New to es and my first build :)

[DinosawR]

Hi all and thank you for a great forum!

I have been lurking around on es for a while to gather inspiration and knowledge for my first build.

What i wanted was a sturdy full suspension bike to replace my car for when I move into the city.
Has to look clean, no messy wiring. Do 35 ~ 40 kmh. Range, 10~20 km would be sufficient.
Cost, maximum $3300 USD


Got a lot of ideas and inspiration from the forum and I want to thank you all for that!
Unbelievable amounts of knowledge and astonishing builds in here


What i settled for:

Bike: Rocky mountain Salyer 50
Motor: Mac 10T upgraded
Controller: 9 fet
Accessories: cycle analyst V 3, rear view mirrors, some cree bicycle light with separate battery pack and a torque arm.
Battery: Turnigy 18s 2p
Bms: human bms! consisting of one human and 3 x cell log 8M


Now for some pictures


The bike


Batteries and template


Frame for battery box


Fleece blanket and resin


Glass fiber, a lot of filler and sanding




Wiring


More wiring..... can you spot my mistake?


Faulty wiring! :/ I forgot that my cargers are buck boost and operating from the same supply, so every pack of 6s needs to be separate.
A flash and one ballance plug gone I had to do it all over again. To my excuse I was tired and working very late, not the smartest idea when handling dangerous lipo. Lesson learned


Testing that my redone wiring works as it should


Fitting of battery box, more on that subject later...


How it looks now



To no surprise I have run into some problems :|

My battery box needs to be redone as it has changed shape several times!
First it expanded so it would not go into the frame, I solved this by removing a small gizmo / thing (don't know the english word) that was holding brake and gear cables. Everything was good and the box fitted in the frame. But no! then the stupid thing contracted making it impossible to get the cover on without squeezing the batteries :x

Got so angry this morning that I just wanted to set fire to the entire bike and just forget about it.
I am never going to do anything ever again that involves glass fibre or resin! I hate that stuff!

No doubt the battery box has to be remade and lacking welding equipment I wasn't able to make one in aluminium witch i would have prefered...

Any suggestions?

I don't want to use a bag because of how they look.

 

[Matt Gruber]

Just cut a section out and re-glass it. Don't give up, it is almost done.

 

[izeman]

welcome to ES. very well thought out - especially for the first build. hope you can tame this rat nest of wires
maybe you should add your location (sweden/denmark maybe if i would guess) to your user profile, will make help easier in the future

 

[Bill Nye the science guy]

buy a sheet of 3mm bendable aluminum, cut out panels as you like, pay someone to tig weld it. should not cost that much if all the fabrication is done. just takes alot of planning.

check out the big hit mac10's just recently talked about. 2 different approaches to the same problem.

 

[friendly1uk]

Nice frame. If you visit a fab shop, you could change that top bar and have a fair bit more room for your box.

You seem to of spent more on cell logs and spaghetti wiring than a bsm would cost. Same again on the charger side of things. Then used a D plug open to the elements for your balancing connection. Tired or not you will be forced to go through your charging procedure hundreds of times. What are you doing (no need to answer, It is a facetious question)

 

[DinosawR]

Thank you for your answers.
Aluminium would surely make me feel a lot safer.
To be honest I'm scared to death by these batteries.
I have watched way to many youtube videos of lipo fires...

Think I'll try to cut away a section of the box first like Matt suggested, I have put a lot of work into that thing.

Cutting and welding isn't so easy for me as I live in the middle of nowhere and nearest shop is several hudreds of km's away.

A bms would have been nice but I couldn't find one that would accomodate 18s but most of the wiring spaghetti is contained
within the battery box if I could only get the damned lid on. just a couple of mm's short.

The worst spaghetti is up at the handlebars and back at the controller, for most of that I have a solution on the way.
Will also have to make a box for the controller to be able to hide all the ugly connectors and wiring.

Why do they have to make those connectors so big? they practically take up just as much space as the controller itself.

 

[izeman]

sorry for denmark and sweden. but i was pretty close
here is a link to a very nice bms http://www.bestechpower.com/666v18spcmbmspcbforli-ionli-polymerbatterypack/PCB-D131.html
you can remove a lot of those connectors this way and avoid some bad things happen. you can take a look at my lipo balancer boards. three of them would fit your battery: http://oshpark.com/profiles/izeman
then you also can move away from the balance chargers. removing and connecting those tiny jst-xh plug isn't good for them as well. they will start to become loose over time. also my xt60 connectors became loose after some time. maybe they were fake, but it's not nice if one of your parallel packs disconnects during ride and you don't realize it.

 

[NeilP]

I am sure it will look just lovely ..all covered in that fake zebra fur ..It wont stand out at all.

 

[spinningmagnets]

Don't give up! I know it is frustrating when you find unexpected problems, but you are very close to the finish line. Very good work so far...You can become the local E-bike expert in your city if you like.