Noob Guide to modding 200W electric scooter

[persiandude110]

Hi,
I am a relative noob in modding electric scooters. I am looking at the Sharper Image X2 electric scooter, which appears to have a 200 watt motor and NiMH batteries thats last for about 40 minutes. It also has a range of 6 miles. a 3mm GT timing belt drive is attached to the 200 watt motor.
My question is, how do I make this scooter faster? Will just putting more batteries for more voltage alone make the scooter faster? Can I not touch the batteries at all and just increase or decrease the gear ratio (I don't even know if they have gears because its a pulley, but I guess the size of the pulley components) to increase speed? Would I have to change the controller or motor? I am looking for the easiest way to do it, which I assume would be messing with the pulley somehow. If someone could please explain how to do this I would really appreciate it. Thank you!
a look at the actual scooter: https://sfbay.craigslist.org/eby/tag/5247929137.html

 

[206monkey32]

Hola Persiandude,
I am far from the most experienced on this forum and I work more with electric skates than scooters but similar principles apply. I would recomend combing through some of the posts in this forum for a day or two. The sticky thread at the top is a great place start. Before I begin let me preface by saying this forum is driven by DIY types. We like to putter.....if thats not your thing as much maybe it´s not worth it.

How to make the scooter faster? There are probably 20 answers I can give you, but you need to be specific and give some details.

How much do you want to invest?
What type of riding are you doing?
How much weight will the scoot be pulling?
How far do you want to ride?
How much time do you want to spend building and tooling around?

Depending on your answers to these and other question: sure some potential upgrades are possible.....

Powere source upgrade (Battery) - Yes you could change your power set-up - currently in this forum Li-po´s (think RC cars) and Li-ions packs (think Tesla) seem to be the power source of choice were you to up grade your power source. Doing this might require a new enclosure for the battery or modifications to the scooters current configuration.

ESC - If you did want to change power sources depending on your current Electronic Speed Controler (ESC), you would probably need to change this part as well. The ESC governs (as name sugests) the speed controls. Again, chances are you would need to upgrade if you changed power sources. VESC is an awesome inovation that is supported greatly by endless followers.

Pully Change- without any prior kowledge of scooters, yes the belt is most likely run on pullys so changing the ratio of the drivetrain could ideally change the speed but can also change how the scooter handles hills. There are some calculater in this forum that can help you figure what ratio is ideal for high speeds. Pullys are pretty easy to find. Agian browse endless- you should find a few sources.

Motor - It is possible you could also upgrade the motor to reach faster speeds, again without pictures of descriptions hard for me to gauge just what you could change. upgrading from a 50 to 63 diameter motor made a world of difference on my skateboard.

I would check out this scooter build thread.....https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=55997. It´s one of the first scooter threads I followed on here and well thought out ground up build.

I hope others will add more but there is a start
cheers and welcome