My Stealth Bomber - now with 130km range

[Sigmacom]

After getting hooked with my first ebike kit from Hyena, I decided that you can never have too much range! Riding into wilderness areas I wanted a bike that could go 60km out and back from the car. I'm more interested in torque, efficiency and range than speed. I bought a 2nd hand Bomber with a dead battery as it had the largest battery box in a great frame at the time. I designed a 16S14P 2.7kWhr (48Ah) battery based on Panasonic NCR18650B cells after doing some testing with them on my old bike. I've posted a thread about the battery build here http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=61604.

I was very lucky that the pack fitted so perfectly into the Bomber frame. The first 15S14P is in the main compartment and the last 1S14P is just above in the 'corner' next to the seat post. I tested the fit just before shrink wrapping the pack:

With the original 5404 and wheel this pack gives me about 130km range with a top speed just under 50km/hr. The battery weighs about 1kg more than the original Bomber battery.

I wanted to put a moto tyre on the rear to avoid flats so decided to also try out a Crown TC65 motor. Being a slower wind motor this should provide better efficiency climbing hills etc, and even more so with the 17" moped rim I purchased from Stevil_Knevil. The rim is very solid and heavy, but the combination with the TC65 and a heavy moto knobby tyre is still a kilo lighter than the 5404 original wheel. Voicecoils expertly found a way around the lacing issues with the Crown motor and the rim (thanks Abraham).

The Crown motor positions the brake disk in a different position to the original 5404, so I had to get a new brake mount fabricated to fit the calliper:

I had to get a few made to make the cost reasonable so anyone who wants to fit a crown to a Bomber let me know! The tyre will be replaced with a Shinko SR241 17" when they arrive here in Oz.

I also added some foam to the edge of the side covers to give the battery a few mm more clearance and make the battery box more water and dust proof:

Unlilke my other bike which has a 16" moto rear wheel, the 17" on the Bomber does not look too small:

 

[RLT]

Nice!

 

[Allex]

Awsome mod, I like it!
I know you know this, but whatch your battery temps they wont last long (Panasonic NCR18650B) if you push them.
Some people place a regular termometer inside to check on them.

 

[Sigmacom]

Thanks guys. Allex - I see you went for a similar pack design with LG cells, more V and a little less Ah (a little more capacity in total though than mine). What current limit (or none) are you running? Mine is limited to 60A - yes a conservative level for a Bomber I know - but suits me I've loaded up the pack to 55A for quite a while and they don't even get warm.

What max charge rate do you run on the LGs?

 

[Allex]

Do not have any limit on current
Highest I have run is 130Amps, gives me 11kw. But this is to much for the motor in the long run it gets hot rather quickly. So on normal XC riding I have the Max-e set to 100Amps.
The cells are 15C so one cell is good for 20A and 35Peak and they also have pretty low resistance, so minimal voltage sag under load.
I charge the pack in 1.5hours. I feed the pack with 19A of charge current. really like the plug and play solution with the Adaptto controller.
I would also like to change the motor to a high torque... 5404 would still give me 100km/h and 5405 around 80 with the max-e
With the current 5403 motor I get rediculous speed of 120km/h (at 130Amps)

 

[Rix]

Man thats an awesom set up. Hill climbing machine. The 17 works with the 24MTB, and even though smaller, looks great IMO. I ran the same set up with the 5404 on my Bomber before my dad inherited it and put the 19MC rim on. He misses the 17 on hill climbs but like the 19 every where else. If you get tired of the rolling resistance of that 70/100x17 knobby, try the Shinko SR241 3.00-17, to date, out of all the 17mc tires I tried, that was the best 17MC tire I had ran on the Bomber for off road and road. Its the rear tire in my avatar pic.

 

[Hyena]

Nice work sigmacom. That's a long range, mountain goat of a beast indeed now.
I'll be interested to do another hill climb challenge with you now and see how it performs vs my high speed set ups. I reckon you might give me a run for my money.. as long as I don't use the sabvoton...

I know you know this, but whatch your battery temps they wont last long (Panasonic NCR18650B) if you push them

He'll be fine, remember his pack is a huge 48ah capacity. With a 60 amp limit that means he'll be drawing 1.25C PEAK and most of the time while cruising around under 1C. And given the huge capacity if he only charges to 4.1v/cell when he isn't planning to go on epic all day rides I reckon it will return probably the greatest number of cycles recorded for any 18650 pack in ebike use.

Also the TC65 in that small wheel will be very miserly with the current draw. He could probably program the controller for a 100A current limit and it would only spike more than 60A for a second anyway.

 

[Sigmacom]

Thanks Rix and Jay.

Rix - I have the Shinko tyre on order with Dark Knight's bulk buy. Should be here late August.

Look forward to a hill climb challenge Jay - though most of the hills we have around here aren't really tough enough! The harder ones are mainly so due to bad surface and loss of traction. I wish we had a 20-30% grade hill around with a good surface.

You're right about the battery load - I have been recording the cell voltages at each stage of the discharge and they continue to follow the Panasonic spec for a measily 0.2C average discharge curve. I'm going to do some logging of CA data with my android app up Chicken Hill with the CA limiting to different speeds and compare the instantaneous Wh/km consumption with the ebikes.ca simulator for some other motors - unfortunately the TC65 is not on the simulator.

BTW that 130km is only charging to 4.1V per cell, not that going to 4.2V makes much difference as they drop off so fast between 4.2-4.1 (more so than lipo).

I expect this pack will die of 'old age' before number of cycles. With 130km/charge I will be doing far less cycles per year.

 

[remf]

That is an impressive Bomber build sigmacom. A hill climbing monster 8)

I know what you mean, those steep grades are hard to find. One of the steepest I've found within a couple of hours from Sydney is Tulloch Rd, Broughton Vale, near Berry. The lead in 1km is at 9%, then next almost 1.2km is at 20%. I'd like to see a race up that one.

http://app.strava.com/segments/2482303

 

[Hyena]

Run what you brung gents, lets organise a hill climb challenge 8)

Berry is a bit of a hike from Sydney but if we could organise it as a bit of an event and coordinate it with riding some local trails as well that'd be cool.
I assume the current record there on strava is Maurice from Glowworm bikes on one of their ezee's ?

Mark in the mean time we could hit up Greenhaven Rd, that's the steepest I know of in our area.

 

[remf]

Hehehe...the Optibike 850 just made it up, the high speed Fighter had no chance. It's a beautiful spot so brung your GoPro's too.

 

[melodious]

130 km = 80 miles. :lol: Still can't get used to the rest of the world's unit of measurement.

So what's the range in "Eco mode" Enough to travel from city to city I'd imagine. Put some adventure racks on that thing. :wink:

 

[Cowardlyduck]

If you guy's want some serious hill (mountain) climbs to challenge you come down to Canberra.
Mt Tennant nearly killed my HS3548 when I had it on my Fighter towards the beginning of last year.
https://goo.gl/maps/6tXj7
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Tennent
At nearly 1400m high the climb is pretty epic and lasts for a good 3.5km.
I plan on trying it again at some stage now that I have my HS4065 setup with forced air cooling.

Cheers

 

[remf]

Mt Tennant looks nasty especially with the loose gravel & steep grades. Pretty sure Tulloch would smoke most hubs too even though it's not as long, at it's steepest stretch it's 20% average for a kilometre, can't exactly recall the maximum but I think it was around 30% at one point. Coming back down was real sketchy, it was a 40 deg C day and the asphalt was soft, almost sending me over the handlebar & that would have been a long, painful descent.

 

[Cowardlyduck]

Mt Tennant looks nasty especially with the loose gravel & steep grades.

Yeah it is steep...I had to push/walk the bike for at least 5 sections where it was stalling. That was with the stock Fighter set-up and a HS3548. It was smoking and spraying water on it made a massive cloud of steam on that ride!
It's not that gravely though. Just dirt fire trail, similar to the stuff in the Blue Mountains. Lots of fun jumping off the water bars.

I think my new set-up could tackle almost all of it with the Duro's fitted. I'll have to do it soon and let everyone know how it goes in the Stealth thread.

Cheers

 

[Sigmacom]

Funny you should mention Tulloch Rd. I've planned a ride for next week or maybe the week after from Moss Vale to my cousin's place in Gerringong via Meryla Pass/Kangaroo Valley/Berry Mountain. I'll be riding right past the bottom of Tullock road so will check it out then.

remf - do you still have an Optibike? Would love to check one of those out. I think it would beat everything else at hill climbing slow stuff, but I still can't get over my fear of something breaking on a mid drive out in the middle of nowhere 40 clicks from the car!

On my Specialised with Jay's kit (HT3525 on 20" wheel) I've climbed a 3km section of the road from Lithgow up to Newnes plateau. From memory Google maps elevation profile said it was 20% average grade.

melodious - I haven't tried a full discharge cycle in real 'eco' mode, but I might squeeze 90 miles out of it if I really had to.

The great thing about having this much range is you can hop from campground to campground (stopping overnight) with powered sites for recharging. Rear rack is already on order

I'm planning a trip from Sydney down to my mate's place at Tuross Head once the weather warms up again, via the ranges - should be fun. Its about 350kms.

 

[remf]

Sig definitely check out Tulloch and let us know what you think. I haven't ridden any roads around Lithgow but it sounds brutal...in any case I think you'll be able to eat up serious mountains with your rig...let alone steep hills that we've got here.

I sold the OB1 but I still have an older one in pieces ready for high voltage reanimation one day. They can definitely climb even with big 50/13 gearing on the Rohloff. Good range too. I always carried a spare chain in the kit just in case.

 

[Rix]

Run what you brung gents, lets organise a hill climb challenge 8)

Berry is a bit of a hike from Sydney but if we could organise it as a bit of an event and coordinate it with riding some local trails as well that'd be cool.
I assume the current record there on strava is Maurice from Glowworm bikes on one of their ezee's ?

Mark in the mean time we could hit up Greenhaven Rd, that's the steepest I know of in our area.

Shits getting seriouse guys, I like it!!!!!!!!!!! Please have video on hand as I cant be there when this goes down.

Rick

 

[remf]

Definitely serious. The red part of the profile is greater than 25%. Actually 31% maximum.

 

[remf]

Another big climb not far from Sydney, Macquarie Pass near Albion Park.

Around 8km, 620m ascent. Yellow on the profile is greater than 10%, red is greater than 15%, maximum is 18%.

 

[Sigmacom]

Think I'd rather try Jamberoo pass than face the traffic on that one!

 

[remf]

Yes I thought that might be the case...after I posted it. I'll keep up my OCD searching for the steepest climbs (and singletrack) within a few hours drive

 

[Rix]

Yes I thought that might be the case...after I posted it. I'll keep up my OCD searching for the steepest climbs (and singletrack) within a few hours drive

Yah Remf, like your style, only the best for this contest.

 

[Sigmacom]

Here is the one near Lithgow I did last year - red is over 10%:

The biggest hills I know of in NSW from lots of 4WD trips over the last 15 years:

1. NSW's answer to Pikes Peak - Tom Groggin to Dead Horse Gap, just above Thredbo. This is a sealed public road and surprisingly its stats are slightly tougher than the Pikes peak race:

Tom Groggin to Dead Horse : 1343m ascent over 17.8km (average grade 7.5%)
Pikes Peak race : 1440m ascent over 20km (average 7.2%)

Again this would be a great site for a EV race except for the traffic.

2. Kilprotay Rd - up in the New England coastal fringe. Nothing beats this road for so many severe ups and downs - one section is over 35% grade! A traction challenge even for modified 4WDs and unclimbable in the wet (which it often is) (I think it may be closed now):

3. Mt Pipanpinga near Wingham - this track is not on Google maps so can't be plotted, but it rises 600m in about 3Km for a constant unbroken grade of 20%!

 

[Rix]

Sounds like the course to be used has been identified , now the when?