mettleramiel
10 W
- Joined
- Dec 28, 2007
- Messages
- 78
A couple of weeks ago while doing some treasure hunting (read: dumpster diving) I found a schwinn folding electric bike! Pulling her out of the dumpster, I saw that the wheels needed respoking, the tires needed replacing and the battery box was missing. So after building a battery box out of some used ABS, using batteries I had lying around (which I also got for free), cutting some new spokes and buying new tires/tubes I had a new e-bike for about $30 and a couple hours of my time!
Here's a picture of her.
I decided to add a couple of small solar panels on the back just because I love to put solar panels on anything! Wanting to keep with the whole folding theme of the bike, I decided to make the panels flip out for charging and fold down for riding.
Oh yes, the panels were found while dumpster diving as well.
Everything on the bike works like new. There is a small dent on one side that I can easily ignore. My one big complaint, however, is that it's a single speed and geared rather low forcing me to use the e-assist almost all the time in order to go a reasonable speed. Seeing as I already have two e-scooters, one of which I also found about to be picked up by the garbage truck, I didn't really have any need for this bike other than the fun of fixing it, so I gave it to my landlord. We'll see how he likes it when he rides it to work this week.
Here's a picture of her.
I decided to add a couple of small solar panels on the back just because I love to put solar panels on anything! Wanting to keep with the whole folding theme of the bike, I decided to make the panels flip out for charging and fold down for riding.
Oh yes, the panels were found while dumpster diving as well.
Everything on the bike works like new. There is a small dent on one side that I can easily ignore. My one big complaint, however, is that it's a single speed and geared rather low forcing me to use the e-assist almost all the time in order to go a reasonable speed. Seeing as I already have two e-scooters, one of which I also found about to be picked up by the garbage truck, I didn't really have any need for this bike other than the fun of fixing it, so I gave it to my landlord. We'll see how he likes it when he rides it to work this week.
