At the beginning of this year I had built the left-handed crank drive shown in this thread:
http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=25199&p=378218&hilit=left+hand+crank#p378218
After commuting 17 miles each way most weekdays for several months I decided that I needed a more sustainable solution from a replacement parts standpoint and from my butt's standpoint. My electric bike needed several improvements:
1. Freewheel crank (from Cyclone bikes, Taiwan). This makes long commutes much easier as I can stand up on the pedals and stretch or take a little break with the motor still powering the bike. It's very fatiguing on the back and butt otherwise. I will probably have to replace the freewheel mechanism with one from White Industries soon since the Taiwanese version (Dicta) seems pretty sloppy.
3. Crank drive moved to right side of frame. This removed the necessity to have two right-sided pedals.
2. Battery repositioned from top of rear rack to inside main frame triangle. This improved handling.
4. Freewheel on motor sprocket. I'm in the process of fabricating an adapter for a 13-tooth metric freewheel. This will allow me to pedal and not backdrive the motor/gearhead.
I designed and built a plug-n-play 36 volt, 20 ah LiFePo battery that mounts to the water-bottle mounts on the frame. It has a custom waterproof aluminum enclosure, 30-amp breaker, power kill switch capable of safely switching the full power of the battery, and charging port. The actual battery pack inside is a slightly custom configuration built by Ping. I was very impressed with his fast service, and the quality of the battery/bms.
It won't win any beauty awards, but I have considered trying to sell this integrated battery solution since I haven't found any with the same power output capabilities that can mount to the water-bottle mounts in the main triangle of a frame. The production version would be anodized black. BionX and AmpedBike's solutions are all smaller (36 volt, 10-12 ah). This may be a pipe dream...there are lots of considerations.
http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=25199&p=378218&hilit=left+hand+crank#p378218
After commuting 17 miles each way most weekdays for several months I decided that I needed a more sustainable solution from a replacement parts standpoint and from my butt's standpoint. My electric bike needed several improvements:
1. Freewheel crank (from Cyclone bikes, Taiwan). This makes long commutes much easier as I can stand up on the pedals and stretch or take a little break with the motor still powering the bike. It's very fatiguing on the back and butt otherwise. I will probably have to replace the freewheel mechanism with one from White Industries soon since the Taiwanese version (Dicta) seems pretty sloppy.
3. Crank drive moved to right side of frame. This removed the necessity to have two right-sided pedals.
2. Battery repositioned from top of rear rack to inside main frame triangle. This improved handling.
4. Freewheel on motor sprocket. I'm in the process of fabricating an adapter for a 13-tooth metric freewheel. This will allow me to pedal and not backdrive the motor/gearhead.
I designed and built a plug-n-play 36 volt, 20 ah LiFePo battery that mounts to the water-bottle mounts on the frame. It has a custom waterproof aluminum enclosure, 30-amp breaker, power kill switch capable of safely switching the full power of the battery, and charging port. The actual battery pack inside is a slightly custom configuration built by Ping. I was very impressed with his fast service, and the quality of the battery/bms.
It won't win any beauty awards, but I have considered trying to sell this integrated battery solution since I haven't found any with the same power output capabilities that can mount to the water-bottle mounts in the main triangle of a frame. The production version would be anodized black. BionX and AmpedBike's solutions are all smaller (36 volt, 10-12 ah). This may be a pipe dream...there are lots of considerations.