I've already had 5 people tell me that they would buy one if I was selling. I attempted to make another video with a helmet cam and failed miserably, again. I'm just going to get one of my buddies to man the camera, and I'll do the driving. The video WILL be up by friday.

 

[VRdublove]

Random question:

Could I use a RC style 4.4V Lipoly pack as a booster with my LiMn Makita Konion cells?

 

[etard]

I don't see why you couldn't use those two chemistries together, but then you have to get a charger, balancer, and switch. Curious why you would want only 4 volts, seems like those extra konions could be used for a booster pack, maybe do that in a tube, but wired up to boost voltage not ah.

So, if you had to sell your trike tomorrow, what would it take to pry it out of your grip?

Also, does it accelerate without too much stress on components, what is the weakest link?

 

[VRdublove]

Good stuff. I only want four volts because my controller will shut off the system if it ever goes above the 50V max. My current battery setup is 40.7 nominal, but 46.2V on a full charge. So the single cell booster would put it at 50.4V on a full charge, 44.4V nominal. But I probably will end up just using some konions, however, I can't do it in a tube, because it is only possible to ramp up voltage in the tubes (think of a flashlight). I will probably just make a small 12-18 cell spotwelded pack (depending on my capacity at the time).



It would take a whole lot of prying to get this one out of my grip. I don't even know what I would sell it for with all of the time I have in the konions, custom fabrication of the motor mounts, custom pack, blood sweat and tears, not to mention the way I love to drive this one. This will surely be the only one of it's kind. Maybe 6k, if I would even sell it at all. (Yes I like it that much!)

However, if I were to make another, I would probably sell for somewhere in the 3-4K range with a RC based componentry and Lipoly packs. I will probably make one of these "prototypes" in the next few months. I'm getting excited!

The weakest link is either the Idler sprocket, or the spoke nipples, however I have had no problems thus far. The only way I could see massive failure happening is a unrestrained snap of the throttle from a stop on 250 amps.

I made a decent video with the camera focused on the Cycle analyst, current limited to 100 amps max, and a half charged pack, I'm gonna work on loading it up. Hopefully I'll get a better one that's on a full charge soon.

 

[AussieJester]

Dont forgetz the 100meter run ...Doc needs some competition ;-P ... me just wants to see Doc pile more batteries on his MTB till it bends hehehe

 

[Doctorbass]

Dont forgetz the 100meter run ...Doc needs some competition ;-P ... me just wants to see Doc pile more batteries on his MTB till it bends hehehe

It does actually bend! .. i'll need to find some titanium from a metal reclycler shop.. :lol:

Doc

 

[AussieJester]

Dont forgetz the 100meter run ...Doc needs some competition ;-P ... me just wants to see Doc pile more batteries on his MTB till it bends hehehe

It does actually bend! .. i'll need to find some titanium from a metal reclycler shop.. :lol:

Doc

ROFL... just think doc, if you ran a non hub motor using the gears you could go faster with half the batteries
Downside you wouldnt bend the frame and would loose e-Wang points not being able to
have the 100v thingo in your sig heheheh Just joking with ya Doc, im just pissed my ride is broke.
Hrmz...i know where you can get a nice brushed 1000watt motor if u want one, has had no probs running at 4000watt
comes with aBRAND NEW 200amp Kelly controller....

Look forward to seeing this e-tek run the 100 meters

 

[Reid Welch]

This page is insane. Australia should be banning ALL ebikes next, add more mercury to CFLS, and limit cyclists to manually pedaled high-wheel trikes,
period! Use Kotex in Australia during your PM season.

g'day!

(off to write complaint to the gov'ment of OZ. It ain't a penal colony for nothin')


Okahauna Reid (who never ever no not ever breaks the law)

 

[VRdublove]

Just a random video from today with a half charged battery:

 

[Doctorbass]

Dont forgetz the 100meter run ...Doc needs some competition ;-P ... me just wants to see Doc pile more batteries on his MTB till it bends hehehe

It does actually bend! .. i'll need to find some titanium from a metal reclycler shop.. :lol:

Doc

ROFL... just think doc, if you ran a non hub motor using the gears you could go faster with half the batteries
Downside you wouldnt bend the frame and would loose e-Wang points not being able to
have the 100v thingo in your sig heheheh Just joking with ya Doc, im just pissed my ride is broke.
Hrmz...i know where you can get a nice brushed 1000watt motor if u want one, has had no probs running at 4000watt
comes with aBRAND NEW 200amp Kelly controller....

Look forward to seeing this e-tek run the 100 meters

Good luck for the repair of your ride :wink:

Thanks for the offer about the 1000W brushed, but i'm still impressed about the silence of the brushless motor 8)

doc

 

[VRdublove]

Doctorbass:

With these LiMn Konion cells, will I get more life out of them if I do shallow discharges and frequent charges, or if I do deep discharges and charge less frequently?

Thanks,
Tommy

 

[Doctorbass]

Doctorbass:

With these LiMn Konion cells, will I get more life out of them if I do shallow discharges and frequent charges, or if I do deep discharges and charge less frequently?

Thanks,
Tommy

With every lithium battery, deep discharge is the worst case of use.

The best option will always to work in the 80 to 20% SOC range. What you need to understand is that a lithium battery is affected by one principal cause: the heat. Now what cause the heat is the internal resistance of the cell... and it must be as low as possible. Over the 10-90% range it tend to increase and you can see that with the normal charge or discharge curve when the slope change in both end. when that happen the current that flow inthe cell will generate more heat...

For best lithium battery life i would personally recommand the 80-20% use and to be equipped battery pack that contain more Wh (energy) than you will usually need. if you plan to use 500Wh in most of the ride you do, build a 750Wh...

Dont take my bike as exemple cause it is extreem case and i usually take like 600Wh out of 2.3kWh... :lol: but for high power demand, i will use like 3C wich is very conservative... that's the advantage cause using a pack at his max C rate will cause it to decrease it life alot..

Doc

 

[VRdublove]

Thanks for the tips doc! I used 5 ah out of my 16ah today and threw it back on the charge and felt good about it! My final pack will be 25ah, and I plan on only pulling 250 amps (10C) from it when I decide to race, and temporarily turn up the controller. I will typically be running a peak of 100 amps, so I will only pull 4C peak. I think I should be good to go. I would love to have a pack like yours at my disposal! When it's all said in done, I will be working with 1kwh.

Thanks for the help!