Finally my bike and torque plates

[NeilP]

Well here it is, after having the idea of building an e-bike last October...It is finally built up on the 'final ' frame.

Jobs stil to do
Fit hydraulic brakes
Sort LVC
e-brake, Cruise, pdelec and three speed switch to wire in
DC-DC convertor for lights

Made the torque plates yesterday.

Will make some new ones when I have time that extend back further, to make rack mounting and trailer hitch ..All on single plate from Torque plates...Hence the horrible jubilee pipe clip attachment at the moment. Will eventually make some proper fittings to secure them to the frame


All up and running...I did cook the controller while the electrics were on the Temporary fram , so this has a 40 amP crystalyte controller till I get my Lyen edition 65 FET one back.
An amazing difference with batteries mounted in the frame and not hanging over the back wheel...it is just so stable

When you look at the last pic...what do you reckon? Wires should exit up? or down ...I suspect down better?


View attachment 2

View attachment 1

 

[amberwolf]

Down, for a drip-loop. Nothing ever seems as sealed as it should be against water, so that will help.

 

[mr.electric]

Nice torque arms. How did you make them?

 

[NeilP]

Yes, that was what I was reckoning..but mates who have looked at the bike all said up, but more from a wiring routing/protection standpoint.

I did swap it around, and the wire ended up running about 0.5 mm from disk brake rotor. A bit too close for comfort.

I have to take the batteries out to charge and the wiring in the box is a nightmare at the moment...a bit too packed in. It took be 15 minutes to get it all back in this morning. The Lyen controller is 20mm shorter, so that will help. Have Andersons for the phase wires...they can go too, will use the ones that Lyen supplies, and once the correct controller is in place, I can cut all the excess wire down to length...it is a bit of a birds nest in there at the moment. I do not like that...but I have put in a little Radio Shack temp monitor in side and nothing gets up much above 35 C in there, even after 20 mins of hard riding.

 

[NeilP]

Nice torque arms. How did you make them?

5mm marine stainless, a drill, a hand file, angle grinder, and a slow speed grinder with a polishing disk

 

[AussieJester]

Good job Neil great to see her all together, bit of
'fine tuning' and yu will have one sweet ride

To save room you could always use bullets instead of andersons, i ain't a fan
of anderson connectors at all.

KiM

 

[mr.electric]

I should make some torque arms too. I have been relying on my rear drop outs to stay in one piece for several months now. I have some mild steel lying around but using stainless is a nice touch. I'll start looking around for a piece of stainless scrap metal.

 

[biohazardman]

Torque arms are good they can save you when your nuts come loose. ;^) I found a loose axle nut a time or two on my bike but no damage to the dropouts.

On the brakes you might just want to try some larger rotors before you spend the extra on hydraulics. I have mechanical brakes 8 inch rotors they stop me on a dime even when going downhill from 40 mph have as yet with over 4K on them had no problems. I thought I needed hydraulics too so bought some used units on Craigslist but have never even put them on as what I have is great and pretty much maintenance free. It's a easy to put a reed switch on the mechanical units as a motor cut off when you hit the brakes. If your bike and load are heavier than mine at 250LBs and or you plan on pushing the 30-40 mph all the time then I would recommend the hydraulics.

 

[NeilP]

Well, yes, I understand what you say about staying mech, but if I have to buy new parts, bay as well just go all the way not with hydraulic...and go bigger too..


I could use bullets, but I already have the big spades connectors from Lyen on my other controller...plus plenty of spare connectors..I bought 25 spare pairs off him when I got the controller

I like the mounting / clamp system for the torque links pictured there. I was wondering how to do mine...was thinking all sorts of ideas,,, but a loop like that round the fram and a hole drilled in the torque tube never occured to me. Quick easy and neat too

 

[Philistine]

Those torque arms are awesome and inspiring. Was that a lot of work? THey will be helpful if you decide to go regen. I have a X5 like you, and the rear disc pads get a serious workout. I was going through so many sets of rear disc pads (a set every few weeks) that I have started considering regen for braking, but I am still intimidated by the R12 mod necessary to achieve it.

On my new build (Greyborg) I am upping to 203mm discs on both wheels. It will be interesting to see how they go, because the weight of the x5 coupled with the speeds of 84v I get serious rotor burn, and as I said the pads get worked overtime. I am half expecting that the bigger 203mm rotors might even warp they get so hot, but will be interested to see.

Good luck. Phil.

 

[biohazardman]

Well, yes, I understand what you say about staying mech, but if I have to buy new parts, bay as well just go all the way not with hydraulic...and go bigger too..


I could use bullets, but I already have the big spades connectors from Lyen on my other controller...plus plenty of spare connectors..I bought 25 spare pairs off him when I got the controller

I like the mounting / clamp system for the torque links pictured there. I was wondering how to do mine...was thinking all sorts of ideas,,, but a loop like that round the fram and a hole drilled in the torque tube never occured to me. Quick easy and neat too

I just used a piece of a heavy duty SS pipe clamp cut it and bent to shape with hole to mount on the arm and I will have to agree with the above yours are quite nice.

 

[NeilP]

Yes, neat idea...i do have some big 200mm SS pipe clamps we used on the farm irrigation layflat hoses..so that is that sorted..Cheers

I can understand how the brakes could take a hammering so am very carefull to try and avoid using them too much...keeping t ogentle acceleration and coasting to a stp in plenty of time...Cant go too fast yet as I only have the 48 Amp Crystalyte controller...just about does 35. Feels very slow and underpowered after the Lyen 65 amp unit

Making the torque arms a lot of work? Well not really, but it obviously depends on your ability and access to the right tools. Witha decent angle grinder ...12 inch one and 4 inch for the delicate work, and decent pillar drill and good drill, bits, some decent files and die grinder, I had them both done in about two hours..the first one took the time, measuring and shaping etc...The second was a lot quicker.

Polished up using SS polishing disks on a variable speed angle grinder. I did not go mad there..I could have gone to a full mirror finish if I had gone all the way with the finer grade disks

 

[Ykick]

'looks great Neil - you're a busy craftsman! Cheers...

 

[nonlineartom]

That looks really nicely done, what battery have you squeezed into the frame there? I've got mine over the back wheel but I'm not a fan of the balancing so would like to do the same as yourself, did you have a custom pack made?

 

[NeilP]

No, nothing custom..the pack is 8 10s Turnigy Nano Tech LiPo's 20s4p 20 Ah




The controller will be fixed to the top of the inside of the box, not where it is in the picture...This is a Crystalyte controller..my Lyen 18 FET 65 amp unit is 25mm smaller,
The battery is not n the cnavas bag now, and I have removed the tppacks parallel/LVC board as it was getting damaged, being crushed on the top of al the wires. i have just made up parallel balance leads now, and will have to monitor volts and Ah used closely. Plus I thing that the tppacks LVC setting was for standard LiPo not Nano tech, so the LVC voltage was going to be too high anyway

 

[Hyena]

Nice torque arms Neil.

On a somewhat related note, what are those 10S long packs like strength wise ? Obviously they're 2 5S packs shrinkwrapped end to end but that stuff is normally fairly thin Do they flop around at all or are they fairly rigid as one unit?

 

[ronnieb52]

Very nice Bike Neil .

 

[NeilP]

Yes, rigid enough, certainly not noticeable as two 5s packs

My first build, still not complete yet.