New electric mountain bike frame by Phasor Cycles

[danimal]

http://www.phasorcycles.com

presents

The ǷHΔδΦR TRANSFORM
OCT 2011
We are excited to announce that ǷHΔδΦR Cycles is un-veiling its new electric mountain bike frame exclusively to the endless sphere forum. The ǷHΔδΦR TRANSFORM was designed from the ground up to be a highly capable downhill style electric mountain bike. Endless Sphere members will have the opportunity to order the first production frames at a discounted rate.
Our first creation was the EMXB prototype designed and built as our mechanical engineering senior design project, this is the evolution of that original concept...everything we learned from that first bike translated directly into improvements to this new model.

(1) http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=24253&start=90
(2) http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=27402

This new frame is tailored for those DIY'ers that are interested in a platform for a high performance off-road electric mountain bike. The frame is highly capable and is compatible with many different component configurations. The simple, yet versatile design allows for a mild or wild bike depending on your budget and goals. The internal volume of the frame has plenty of room which can easily house up to 35 Ah Zippy Lipos along with the controller and still have room to spare! Fit your batteries, controller, and even charger in the cavity. The frame is constructed of TIG welded chromoly that has been precision waterjet-cut, making a capable light weight and versatile frame. It has been designed to hold the batteries low and centralized.

Above and directly below is an example of the frame with components we selected to make a high performance down-hill style electric mountain bike.

Below is the frame and swingarm ready for anything you can throw in it or at it. Expected to be available late 2011 / early 2012.

The Phasor Transform frame features:
• Fully TIG welded Chromoly frame and monopivot swingarm
• Thick 7/16" 4130 chromoly dropouts with captive "pinch" axle retainers
• Front suspension compatibility Uses standard MTB 1.125" steerer tube
• Clearance for long suspension travel, 26" wheels (up to 28" actual tire OD)
• Large enclosure, room for lots of batteries, controllers(s), chargers, wiring, etc.
• Progressive rear suspension geometry
• Head tube = angle 66°
• High ground clearance
• Low, centralized center of gravity
• Zero offset rear- no dish required
• Wheelbse: 50"
• Standover height ~ 31" with 8" travel forks


Specifications of bike as shown:
• 30A*hr, 72V Zippy LiPo (20s6p)
• Kelly 72450 4500W motor controller
• 26" x 3" wheels with 2.7" Kenda Nevegal tires
• BMC V4T hub motor
• Hayes disc brakes, 9" front 8" rear
• Weight: ~<100 lb as shown
• Fox 40 RC2 8" travel downhill forks
• Rear shock fox DHX 5.0 3" stroke coilover - with 2.7:1 leverage ratio = 8.1" rear travel

***will be thoroughly field tested before production
Keep an eye out for more products in the future

 

[AussieJester]

I can see certain members will go nutz over this, nice design
if its as clean as your electric motorcycle bicycle frame
it will be one classy frame and a great basis for an e-bike build!

KiM

 

[DimGr]

design very similar to Greyborg though

 

[liveforphysics]

I like it a lot!

Fantastic frame material, fantastic frame design, generous enclosed battery cavity, pinch-type thick drop-outs, I'm very pleased.

If I was going to make a hubmotor bike for myself (kinda doubtful), I would choose this frame.

 

[adrian_sm]

Very nice. This should be a great frame.

Couple of questions.
(1) How do you get your battery pack in/out? It doesn't look like a lot of room from the side.
(2) Does the chain line work? It looks like the chain would run through the swing arm at the moment for some of the rear cogs.

 

[gogo]

The frame triangulation could be better with an element going from the shock mount to the headtube area. You have the leverage of the seat triangle and the shock pressing into the side of the vertical element.

 

[SamTexas]

Looks good!

100lbs? That's complete with hub motor and 74V/30Ah battery, right?
No dishing needed for rear wheel, excellent!
Price? Price? Price?

 

[Spacey]

Going to have to give us some price estimates for just the frame body and swingarm minus the forks

 

[Hyena]

Nice design with a great list of features.
I particularly like the hollow-ish frame - if you want to run with a smaller capacity battery you could use modified side covers to retain some hollow triangle space and keep it looking more like a normal bicycle (important for street riding in the majority of places.

Any idea on ballpark pricing ?

 

[heathyoung]

I'll second that - very interested!

<lolcatz> I can haz price plz? </lolcatz>

 

[dpearce]

Hello all,

We are working hard to bring this to the market and we will post up a price very soon. We can say that we will offer Endless Sphere members a 10% discount, and exclusive access to pre-order the first production frames, as a token of our appreciation for the forum and the ES community. The frame will include the necessary hardware, panels, and swingarm, as well as the wide spindle needed for the bottom bracket. It will also have a MTB International Standard Chain Guide (ISCG) mount. We will also have a MX style seat option available.

To answer your questions,

(1) How do you get your battery pack in/out? It doesn't look like a lot of room from the side.

It is designed to use modular battery packs, so yes a single 30A*hr block would likely not fit through there. The pack would need to be broken down into smaller modules.

(2) Does the chain line work? It looks like the chain would run through the swing arm at the moment for some of the rear cogs.

This was something we paid close attention to as the first prototype we made had a minor swingarm / chain clearance issue at full bump. The chain clears throughout the suspension travel now, this was one of the reasons the swingarm design is quite different.

The frame triangulation could be better with an element going from the shock mount to the headtube area. You have the leverage of the seat triangle and the shock pressing into the side of the vertical element.

That is a good point. We have done some analysis and will be testing this before any are sold so there may be some minor revisions based on how that goes. Any revisions will not compromise the requirements set forth as written above by Danimal.

100lbs? That's complete with hub motor and 74V/30Ah battery, right?

That is right, 100lbs is our estimate for the complete bike fully loaded with 24 15C Zippy LiPos. Of course this will be dependent on your particular selection of components.

Here is a close up of the dropouts. They positively lock in the axle, and the captive pieces also allow only elastic deformation to prevent over tightening which would make it hard to get the axle out.

And another view of the frame

 

[GCinDC]

Fully TIG welded Chromoly frame and monopivot swingarm

love the swingarm design. how thick will the frame material be?

why not go w/ a smaller capacity frame too, a little brother version? the frame looks rather large to me, especially up top, and i'd only need half that room... just a thought.

ǷHΔδΦR Cycles

The greek letters are cute, but if spell RIDDFR, not PHASOR, so I'd be careful there...

pretty awesome tho, and psyched you'll come out w/ a DIY version!

 

[Alan B]

Very interesting!

 

[danimal]

why not go w/ a smaller capacity frame too, a little brother version? the frame looks rather large to me, especially up top, and i'd only need half that room... just a thought.

Thanks we like our swingarm too! The frame is .050 thick.

The greek letters are cute, but if spell RIDDFR, not PHASOR, so I'd be careful there...

HaHa...PHASOR CYCLES comes from math jargon, we know the the greek symbols don't correlate to any translation of the word, but they do represent some engineering variables that can relate to phase vectors.

pretty awesome tho, and psyched you'll come out w/ a DIY version!

The DIY market was our first thought when we designed this bike. We a saw a need to provide a platform for these new technologies emerging for e-bikes. There is a limit to what you can do with a standard bike frame so we wanted to create something that from the ground up is made to romp. We want to offer a better solution than duck-tape and bungee cords to the e-bike community.

 

[Philistine]

Looks good. I think there is a huge market looking for the stealth bomber frame without the price, as the Greyborg demand on this forum has shown.

My two cents (as a Greyborg owner who has contemplated these things):

1) make sure the paneling has a small quick-release part if possible, for accessing wiring in case you need to do a series/parrallell change to charge (or just to charge).

2) I love the pinch dopouts, but would it be possible to make the drop outs a pair of plates that bolt onto the swingarm, so that if you damaged or weathered the dropouts over time, it would simply be a case of bolting off the plates and sticking on new ones, rather than having to weld or replace the whole swingarm.

Just a thought.

 

[Hyena]

PHASOR CYCLES comes from math jargon

And here I was thinking it was star trek derived. Just think of the marketing possiblities. "The new phasor electric bicycle. Set to stun"

make sure the paneling has a small quick-release part if possible, for accessing wiring in case you need to do a series/parrallell change to charge (or just to charge).

Good point. Assuming the side covers aren't structural and that being a steel alloy the frame would be magnetic ( ? ) you could get away with a thin light weight magnetic side cover. Either a whole section of thin magnetic material (like used in car door advertising, some fridge magnets etc) or use some other material with a number of small neodymiums

 

[Spacey]

Keen to know rough price, make sure there is enough clearance for the pedals on the ground

 

[Microbatman]

Great work
I too agree with the idea of having smaller frame version with less battery space.
For the small version I would make it single tubes through out frame. No parallel pairs.
Anyways keep it up.
This is my new favorite thread as you can see from my avatar I believe most stock bike frames belong in the trash.

 

[Whiplash]

This could really change things! If I had the time I would already be selling something like this! Beautiful product if you can build it for a reasonable price. To be fair, a frame less shock should come in around $500.00 and you would sell a lot of them I think! Much more than that and you will greatly limit your target customer..

 

[Alan B]

A Yuba Mundo frame is $500. I suspect it is made in china, in pretty significant quantity, and it is fairly conventional.

To expect a near custom and low volume frame to be as low in cost is probably unrealistic.

In any case, they need to determine their price. If they can't make money they won't make frames.

Good Luck to them, and looking forward to having more choices in ebike frames!

 

[Whiplash]

Well, for what its worth you are only looking at about 100-150the dollars worth of steel when purchased in quantity...

 

[patrickza]

I quite like that. It looks like a stealth and a greyborg had a love child! So how many 38120s cells do you imagine you could fit inside..?

 

[Hyena]

Here's a photoshopped option for a smaller more MTB looking frame. I would much prefer something like this.




The only problem with the above is the triangular shape eats into the battery storage space. Better still would be if you could make the section around the bottom bracket a little more square in lieu of the existing chunky square bottom that sticks out.
This way would allow for fitting 3x6S packs wide in the bottom as shown, you could fit an 18S4P pack (18S3P shown) or 24S3P - which I reckon would suit many of the people looking for this sort of thing. And it still maintains more of a MTB looking shape at a glance (as it flies by ) A common issue that people have with bikes like the stealth bomber is that it looks too much like a motorbike or stands out too much with the solid enclosed frame. The more you can do to get away from this the better IMO. Obviously the larger the battery capacity the harder this will be to pull off

 

[gerrydesign]

subscribe...cost?

 

[o00scorpion00o]

I'm only seeing this now

This is really what I'm looking for, a full suspension with good travel, like a DH!

Do you think the 8ah Zippie's could fit in there ? that would really save some wiring!