My econo-e-bike

Glad to see it just the tire/tube, I had a 3 inch nail go into my side wall while I was driving on a concrete parking lot. How a flat object can jump up and penetrate so precisely is nothing but ninja level physics.
 
Well I didn't really realize it until today, but I've been off my bike for over a month now. I'm blaming part of that on the weather, which allowed me to have an excuse to be lazy and put the repairs off. So as of today, the bike is wearing new tires, MAXXIS Hookworms, 24x2.5, the first street tires I've had on the bike since the original slicks I used for the initial build. Now my bike is totally silent, which is one of the pros. The 2.5 tires are noticeably smaller than the 2.8s, but still look substantial. From my quick ~15mile test ride, these tires are great on pavement and I feel pretty confident already leaning way into corners, so performance on dry pavement is another plus. I took a few of the dirt paths next to the bike trail and also rode over grass, and they performed OK, so I'm not strictly married to the pavement. The biggest pro so far is the much better rolling resistance. Roll on acceleration in the 20 to 30 and 30 to 40 ranges is quicker, likely because of that.
I can tell that the additional Statorade is working. I did a half dozen or so hard accelerations up to 40, at around 5800W, and the motor only got up to the low/mid 70Cs, when before topping off the Statorade, I was hitting the mid 80Cs. It really shows up when off the throttle, since the motor is back to cooling down quickly at rest or under low throttle.
The best news is that after 8k miles, the motor still looks new inside! The Statorade wasn't gummy or anything, and the carrier fluid viscosity was still low, so still sort of doing it's job. The stator had fluid all around, so the Statorade was sort of bridging the gap, but the amount between magnets was only slightly higher than the magnets. I replenished just enough so that the amount between magnets was to where it was when I originally applied it, so maybe only 2cc's total added.

I checked the bearings and they seemed fine; smooth and not gritty. Not sure if taking the motor apart and putting it back together did anything, but it seems like the noise I was hearing when leaning into a left turn is gone, so maybe just putting the sidecover on with a different rotation fixed it.

Hookworms.jpg
I'll do some temp testing on my usual routes in the next couple of days to get a baseline before adding heatsinks to the hub and retesting.

I feel a little inspired now, so I may get around to cleaning up my cabling mess and consolidating it down to the single harness. The bike needs a cosmetic clean up anyway. I think the single cable harness I bought is sort of ugly (semi transparent grey) so I'll probably cover it with some sort of cable wrap. I'm using some wrap now, but I was looking at soaresdacosta's build thread and like the way the braided wrap he uses looks, so I plan to redo everything with that stuff.
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I guess I could be really lazy and not consolidate the cables and just cover them, but they get to be a mess in my connector box, so that's where it would help most.

Also, somehow my rack got a huge bend in both upper rails. I can't figure out how that happened, because it would take a lot of force. You can see in the pic, what appears to be a shadow or cable hanging down, above the controller, but that's actually the rack rail. I'll need to take it off to straighten it with my vise. I think I'm going to redo my connector box again too; 4th generation. If I consolidate the cables so there's less excess, I'll be able to trim down the box. I need to change out the breaker anyway, and it will be easier to make a new box to fit it, than to try to get it into the old box, since I have my shunt, anti spark circuit, as well as all of the wiring to work around.

Other things on the list are changing the fork seals and oil and swapping out the torque sensor, in that order of priority. The problem is, the overriding priority is, and always will be, riding, LOL.

Still getting used to the smaller tire size. I may mount my fender higher to see how that looks.
NewShoes.jpg

EDIT: Day before yesterday's ride was on a half charge and I was hitting my self imposed LVC riding uphill. I had to charge for a couple of hours to get closer to full before see how it performs in the +/-80V range I usually ride around on. I'll need to readjust my throttle ramp for the CA because the new tires make the bike more prone to wheelies, even in low, at speeds under 20. I noticed that at the same assistance level on PAS (set to 290W), I'm travelling 2mph faster (20 vs 18). The combination of the tire pressure and tread on performance is pretty noticeable.
Today I accidentally took a few short offroad routes out of habit, forgetting I didn't have knobbies. No incident. I figured it and just adjusted my riding. No climbs though.

Street Rod tires:
Tsunami.jpg

Forgot to note that I swapped out my mirror a couple of months ago. Back to crystal clear. This one is bigger. Plastic, but stable (clear, no vibrations), feels flimsy but it's not; plus a bigger field of view.
Bay Bridge.jpg

The weather vane is just a little bigger than the one in my backyard.
Vane.jpg
 
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Damn EHP, thats a perfect size tire, 2.40 wide tire is so sweeeeeeet!
How much space you got, can you go wider?

Now thats a long distance beast, beefy kickstand and all, its all very nice.
You can stuff a ton of kwh on that ebike.
Ah that saddle and seat post is sweet too!
My Kona couldnt even hack 2.30 wide tires but it lasted a year, dropouts cracked.
 
What is your top speed on this bike?

It looks great. You seem to climb a lot of hills with it. Would you see any problem in going for this type of build over a BBSHD / M635 torque sensing BBSHD, with large hills as part of the regular terrain? Any advantages or disadvantages?
 
I've been seeing some bulging from my 7S lipo helper packs, so I've been monitoring that for a bit, luckily. This morning I found that one of the two 7S lipos (run in series and parallel to my 52V triangle pack) had split the shrink wrap. The other pack still looked OK, but I'm disposing of both since I need matched packs for this application. They're sitting in my backyard until I figure out what method I'll use to discharge and dispose of them.
These packs have been functioning well for almost exactly one year, and have stayed in balance the whole time, charged to 4.15V/cell almost daily, and never discharged below 3.8V or so (I have LVC set to 3.7V/cell). Given one pack still looks good, I'm not sure if one year is what I should expect or not, but the three 6S 8Ah Graphene lipos I've been using for much longer show no signs of degradation. I think a contributing factor was that I didn't have the pack secured very well for part of the time, so they were subject to some jostling around. The triangle pack is still healthy and will hold a full charge.
Anyway, I'm replacing the 7S packs with the exact same ones, which should give me some time to come up with a plan for a single high discharge 20S pack. Anyway, looks like I'll be limping along for a week or so limiting the bike to 3kW or so, but luckily I'm using the CA analog input for that, so easy to dial up and down. Sadly, I've been spoiled by little to no voltage sag for a year now :-(

IMG_8332.JPEG
 
They're sitting in my backyard until I figure out what method I'll use to discharge and dispose of them.
Make a 5 percent salt solution, dunk the whole battery in it. Leave it for a couple days to be sure. The brine will slowly discharge the cells to 0v.

Alternately, connect to an appropriately sized resistor for as long as needed. 7s? A 250ohm resistor will discharge 50-150ma or so
 
I discharge them to 0v with a lightbulb or multiple lightbulbs in series so that they are electrically inert and then dispose of them in the legally recommended way ( local waste dump )

Sorry to hear about ya lipos. I would guess physical trauma is the cause of death considering they kept balance well.

When i used to run them, individual 12S groups would be taped together so that they don't slide around, then padded out. These lipos lived a long and useful life because they were by all aspects pampered.

falconev20ah.jpg

I like the idea of using a voltage booster pack on a regular BMSed battery. Does it involve a diode, or is it just pure electrical wiring?
I have a 19.5ah 14S battery and it would be cool if i could add 6S 20AH to it whenever i felt like hot rodding.
 
Thanks for the insights. I didn’t figure out to duct tape them together until the shrink wrap started looking a little worn from sliding around. I may end up making a hard case out of ABS or something and mount them under the downtube, which was my original plan until I got lazy. My whole battery setup is pretty pampered, so it was a bummer to see this happen after a year. I’ve been using the graphene lipos for a lot longer.
 
I like to let them be a little loose so they can naturally puff and contract, and i can also inspect if they are puffing too much, which is a sign that they've lost stability and i need to take that pack out of service fast, so hiding the puffing is the opposite of what i'm looking for.

Yeah be careful, this is the most temperamental and least well protected battery that money can buy, but they're awesome too. :)
 
I have a healthy fear of them. I’ll secure them with better padding in the bag and see how that goes. Replacements should arrive Monday, so at least I’ll be back riding thanks!
 
Oh good i'm glad you have the healthy fear, i always worry about people playing with lipo because so many things can go wrong.

What about this Q?

I like the idea of using a voltage booster pack on a regular BMSed battery. Does it involve a diode, or is it just pure electrical wiring?
I have a 19.5ah 14S battery and it would be cool if i could add 6S 20AH to it whenever i felt like hot rodding.
 
Oh good i'm glad you have the healthy fear, i always worry about people playing with lipo because so many things can go wrong.

What about this Q?
No diodes, just directly paralleled. I bulk charge the whole monstrosity via the discharge port (actually a made a separate charging port with XT60 connectors to charge with to avoid making mistakes) and monitor all of the voltages while charging. Paralleling the 5Ah packs to my triangle pack increased current output and pretty much eliminated most of the voltage sag, with an additional benefit of allowing me to charge at a higher rate.
I’m going to say this is still experimental, since I’m looking for signs of degradation of any of the packs, but things seem to be staying balanced and I don’t feel any heat from any of the batteries. If I see bulging again with the new packs then I’d be more concerned, but by then I hope to be closer to building a good high capacity/output 20s pack.
 
Oh sorry, i didn't read the whole thread. I was thinking of series.

If you're seeing low heat, you've got happy batteries; you're probably prolonging the life of that UPP by offloading it's current output duties. I like the setup!
 
To clarify, I have two 7S packs in series, that are wired in parallel to my 14S triangle pack. All of that is in series with 24Ah of 6S lipos (3 - 8Ah paralleled, I monitor the voltage on these and the sag is virtually nonexistent in any riding condition) to get up to 20S.

I wouldn't recommend a setup like this to other folks though. I tried to eliminate any chances of fat fingered mistakes and even set a timer even though I'm there monitoring during charging; but since charging is fast, it's worth it for me.
 
That's quite an elaborate setup. Sorry if you already answered this elsewhere, but what speed do you get at the upper end?
I saw somewhere you mentioned a plan to build a mid-drive, maybe BBSHD build, did you end up doing that? And why did you think about that considering you've already apparently got pretty decent hill-climbing ability?
 
That's quite an elaborate setup. Sorry if you already answered this elsewhere, but what speed do you get at the upper end?
I saw somewhere you mentioned a plan to build a mid-drive, maybe BBSHD build, did you end up doing that? And why did you think about that considering you've already apparently got pretty decent hill-climbing ability?
Never tried a top speed run, but I was still accelerating at a decent pace when I hit 50-51 mph or so when I tried riding full throttle for a bit. I'm guessing 55 (with field weakening). Without field weakening, accelerates up to a little more than 46mph. I don't have the patience to sit and watch the speedo crawl upward, like those guys on YouTube do when they do top speed runs (If I can't feel the acceleration, then those extra mph's are useless for navigating traffic). I don't wear a full face helmet, so keep my normal riding speeds under 25 mph when not in traffic.
I'll eventually build a mid drive, but there's only a couple of trails that I'd use it on, so not in a hurry, since my current bike can climb any offroad trails except ones with switchbacks 5 mph switchbacks. There are actually a lot of single tracks around here, but a lot of those are patrolled and I need to ride about 18 miles or so just to get to those trail heads, which would limit my trail riding time.
 
I ran up 3-7% grades at 50-55mph on this motor for miles at a time with a 26" wheel without it overheating.
E-HP's build produces 6.5% more torque and has maybe 0.3% better efficiency thanks to the 24.5" wheels, so it's a bit more capable of a hill climber vs mine.

The ideal motor will depend on your topography.
 
I discharge them to 0v with a lightbulb or multiple lightbulbs in series so that they are electrically inert and then dispose of them in the legally recommended way ( local waste dump )

Sorry to hear about ya lipos. I would guess physical trauma is the cause of death considering they kept balance well.

When i used to run them, individual 12S groups would be taped together so that they don't slide around, then padded out. These lipos lived a long and useful life because they were by all aspects pampered.

View attachment 352564

I like the idea of using a voltage booster pack on a regular BMSed battery. Does it involve a diode, or is it just pure electrical wiring?
I have a 19.5ah 14S battery and it would be cool if i could add 6S 20AH to it whenever i felt like hot rodding.
I did that for years only I always had them hooked up for high voltage and only unhooked the boost pack when the voltage dropped too low. The boost pack was 4S2P and the main pask was 18S3P so I never had a problem making it home. 🙂
 
I did that for years only I always had them hooked up for high voltage and only unhooked the boost pack when the voltage dropped too low. The boost pack was 4S2P and the main pask was 18S3P so I never had a problem making it home. 🙂
I did something like that when I had my Powervelocity controller, since it had a wide voltage range, and my 14s pack had more capacity. I made a XT90 jumper for swapping out the lipo. I only had to use it once, but nice to have the insurance.
 
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