The SB Cruiser : Amberwolf's 2WD Heavy Cargo Trike & Dog Carrier

[amberwolf]

Since Tiny had a really good day today and kept herself moslty occupied with Yogi and yard explorations (and nappies) after breakfast and settling-wait time, I got some work on the trike done, over several hours between watchingthem play and stuff.

First was to finish the lacing/tensioning of the wheel above,. then to move the stator into it out of the 26" wheel itw as tested in, along with the side covers, and install the freewheel threaded flange onto it that I'd used on it when i used this front motor as a rear on CB2 a few years ago.





This part was the most interrupted, as Yogi kept running past me out the door whenever I clanged something (whcih happend a lot); he really doesn't like noises, worse than Tiny in some respects about this. Poor Yogi...then I'd go after him to try to get him to see it's ok; and he did get better over time but stillw asn't having any of it.

Eventually I got the stator in, covers on and bolted halfway down (only have about half the amount of cover bolts needed, no idea where most of them went, as these motors have all been apart since before the fire and many of the little bits are lost, including all the axle nuts and hardware--teh only hardware I have is one axle nut, two torque washers, a couple of regular washers that happen to fit the axle, and an old "torque arm" that originally came with t his motor.


Then I set up the wheel on that test frame and hooked it up to the black 12fet, and made sure it worked. Then i trued up the wheel, and jacked up the trike to get the regular wheel off and put the motor wheel on.



That was quite a mess, because I'd screwd up and put the covers on teh wrong sides, having intended to put the freeewheel on the wire side, so that no cables stick out the side of the trike and instead run under teh deck. So off the wheel comes, and then I had to swap the covers, and put it back on. About an hour and a half wasted on that part, including the time I spent doing it int eh first place.



also, the freewheel I happened to have available for this (can't get the other off teh old wheel) is 16T, old was 18T. Had to take otu a link pair from teh chain to make ti fit.



Since I only have one axle nut, I had to come up with something to help secure teh outer end of the axle (left side) and used the axle nut itself on the wrie side (right),


so I used that torque arm (which is tight enough to reuqire tapping onto the axle with a rubber mallet). and a long 10mm wrench. The werench is hose clapmed to the fender frame at it's far (ring) end, and the torque arm and wrench are clamped around the frame near the axle, ina way that should prevent it fom moving forward in the dropout slot, or rotating.

View attachment 10



I tried a couple of clamping methods before arriving at that, one of which is picutred below. That one didn't work out cuz once the motor was started with a load, the hose clamp twisted and began wearing the metal off teh cover's bearing retainer hump in the cetner of the cover.



I added the centering spring for the front wheel, to keep it from pivoting when i'm trying to push it thru the door. it's not how I wanted to do it but the only way that will work until i can put something on the front fork to stick out towards it's rear and let it be cetnerable, but rightnow that doesn't work so i used it on the tiller itself to the frame, which does work, if imperfectly. I think this spring was froma screen door, can't remember.



the second wheel/cotnroller has it's own throttle, on the left side, so ti's like cb2 where i have left for rear, easy for me to remember. I also replace the intermittently defective wuxing ebrake lever with an older version that while not water resistant like the new kind, does at least never accidentally "come on" even though the lever is not being moved, or even is actively held in it's disengaged position. Suspect problem with switch itself, or wiring to it, but was qujciker to replace than to troubleshoot, will deal with othe rone later.



I took it out for a spin around the block after dinner for the doggies (which itself takes around an hour and a half now; half of what it has been recently but mahy times longer than before Tiny's illness).

NOW it has POWER and can actually get out of it's own way pretty qcuick. it's not as quick off the line as CB2 yet, but it's close. It has about 2800W now, around 56A battery current. No speedo on it yet but I would guesstimate it takes about 6 seconds to get to 20MPH (vs the several times that with just the front 26" x5304).

There is some grinding as it starts up, if I only throttle up the rear motor, btu not if I use both, so it's probably something about how the curretn limiting on the black 12fet works.

I also paralleled the regen braking of the rear motor to teh same brake handle that the frotn one uses, and that gives some POWERFUL braking, more so even than on CB2, because these two controllers don't just do regen, they actually actively brake the wheel using power to do it. On CB2 with regen I can use it to "slowly" brake down from speed, but on SBC with active braking I'm gonna stop several times faster than on CB2, without applying the mechanical front rim brake even.


When i got back from teh trip around the block, I verified no loosiening of the axle/etc so far, even with the hard braking and accell.


Then i got the grin tech taillight wired up, and since it' needs ground for it's falsh mode, I had to use the regen brake lever to trigger it, instead of the brake light lever, cuz the BLL shorts across the diodes on the main taillight that dim it down wtih 13v instead of the 16v full voltage. So when braking that light flashes, and my main taillight about doubles in brightness. Should make it even more obvious I'm braking, since on SBC I don't have the intense brightness of the braking lights that I have on CB2.

View attachment 5


And apic of the matching grin tech headlight, which presetnly is wired in aprallel with the car headlight. I'd prefer tow ire it separelyt so it can be used without the headlight, like on bike paths, etc. wehn i don't need a super bright light to see the road, etc.

 

[ax57ax57]

AW,

Great to hear that Tiny is showing some improvement. It took me a week to read all the way through your thread about the house fire, but a thread such as that needs to be read in its entirety. I don't even know what to say, I feel the same way about my dogs that you do about yours. I lost four dogs within the last 18 months, but in each case, they went to what's next with their head cradled in my arms. I know I'll see them again someday though.

Right now I only have one female collie rescue, and she's still grieving for the one that we lost a few months ago. (We all are.) Very soon we hope to add a collie pup to the family, and eventually another rescue.

 

[amberwolf]

Great to hear that Tiny is showing some improvement.

She's practically normal right now, except for some uncoordination in certain movements, a little less energy / more naps, and the cough from drool that goes the wrong way down (whcih the vet has been working on possible solutions for), and being a little less able to shed heat (so she's gonna get more shaved in the next day or so, though not all of her cuz then she has no protection from the sun when she does go out in it).

Most of the cough thing woudl stop if she wasnt' so obstinate. I've already taught her to get her front end up on her pillows, or on teh couch arm, and lay on her side that way, to stop the cough. And if I direct her to, she'll do it, for a minute or two (more if I'm right there with something she thinks is noms), and once or twice she'd done it on her own, but only stays for a few seconds. And mostly doesn't do it at all, and isntead wants to get a drink of water, which will make things worse. (which is why there isnt' any available to them except when I'm right there).

It took me a week to read all the way through your thread about the house fire, but a thread such as that needs to be read in its entirety. I don't even know what to say, I feel the same way about my dogs that you do about yours. I lost four dogs within the last 18 months, but in each case, they went to what's next with their head cradled in my arms. I know I'll see them again someday though.

I've never lost more than one at a time before that...not even really close together. And never to anything so horrible...and I didn't even have my home to retreat to, or get another dog to help me help them and recover, etc. And constnatly knowing what they went thru (I know what people say, but neighbors tell a different story I'd rather not talk about).

Right now I only have one female collie rescue, and she's still grieving for the one that we lost a few months ago. (We all are.) Very soon we hope to add a collie pup to the family, and eventually another rescue.

Nana kept looking for Bonnie even up to the time of the fire, though she'd died almost a year and a half before that. And neither of them liked the other, and fought enough that I had to keep them separated, so that either coulb e with any other dog or group of them, but not with each other. :/ yet still...Nana missed her.

 

[amberwolf]

Today Tiny was doing pretty well, and we needed some noms and things (especially laundry soap and bleach...been using it up a lot cleaning up her pukies though those have decreased greatly, her obstinacy still causes some now and then).

And I wanted to test the second motor and braking in "real world" use, with loads in the back, etc. So I made sure Tiny and Yogi would be ok at home for a couple of hours, and took a trip to the grocery store and couple of dollar stores.

Before leaving, I needed to change out the disintegrating outer tire on the right wheel, cuz the two layers are there so I don't have to go changing things with a loaded up back end on there. Been there, done that, it sucks (on DayGlo Avenger, CrazyBike2, Delta Tripper, and various trailers on each). At first glance, it doesn't look so bad.



Touching it shows it's a lot worse than you'd think.



Once the tire is off, well, you wooudln't wanna ride on that. :lol:


I guess you can see how much scrub the trike has in hard turns at speed, eh? I'd rather this than tipping, so, I just need much much better tires, like moped or motorcycle tires.


This dual-tire only works with certain pairs, because the inner one has to be just enough smaller that it fits perfectly inside the outer one, without a gap, (or else the outer one wrinkles up as it rotates, and progbalby fails a lot faster), and without bieng so large that it folds at it's bead and pinches the valve stem, tube, etc. I've found just a few of the ones I have that will work like this. I put another not-very-worn tire (that used to be the front tire of Delta Tripper) on the outside of the old Kenda Flame tire, and installed it back on the rim of that BMX wheel.


But then I found a few problems with the wheel, while doing this. The first and worst one is that crack from the curbstrike during SBC's first tests as commuter--it has gotten a little bigger, which is a bad sign.


The second is that there are a lot of slack spokes around that area now (weren't before), and there is a broken spoke (at the elbow) opposite that area, where more slack spokes exist.

When I took a better look, there is an obviously warped area of the rim there at the original crack area (wasn't before) so it's loosened spokes on both "ends" of the rim on that side (the outer side).

Unfortunatley my spoke tool is too large to fit between them for more than about 5-10 degrees of turning, at most, and I have no idea where my little tiny box-wrench is that just about fits 14g spoke nipples, so I ended up using pliers to tension up various spokes, as i was too lazy to undo the tire and tube install I'd just done before seeing these problems.

Eventually I gave up on it, cuz Tiny needed my attention, and after we were done I wanted to get going before she was gonna need water adn wait time, so I coudl go and get back before then, and just used the left-side wheel (with freewheel) that I'd pulled off to put the mtoor wheel on there yesterday, including the still-instaleld Ringworm tire.



I'll get back to that wheel someday when I have some spokes to replace them with (off another broken wheel probably). Doesnt' matter much for this trike, cuz it's gonna have the motor wheels back here instead.


The trip itself went better than expected; I actually had a little trouble keepign my thumbs from pushing waaaay past what I am pretty sure is 20MPH. :lol: This trike is a lot more fun now.

For teh first time, I didn't have cars honking at me or trying to speed around me at traffic lights, though I didn't beat any of them across the intersection like on CB2; it doestn' quite have taht good of acceleration.

Of coruse, I forgot the wattmeter, so all I have is the charge data. I'd just fully charged it after last night's trip, so it took 5.79Ah to recharge it after this trip, whcih si 313.3Wh.

The trip itself is roughly 5.7 miles according to the "measure" function on google maps (probably closer to 6 miles since it doesn't measure curves), so if we divide the Wh used by that distance, we get about...52.2 Wh/mile!

Wow, that's awful!

As a mitigation, it was very windy, and this thing is as aero as the Shuttle, :lol: so we'll concede several wh/mile minimum just to drag from teh gusty winds.

As a further mitigation, I was carrying around 60lbs of groceries and stuff in the back, in additon to whatever the trike weighs, plus my own ~170lbs. Gotta weigh the trike at some point, when I figure out a way I can physically do it without disassembling it.


I ran into one problem, once it was loaded down and on my way home: the axle nut (on the inside of the wheel, udner the deck) stays tight but it isn't possible to tighten it enough to keep the wheel from pivoting in the dropout with the center of the pivot at the *outer* axle mount/dropout, and the circumference of the pivot along a horizontal line levelw ith the axle at the nut end.





So the front of the outer edge of the tire would rub on the frame, and I'd have to stop and loosen thenut, force the wheel back, then tighten it again. It seems to happen when turning hard left; right turns don't do it. So it has to do with scrub and the yanking on the tire/wheel at taht angle.

I'llneed to make a "torque arm" retainer like the one on the left side (outer) for the right side (inner), so the axle can't pull forward like that. I had no problems at all with the nutless outer (left) end of the axle, which surprised me, as that's where I expected to ahve the problems.


There was no twisting of the axle, despite much repeated hard braking and accleration torque.

Spokes appear ok so far; gotta check tension and trueness though.


I guess now I'm ready to take the 5304 out of the 26" front and relace it inot the 20" right rear wheel, and replace the front with a regular bike wheel for now. (later perhaps with a third motor wheel, once I figure out which one).

But probably not tonight, as the doggies are napping and soon it will be dinnertime for them.

 

[ax57ax57]

Nana kept looking for Bonnie even up to the time of the fire, though she'd died almost a year and a half before that. And neither of them liked the other, and fought enough that I had to keep them separated, so that either coulb e with any other dog or group of them, but not with each other. :/ yet still...Nana missed her.

The day after Kody died I was startled to hear Norah howling like a wolf on the back patio. She held a long, sustained note that sounded exactly like the call of a wolf that you would hear on a nature program. Of course she stopped doing it as soon as I had my video camera in hand, and she's never done it again. Wolves use that call to help a lost member of the pack find their way home. I've had many collies in my lifetime, but she's the only one that I've ever heard howl like that.

Here's Kody in the foreground, and Norah in the background just 5 months ago on 12/31/14 outside of Sedona, Arizona. We lost Kody 2 months later despite a state-of-the-art cardiac procedure.

IMG_0745_01 by Rick T., on Flickr

 

[amberwolf]

Unfrotunately sometimes thigns go wrong despite teh best care / etc. That's what has me worried with Tiny, cuz there are a number of things that could still go wrong, the most likely being aspiration pneumonia, especially with Her Obstinacy's, well, obstinacy.


On teh trike, I wasa bout to take the X5304 wheel off, when I realized that it's solderd to the cdontroller which is soldered to evertying else, in the "hairball compartment" up front, and just at that moment I didn't want to deal with cutting htat apart. When I do, I'll cut the ctonroller away from the hairball and leave it connected to the motor. So then I'll need to redo teh power, throttle, brake connections after I move it to teh rear, once it's laced up into the 20" rim, and remount the controller at the rear.

Now, mounting the controllers...the left motor's controller is temporarily mounted under the front of the seat, so I could do the test. Haven't decided where they'll go for final placement. Two strong possiblities are either under the cargo bed, or inside the frame under the seat. Either would keep them and wiring out of the way of anything I'd do day to day, but neither place is easy to reach for service.

Under the bed has more airflow for cooling, except that pavement gets REALLY hot in summer here, and would end up actually heating up the controllers more than the airflow would cool them, on any even remotely hot day (even now, when it's only mid-90s F, the pavement and air inches above it can get well over 130F, up to 150F if air doesn't flow over it like when stopped at a light, at midday).


Inside the frame may have less airflow for cooling, but is shielded from direct "reflection" of the heat from pavement by the main "downtube" of teh trike, the 2" square tubing at the base of the frame, plus the battery box on the right and the accessory box on the left.


I could also mount them inside the fender wells, behind the coroplast, whcih would ensure airflow during operation as the wheels spin, but would then have no airflow at all when stopped, plus heat from the pavement would rise into the fender wells. Another issue is water/etc coming off the wheels on the few times a year that it does rain here at a time I have to ride in it.

Under the actual seat could be done, too, bolted to the bottom of the seat proper, but that would be less secure unless I actually run bolts all the way down thru the seat cushion itself. And it would block the lid of the accessory box on the left.

Anyway...i'll have to do some rewiring of the trike itself for all this stuff, no matter how it ends up.

 

[amberwolf]

Been doing yard work the last couple days, cuz stuff needed doing and doggies needed attention, and it's been so nice out. But today it's been pouring rain off and on, and the last couple of hours it's really been comign down.

I might need to add pontoons to the trike.

So after the partly sunny morning went away, today's been mostly indoor stuff, like the trike, between doggie stuff.

Iv'e got the x5304 wheel off and unlaced from the 26" rim, laced into the 20", and most of the way thru tensioning first round.

It's laced with all the spoke heads facing inward, radially, because it gives the best bracing angle and also keeps the elbows supported a lot better than if I have any heads facing outward, given the flange deesign and rim hole spacing.

I may go back and relace the other 20" wheel with the 9C in it to have the heads all inward on it, too, cuz I think presently I have them alternating like a typical wheel.



When I took it off I cut the throttle, reverse, brake, and power wires from teh controller to the trike, and left the phase and hall wires to the motor connected, so the controller will move with the mtoor to the rear.

I put a regular bike wheel on the front for now, one with a disc brake rotor so I can use dual brakes up front (rim and disc) if I want. It's not yet tested or anything with that wheel, and i don't hve th disc caliper on there yet, but I'll be putting that on and testing when I also test this motor wheel on the rear.

While I have it off the trike, I'm going to do some testing on the test frame and see about why it feels as if the controller doesn't use the halls, as if it is sensorless...cuz the halls worked when it ested them all before.

 

[amberwolf]

So...an X5304 in a 20" wheel even at only 30A controller current, slowstart type, STILL has a lot of torque.

Enough to (on the second braking test) rip it out of the frame and leave it a few feet behind the trike, while the trike coasted for a second before it decided gravity still applied. :/

Thankfully with 20" wheels, it doens't fall as far over as Delta Tripper did when the Fusin geared 26" motor wheel did something slightly similar (for different reasons), and doesn't tip over. Just...slams on the ground and drags around to the right as it skids to a brutal stop.

So I didn't get hurt or anything, othe rhtan my pride.

I rolled the trike on it's side, hobbled over to the wheel, rolled it to the trike, shoved it in the dropouts roleld the ripped-out wires into a bundle, and tightend the nuts down enough to hold it on while I limped home on the 9C.



Backing up a few minutes, I'd finished up the wheel install and temporary wiring, and took it out for a spin around the block. First check was to see what the current was on startup from a stop, so I accelerated hard with both motors and...wow it took off fast compared to what it used to be (almost as good as CB2). It pulled to the left because the X5304 pushes notably harder than the 9C 2807 does, in teh same size wheel. Smoothed out straight after a second ro so maybe 5-7mph, and after another couple seconds I braked toa stop with the regen and it dragged really hard to the right, cuz the x5304 brakes much harder than the 9C as well.

Checked the current, and it was about 56A, about 2800W.


As a check for braking hold, I held the ebrake and tried to pedal it, and I couldn't start it moving. Someone with better knees than me probably could, but i can't. So that's a good thing for braking hold power on the little hilss and such that I encounter at intersections while I have to wait fo a red light, if I have a problem with the mechanicals for some reason.



Next was to head around the block, accel and decel as if I was in traffic, coast, etc., and I made it down to the first corner , turned, got about 3/4 of the way down and tested a hard braking from about 10-12mph, whcih is where I found the inadequacies of my mounting method.




That moutning method I wasn't planning on using for more than the test anyway, but I was a little excited to test it out now, rather than wait till I could build the dropouts I want to for it, especially since I had found a solution for the 9C's axle problem. On the 9C, the inner side of the axle kept slipping forward (not from chain pull, but that would've done it too) in turns. Below are a couple pics to show without teh nut what I have to work with there.





and this is the still-secure outer side of the 9C, no slippage or rotation that I can see any signs of.





Trike on it's side while I figgered stuff out to fix that.



Eventually I figured out I didn't need somethign to p[ull the wxle back, just someting to block i t from going forward. Turns out on eof the torque washers I nromally have no use for flled the space perfectly, and should stop the axle from being able to move forward.

it also works instead of the other plain washer, used toline up the chian with the drive sprocket.




catch is that the tip of the washer sticks out far enough that the axle nut can't go on.


So i dremelled the tip down a littel to e fluxh with the droput face.


now it fits perfectly.




I'd beefed up the inner dropout on the right side (x5304 side) back when teh Fusin wheel came off of Delta Tripper,


but that wasn't enoguh for the x5304's torque. It seems strange, because the front fork dropouts were much thinner, no torque arms or torque washers, yet it still had no problems for the month+ I used and abused it on the front as a 26" wheel.

But being in a 20" makes a big difference....


The torque washer in the stack


is only really there as a spacer so the side cover doesn't rub on the fender frame (which I built around a regular wheel, not a hubmotor), but I suspect it was part of the cause of the problem, forcing the axle to push backwards against the rear edge of the dropout, slowly spreading it apart despite it's thickness, because it's made of several stacked plates, not a single one. Then braking would release that, twisting the axle back the other way, etc.



Even with the wrench as a torque arm, because I only used one clamp on it at it's center,



it probably was able to pivot a little, and so eventually didnt' hodl the axle anymore, then let the torque wasner's tab finish the job of prying it out of the dropout when i hit the regen brakes that last time.


You can see the shadow where the gap is on the now-pried-open inner dropout

View attachment 2



So the plan now is to take some 5mm+ thick metal I've got from the back of a cpmuter chair, and make some dropouts from scratch for the x5304. They'll be vertical dropouts, so that weight will help keep the wheel in, too, and since it doens't need to be moved back and forth for chain tension ro antyhing. I just ahve to be sure I line it up right with the left sid'es axle when I install the droputs.

this is the wheel on the "test stand" beign trued and tensioned



I had other stuff to say but wcan't remember at themoment, so I'll post this and upload the pics and put up anything else later.

 

[amberwolf]

Having the wheel get ripped out of the frame and subsequent events plus the rest of my day must've taken more out of me than usual; I fell asleep editing the pics into the above post.


Anyway, I remembered the other stuff I think:

Since the wires were ripped out of the harness for phase and halls during braking, I don't know if it damaged the controller or not yet.




It's status light was still blinking normal "ready" rather tahn any error, so one thing for sure is it has no idea there's no motor on it anymore. :lol:

It's power is wired in parallel with the other one for the 9C so I couldn't power it off and stilluse motors to get home around the block, and I didn't feel like testing the pedals for that.

But it didn't smoke or anything, so either any damage is already done, or it's ok. If it is ok it's possibly because I staggered the phase wire splices, and that's where two of them were ripped off. (I peeled off the remaining heatshrink and electrical tape that had still been around those points when it ripped apart to get the pic of the cotnroller's green phase wires).


I'll setup the motor on the "test stand" and rewire up the controller temporarily to see if it still works before I do the new dropouts. If it doesn't work then first I have to fix that to have any point to carring this really heavy motor wheel on the trike.

(or see what's wrong, if anything, with the Grin FOC controller that came in the box of stuff with the spokes, and figure out how to use that with the x5304).











.

 

[amberwolf]

The controller still works fine. I did another test I wanted to do yesterday, but didn't wanna cut the hall wires to do, but since they were already ripped out...


I ran it without halls, and it runs identically to the way it does with them connected.

I then twisted all the controller's hall wires together, excpe tpower and ground, and it runs the same that way. Tried with them all tied to 5v and same, and all ground, and same, and also some to one and some to the other, same results.

Tehn I hooked up the halls to teh mtoor's halls, and tested, same. Randomly changed around the 3 hallw ires between them, and same.

So basically the controler deosnt' even need hall wires cuz it doesn't bother looking at htem. I don't understand why tehy bothered installing them!

At least it explains why it always operated as if it were sensorless...cuz it does!


Sigh.

I think I'm gonna test out the FOC controller just to see how it compares.


And then on to work out the dropouts to hold this thing in place for whatever ends up driving it.

Also, some pics of the broken-off lights:

 

[amberwolf]

Tiny's having a not so great couple days, so I've been following her around today and not doing a lot on this.

I got the dropouts "made", using some old steel L brackets with bolt slots already made into them. I forget exactly how thick they are, but that's my thumb in the pic, there.




The slots are at least 15-16mm wide, and I only need 10mm, so I had to fill one side of each one by welding, then angle grinder to get basic shape, then file.
View attachment 2


Unfortuantely I figured that using an old GM/9c type stator/axle to test teh spacing on would be "safe" in that it would likely be the same or thinner than the X5304 axle, and used that to file it down to a nice tight tap-it-into-place fit...



but it turns out it's maybe half a millimeter or more THICKER than the x5304's.

So I removed more material than I wanted, and now the x5304's axle will rock a little in them. Maybe I'll make some shims, or maybe I'll go back and reweld/file them; haven't decided. I know which would be better, but it's a lot harder and time consumng and I'm not sure I care taht much just at the moment, though I'm sure i will the first time the wheel rocks out of the dropouts again. :lol:


Now I need to wheel the trike out back and get these welded onto the rigthside fender frame, in place of the existing dropouts.

I *hope* that this will be enough to keep the wheel in there, and prevent spinout, etc.

 

[ax57ax57]

AW,

Have you thought about peening the opening with a hefty hammer to tighten up the clearance? It would not only tighten up the clearance, but it would work-harden the mild steel and make it more resistant to being stripped by the torque on the axle flats.

 

[amberwolf]

Hadn't considered that, but I'm nto sure I could do it. I have a 4lb sledge and that's the biggest I've got. I can swing it downward pretty hard (enough to pound an inch+ of fencepost into the ground at a time), but dunno if that's enoguh to do this.

And I don't know what to do to translate the flat hammer face into something that would do what you're talking about, without bending up the thick steel plate itself.

I don't really have anything I could clamp or affix it to that would take that kind of a beating, either. An anvil would do it, but don't have one. The bricks and concrete I have around are probably not strong enough. I have two chunks of concrete with a steel pipe stub in the center, that *mgiht* survive it, but I'd have to weld the brackets to the pipe itself to hold them on there while I beat the crap out of them.

Any ideas?

 

[DAND214]

AW, make them clamping ones. Looks big enough to put a couple angles and a bolt thru.
Just a thought as you have done it before.

Dan

 

[amberwolf]

I'd like to, thought about it, not sure I can do it right.

The way I did it on CB2 was kinda screwed up but it was my only option at the time. IIRC I welded rings cut from somethign on one side, and nuts on the other side, but this sticks out a lot to eitehr side of the dropout (cuz I don't have anything I could use that's narrower than the plates) and so I'd have to pry them apart every time I want to stick the wheel in or take it out, which on CB2 was a huge PITA and took like 2-3 hours total to do any work on the rear wheel for any reason. Or more.

Also, the ring on one side just plain broke off from stress and my welding insufficiencies, and the other I think was going to at one point. I forget. Eventually I cut them off and found that (even now, years later) I am not having any trouble with the dropouts spreading or axle turning in them, even with the torque applied via the 20" wheel and HSR3548 @56V@40Aish, around 2Kw. (and a few others between that and the original 9C attempt, which is now the leftside motor on the trike).



If I had long enough bolts and nuts and tubes narrow enough, I could do that again on these plates, but within their thickness. But AFAIK I have nothign with all the qualities required. (buying even cheap stuff that I don't ABSOLUTELY have to have just now is out of the question; I've already lost at least $500+ being off work to take care of Tiny).

I do have some bolts that are very long, and are themselves narrow enough to not exceed the dropout plate thickness, but the nuts are AFAICR too wide for this. I could use them to run thru the entire width of the plate if I drilled thru the plate itself, like most people do....


So to drill thru the plate I'd have to put the pieces in the little HF drill press to drill the bolt hole thru the width of the plate, and can't figure a good way to clamp them in place straight. I have a little vise but have been having troulbe figuring how to get it to hold onto the baseplate of the drillpress's workmount.

I may end up having to unbury the big southbend lathe, and use the workpiece mount on it to hold the part, and the chuck to hold the drillbit. But I may have to make a belt for it first, cuz i'ts been sitting so long in the shed now that the old one is probably rotten.


I really wanna put the plates on here now, though, so I can test the trike and so I can use it. Because of inventory coming up I have to work tomorrow, like it or not, there's not enough people to let me not do that. And I'd liek to bring Tiny up there with me, and not in the trailer using CB2.

So I am probably going to weld on the first set of these tonight (right after doggie dinnertime), and see how it works out. If it doesn't, well, I c an still use the othe rpart of the L to make a second set, or I can use the second pair of these L brackets to make the new set (though I'd rather save those to make new ones for the other side once I perfect something for this side).

I'd already cut off teh regular dropouts on the right side of the trike to work out how to mount these (since they won't go in parallel with them), so no going back to just a regular bike wheel without welding *somethign* on there.


FWIW, to make sure the axles are at the same distance back from the "transaxle" support tube, it looks like the right side has to be forward of where the dropouts were actually made by more than a whole axle width. That's strange, but it might be somethign I did to that side when I was doing stuff on it as Delta Tripper to deal with the Fusin geared hub's width, and the failure where it came off the trike.

 

[amberwolf]

I went ahead and welded them on as they are, and they appear to be lined up correctly.








I used the regular bike wheel (because of weight and ease of manipulation) to bolt to them and hold them aligned while i tackwelded them in place,



then I put the X5304 in there to verify positioning, then fully welded them.



I don't think the motor is going to pry these open anytime soon,
View attachment 8





but I did find a problem: The threads on eithe rthe nut or axle on the wire side (inner) are stripped, so I cna't tigthen that nut completely. Not sure if that happened during the wheel-self-removal incident or if I did it just "now" with the latest install. Felt real easy to turn too far so I suspect already damaged. Doesnt' matter. Have to see which one it is adn HOPE it's the nut cuz that I can replace relatively easily. If its' the axle, well, it needs a new one anyway.


Test rode it around the block a little, no failures except that there is a light scraping on the rigthside cover from the leftover edge of the new dropout, where i cut it off the L bracket it came from. Too late at night to grind that off, so will have to do it tomorrow morning.


Then will do more ride tests aroudn the block with hard electric braking and acceleration, and see fi I can break something.


For now, I painted the dropouts, mostly so that if something shifts I'll be able to see that, but also to make it look a little neater.




Speaking of neater, the controller/battery area definitely isn't:

/

 

[docnjoj]

That looks pretty and quite solid. I look forward to the road tests. It does look like a couple of short angle irons about 3/4 of an inch vertical mount could make those drops really foolproof. Just my 2 centavos. I'm thinking welded on the outside and a bolt through a single hole.
otherDoc

 

[amberwolf]

That looks pretty and quite solid. I look forward to the road tests. It does look like a couple of short angle irons about 3/4 of an inch vertical mount could make those drops really foolproof. Just my 2 centavos. I'm thinking welded on the outside and a bolt through a single hole.
otherDoc

That's a thought. But to clear doorframes and such they'd have to be on the "inside" dropout only, not on teh "outside" one, unless they are *very* short (no longer than the axle/nuts of the motor itself).


I took the wheel off and ground the extra lip off the piece for the dropout, put the wheel back on, and tested it around the block a few times, for around 1Ah of power consumption.

No problems, hard braking and accel. Got up to 3050W and 59A.

Inspection after the ride showed no movement of anything, but the roads are relatively smooth vs the way they will be on the commute.

FWIW, with the extra weight so low on either side and out so far, it did not even attempt to lift a wheel in turns, but the front end acted squirrely cuz it doesn't have enough weight on it now vs the back end!

Braking with the front skids the wheel easily, although it's nto my "good" sticky tire, instead is a narrower harder tire that was already on that wheel. I need to change that out, but it won't happen today before work; I am sitting here eating and resting with Tiny and Yogi now, so I'll ahve the energy to actually do whatever it si I have to do at work.

Also, an ooopsie during welding, where a bit of slag set fire to teh other side's fender cover (since i had to do all the work with it on it's side)



pics of teh trike as it is now.

 

[Solcar]

Looking geal good.

 

[amberwolf]

Ride went well both to and from work, was able to out accelerate a couple of trucks at lights but not all teh way across the intersection like on CB2.

But considering the trike is heavier, longer, and also had Tiny in teh back plus my chunkier-than-used-to-be self, that's pretty dang good.

The only issue I ran into was nearing home, the nut on the inside (the stripped one) loosened significantly, so in right turns (where the bottom of the wheel is dragged away from the trike, toward the outside) the tire would rub on the fender frame, but would go straight again as soon as the turn was over.

So I'll have to figure out something else to secure that, a differnet nut, or those "external" clamps for the dropouts, etc.

 

[dogman dan]

Nice work on the dropouts. It should be pretty easy to convert them to clamping type, for that stripped axle.

I'd just do the angle iron thing, rather than try to pinch that whole thick steel slot. You've seen the picture of how I did some.

You can bolt on one of the angles, or weld it on.

 

[amberwolf]

I guess how I do it depends on what I have laying around..but most likely I'll just weld the two former ends of the L pieces onto the "inner" dropout right next to the dropput faces, so they "continue" teh face, add a "dotted slit" at the top end of the dropout itself for "flex" then run a couple of massive bolts thru the existing slots on those new pieces (which are ~15mm-ish wide, by maybe 45mm long?) to pinch teh whole thing together as much as psosible.

We'll see what I come up with, most likely later today. right now I'm goign back to sleep now that dawn pooptrol and playtime is over, till they wake me up for breakfast. Zzzzzzzz.....

 

[amberwolf]

Well, they didn't wake me up till nearly noon! Tiny was so excited for breakfast that I don't know why she hadn't dragged me out of the bed before then.

After breakfast for them, and a little playtime (was in the 90s already so they didn't want much), then naptime for them and triketime for me.

I had a kind of scattered day, despite all the sleep I've been scatterbrained.

Before I started on critical stuff like the dropouts, I started by digging out a YUS caliper for the disc brake mount (since it already has the disc on the wheel)...but ti turns out the disc is too small and only just gets a few mm of contact with the caliper pads.

I recall vaguely that I'd welded the mount point on based on the largest rotor I'd had at the time, so...I dug out a 24" wheel that had had the larger disc rotor on it, (it's teh same wheel as the 26", just in 24", both off a Mongoose Basher--the 26" ones from Mdd0127 and the 24" from the one I found at Goodwill years ago).

But the rotor wasn't still on it, and I couldn't find it with any of the other ones I thought I had, but I did find one of the old thread-on ones that I'd long ago taken the rivets out of and the threadon adapter off, leaving just the non-iso mounting holes. I recalled a failed attempt wiht a drill press to mill out those holes to ISo placement, so I used the angle grinder to slot them instead of trying that again. Test fitted it on the 24" wheel, and put that wheel on the fork:



It rides a little differently with that, but unfortunately the rim brakes don't reach the 24" rim, and while I could fix that I decided to leave it as 26" for several reasons; simplicity, ride quality, etc.


Before taking it off I tried teh brakes, by cabling it up to the second Avid lever from WayneBergman (the first is running the rim brake), but regardless of adjustmetns I couldn't get it to brake even hard enough to stop me from pedalling it! So, can't live without th erim brakes...which themselves are powerful enough to skid the wheel on grass and dirt when using the motor(s). Same probelm I had before with the disc, that I didn't recall when I started this today.

Since it's not the disc itself as it's not the same one I'd had problems iwth on CB2 (although it could be something wrong with the surface machining or something?) and it could be the caliper or pads (which *are* the same ones), I had hoped to try the (promax?) caliper off the 29er fork, but can't find the fork! I know it's here somewhere, and it must be in obvious plain sight but I'm baffled. :/

Anyway, for now, it's still on there as additonal braking, but not to be depended on by itself.
View attachment 30

Now back to the wheel itself...pulled the 24" off and mvoed it's rotor to the 26". The tire on that 26" is ok, but it's harder compound and less sticky, and older and skinnier than what I had run on there (and what's on CB2), so I changed it out for the one I'd had on there before the rim swapout on the x5304. Here you can see the difference between them, the skinnier kenda and the wider CST, which is also slighly larger outer diameter. VERY similar tread pattern for the center, though more aggressively knobby on teh CST's edges (which is irrelevant for the trike, but possibly useful on CB2).




That all done, I started on the clamps for the x5304's inner dropout. First up was to see what i had and how it might fit. The left over bits of the L brackets I used to make them from in the first place were the first obvious choice, but a bit large to fit...




So I ground off some of one side, so they'd fit in there under htat edge (whcih I later cut off whcih made some of the below pointless)


Then i needed to grind off some weld spaltter and stuff, so they'll sit flat perpendicular to the dropouts.



But the grinder won't reach, cuz the gearbox sticks out too far, even if I had a brand new wheel on there whcih I don't have to try.
View attachment 23


So out comes the larger B&D grinder that stopped working a while back, that I never got around to fixing. After more than an hour I finally found the problem was a contact broken between the wire crimp portion and the contact area, between the brushes and the field windings. (it's a series wired brushed motor). Fixed by running some wire up and around, clamped in place by the brushholder mount, and just twisted around another contact on the brushholder itself cuz I apparently am completely out of solder. (I forgot I was running out, and was going to order more, but right now I have to save what money I do have in case Tiny's issues require me to stay home from work unpaid longer and/or again.) I might still have bits of it in project boxes but probably not much, if any. (I do have a roll of thick silver solder but it won't melt even with my little butane torch; I'd probably ahve to use the MAPP torch for that, adn that would destroy wires/electronics).

That fixed the grinder, so then I could easily get the spatter/etc off, and also used it for flattening the tops off the clamping parts after I'd cut them off.


Originally I'd planned to use the narrower side of the parts (less material between the bolt slots and the edge) but after I tack welded the first one I realized that after fully welding it no bolt head or washer would sit flat on that surface now, becuse the weld would come up nearly to the edge of the slot. I wanted to use them this way because it meant more force direclty to the dropouts to pull them together, less bending across the clamp,e tc.






But given the problem and the need to fully weld it all teh way, I flipped them over aand used the wider side. I could've cut down that wider side a little but decided not to, partly for time reasons as this was all taking a lot longer (hours longer) than I'd planned. (and Tiny and Yogi need attention, too).

So I tacked them on this way, with the plates ever so slightly overhaniging the dropout slot, to help make up fro that slight gap I'd accidentally made, so they won't be able to rock axles in the clamps. Then test fitted the motor with no nuts at all, and it was very tight fit, no bolt to clamp it yet.







Offgroun,d trike still on it's side, I ran the motor fast, slow, reverse, braking, etc., with no rocking at all.

Then I installed the bolt to clamp the dropouts, cranking it all teh way down until I could not turn it more, and indeed the top of the clamps is closer to gether than an axle will even fit, so the dropout part may actually be clamping together with some force (can't tell). I also isntalled thenut on teh outer axle end. Teh bolt is itself almost as large as the axle.



I did forget to slit the end of it, so that will have to be done later (with a hand saw most likely as I doubt I can get a grinder or other power tool in tehre to do it), if it needs to be doen at all.


I took a look at the axle threads, and the nuts, and found the axle seems not to be damged, just the threads on teh nuts severely stripped out.


However, the outer 9C axle must be slightly larger diameter because it fits fine and tightly on there, and does not exhibit any stripped behavior, when I tried it on a whim onm the outer 9C axle (left side).


On the 9C's inner axle, with the notch for the wire drip loop, ti's pretty problematic cuz there is only a tiny 2-thread bit on that side of the axle to even catch the nut at all--the notch effectively removes all of the other threads from service. So it *does* rock back and forth some, given that there is no clamping or thick dropout, etc, and so that is my next task, to use the other pair of L brackets to make teh same dropouts on this side too.

The catch is...I have to make them bolt-on for the inner side, becuase if I don't there's no way to install or tension the pedal chain. At least, not without teh complications of a separate tensioner or other devices.

For now, to stiffen the weaker rear end of the inner droput of the 9C, I welded on the former rightside inner dropout to it's back end, and to the frame behind it. It may not help a lot, but it does help some, keeping it from being able to just push that back and spread it open quite as easy, since I cna't thicken that dropout as there's just not enough axle to do that.




Since it was late afternoon or even evening when I got as far as the above, I didn't continue with that yet as I need to wrok it out in my head first.

Instead I thought I'd fix the aiming issue with the headlight, which I never got back to--it points down too low and the only way to fix it is to cut the welds on teh stem mounting point, and pivot it up a few degrees. I did, tested tej aim to what looked ok, then tacked it very lightly (breakable by hand, I thought), and tested teh aim riding around in teh shadows I could see the light in.

But I'd screwed something up and it was way way too high, so instead of going back to teh work area and using the grinder I just grabbed the chisel and hammer and broke the tacks..easy enough but the second blow on the last one shattered teh headlight! (even though I was nowhere near it).

Sigh. I don't know where the last one of those is, and I am not presently up to gorilla-gluing the pieces together after soldering in a new bulb (cuz I don't have solder either) as teh filiament stretched and broke too. I do still have the bulb out of the old headlight that shattered when I hit the pothole on CB2, months back, actually on my trip back from picking up the x5304!, but it's reflector/etc is in even worse shape more bits missing, and I tossed out most of teh broken glass from that incident.


So I got the scooter headlight off DayGlo Avenger, which I'd already remvoed a few weeks ago thinking to use it on here... I didn't wanna remove the regular headlight mount so I just put it inside that (it's a lot smaller) and ziptied it in place with some cork pads behind it to help aim it. it's not as good as the car headlight but it's better than anything else I have laying around. When I have money, if I still need one by then, I'll just buy one, they're only about $10-12 I think.
View attachment 7


I do still have the Grin LED light too, but it's not very bright compared to even the scooter headlight. Good enough for people to see I'm here, but not for me to see anything.




Last thing before losign light was to try adding a brake stiffener to teh front rim brakes, sent alogn with the othe rbrake stuff from Wayne. I couldn't use washers between it and the bosses/arms because doign so aused them to deform and press on the arms, keeping them from moving back after braking, sticking them to the rim.
View attachment 3


Instead I used nuts, which won't deform, threaded onto the bolts as the first two I picked happened to fit (how, i can't imagine, by chance, but this stuff happens to me).


This stiffened the brakes a LOT so now I can lock them up pretty easily, and did some adjsuting of the various knobs on teh levers to give more control before that happens but still just allow it at full lever pull.


I havent tested on pavement yet but I expect a little readjustment will get me lockkup ability tehre too.

 

[amberwolf]

Crossposted from the Satiator thread
http://www.endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=60169&p=1050703#p1050703



I finally got the chance to try the Satiator out on the SB Cruiser's EM3EV A123 20Ah pack, which was *almost* fully charged already, and it works fine, though I had to make a new charging profile for it as it's charger normally runs at 58.4V final rather than the built-in-profile's 57.6(?)V.

Doing that charging profile via the built in screen and buttons was really easy, but had me wondering till I went back thru this thread, cuz the built in profiles are actually titled LiFe vs other LI type and there wasnt' an option for that in the custom profile menu. Since the Satiator will trickle current after finishing anyway, it doenst' really matter cuz that will let the BMS in there balance if necessary.


I only ran into one glitch, because being a beta tester by nature I poke and prod things to see what they do and how I can break them, so i can tell the makers how to improve things.

I'd already seen in the manual 5.2.4 section about the OLED screen glitch when AC power gets interrupted momentarily, but I found another way to do it. If I hold the physical brake on teh front wheel of the trike, then thump the throttle of the x5304 right rear wheel, after a couple times of this the OLED screen will glitch and corrupt/freeze, until I either press a button or wait for teh screensaver. It's pretty repeatable, most times it'll happen after two or three tries. I can see the current surge on the Satiator screen, from the 0.1A/0.2A flickering of end of charge, to 3-4A momentarily, until the glitch occurs.

I took some pictures of the screens but am having trouble getting the camera connection to work, and it's unlikely to have any bearing on the issue, so I won't worry about uploading them unless they are needed.


FWIW, it doesn't happen when I use the 9C on the left to do the same thing, so even though both are runnign on similar xcm806 type 12FET controllers with similar ~30A current limits, I suspect teh inductance of teh X5304 itself, or some other property of it, is causing teh issue. I can't tell for sure if it happens from the inbound current surge to the motor, or the collapsing current surge out of it that maybe spiking it's voltage higher and feeding back thru the controller to the battery (and thus the Satiator).

The only major difference between the two controllers is the input capacitance: I added caps (and bigger ones than it started with) to the one on the X5304 as it had the space inside, and haven't done that to the other one yet. I doubt that has anything to do with the issue, but I suppose its' possible.


Since this issue has nothing to do with the normal usage of a charger, and was done just to see what kind of response the Satiator would have to it, I wouldn't expect it to ever happen to anyone else, but thougth I'd document it here in case it turns out to be important later on, or connected to some other underlying issue.



Next up will be to create a profle for the EIG NMC 14s 58V 20Ah pack on CrazyBike2 and test that. It'll be a top-off test first, cuz it should be nearly fully charged.

Then one for the EIG NMC 4s 12V (16v, really) 20Ah lighting packs I use on the bikes, so I only have to have one charger for any of the bikes, and don't have to use a little RC charger for teh lighting pack while I use a bigger bulk charger for the traction pack. Sicne the Satiator is capable of higher currents than any of the other chargers, it probably wont' take much longer to charge first one and then the other with it than it would to charge each separately and simultaneously with the smaller chargers. (something else to test).


I can't say there's anything in particular I don't like about it yet; it is intuitively easy to find my way around the menus, even before I bothered reading the manual I just played with it and figured it out by doing the obvious things. So I'd say so far that it's well laid out, and though I'd add some options to things if I could, most likely they arent' really necessary or desirable for other people anyway (cuz I'm wierd and do things different from most).


So far I give it two thumbs up!

 

[amberwolf]

Antoher crosspost from teh satiator thread:



The test charge of CB2's pack actually did significant charging, at the full 8A rate (I forgot I'd used it and not recharged it some days back), for the first bit of the ~3Ah of charging it did. I couldn't stay and watch any of it due to the sonic assault in the neighborhood (see note at end) but checked on it at the beginning for a few seconds, and after a while checked it again to find it done. I don't remember the time it said it took to do the charge but it was very much shorter than with the 5A Modary charger I normally use.


Before the assault started, I had gone on a grocery run in late afternoon on the SB Cruiser, using up a few Ah on both traction and lighting packs, making a good chance to charge them, too.

Again, full 8A charge rate with no problems, for teh short moments I could stay to watch. Also finsihed much faster than with the Modary, as expected.

The test charge of teh lighting pack also went very quick, profile created just for it's 16.4v fullcharge, but I did use 8A. This took very little time to finish, and since that pack isn't attached I did the charging in the bedroom, I think it took less than half an hour to do the 2Ah. Normally the "5A" RC charger I use for it, in fast charge mode, takes a couple of hours to get around to finishing that same charge.

I don't know if I will always use the fast charge rate on there, or create a slower charge profile too, as I expect slower charging would lengthen the life of the packs--but it certainly will be nice to be able to charge much faster when i need to.



I won't be moutnign the charger on the bikes but I may carry it with me at least sometimes (don't need to on the commute) just in case on longer trips.











(forgive my imprecision; the last 1/4 of this whole day, almost 6 hours now, there has been a party going on with a physical assault of incredibly loud and raucous live music in their backyard diagonally across the intersection from my house, and it is so loud that it frequently sounds like someone is knocking on my front door, and occasionally as if they were kicking it in. Many people have tried to get them to stop but they just tell them to frock off, and the police they've called have never shown up, despite continous calls from teh entire area about it, for blocks around. Even here in my bedroom, the farthest possible room from their assault on the neighborhood, with a blanket over the doorway and the door shut and a privacy screen holding up mroe blanets between me and the door, and the box fan and window AC unit going (cuz I can't open the windows to let the cool air in due ot the continued assault) I can still feel the thumping of their attack on us, and sometimes hear the "vocals" (not sure I would call them "singing" even if they werent' so loud you can't actually understand anything). So it's pretty damned hard to concentrate on anything, as I've had a severe headache from it since it started, and the dogs are still upset about it--though finally starting to nap now something like an hour and a half after dinnertime. I wish I could. )