I've been fixing and building guitars like a madman. Haven't even been able to think much about my electric vehicle projects.
http://www.sevenstring.org/forum/4475905-post536.html
I just told everyone no more repairs though because, for the next few months, I'm finishing my 9 string all aluminum/brass/stainless/copper travel guitar, and building at least one, maybe two, offroad tadpole e-trikes. I've decided to put off the hemp/bamboo/wood amphibious trike until I make it to somewhere tropical where I can find a place I want to hang out for a while and a shop I can work in.
One trike will be for one of my best friends who's a baja racer that works with wounded vets. I showed him John in CR's 103mph hubmonster video and he said that when he gets back from chasing his cousin in the Baja1000, he wants to build a three wheel drive off road trike. We'll see what happens but he seemed really excited about it and will probably run it in the NORRA Mexican 1000 offroad race if he can find a battery sponsor so we can quick change packs at pits and recharge them with a trailer mounted propane generator pulled by the chase truck that's also for the gas powered vintage dirt bikes, that podium every year, a 71 Honda SL350 and a 77 Yamaha XT500. If he actually ends up committing to building one this year(race year that is. It's in May.), I'll definitely be helping in any way I can as I'm the one that's turned him on to e-drive potential. The plan we came up with today is using two mid mounted hubmonsters, powered by four Adaptto Max E's, one motor driving the rear wheel, and one going to a quad front diff with extended a-arms and axles. I figured we'd look at battery options for it when it's done and am open to suggestions. I'll see if I can get him to put up a build thread for it here but he's pretty burnt out on the internet so I may just do a post once it's done.
I'll be working on a trike for myself too but with much less power. An Amberwolf inspired build for sure! The SB Cruiser really got my gears turning as to how much utility and awesomeness can be accomplished with so little! I plan to use most of the parts for the sustainably built leaning/tilting all belt drive amphibious camper trike and just mount them on a steel trike frame with a 300 watt panel on the roof. I'm wondering if I can separate the glass from the panels and coat them with thin uv stable ultra clear epoxy instead, to lighten them up a bit. Might have to borrow/improvise a pizza oven! lol Pedal drive will be a Hammerschmidt to a NuVinci N360. Electric drive will be a Ryobi 40v lithium brushless chainsaw(6374 fan cooled outrunner and 12-fet basically) running a primary friction reduction, then into a bike chain secondary reduction jackshaft with twin csk25 freewheels for pedal drive input and twin csk25's for the ev input too so silent freewheeling for each input, then into the NuVinci. The final reduction out of the NuVinci to the rear wheel will be a #219 o-ring chain setup. The front end is off a banshee 350 quad with 21" sand tires, and I just picked up a KX450 swingarm and 17" rear 3 spoke magnesium sport bike wheel that will run a Heidenau K60 Scout dual sport rear tire. I'll use the solar panel as a canopy. It's not going to be fast at all unless it's going down hill. It will only be geared for 15mph in high gear, 3mph max in low, so the little 2500 watt chainsaw won't get loaded too hard. Not sure what I'll do for batteries yet but I may just get a couple of high capacity 160wh Ryobi batteries for it. I primarily want to pedal the thing and power the motor off the solar but it will be nice to get a little help up the hills or on cloudy days, even if only for a few miles. Ideally, I'll find a 20-30ah nmc pack for it someday which should make electric only range somewhere in the 20-40 mile range, which is more than I ever need to go in a day.
I'll also need to build a little trailer to haul a few tools and some camping gear and supplies with and will probably put a solar panel or two on it. 900 watts of solar isn't much but if 5 hours of sun can get me 25 miles at 5mph, it will be perfect. I'll use more quad crap for the axle on it and have thought about mid mounting a used hub motor and a little battery pack on it too. When the trike is done and I can get around for free, I'll have money to get some c-beam's from open builds and a henrob/dillion torch kit so the outer frame for the trailer will be a cnc router/dremel mill/torch table. I found a couple of really light oxygen generators at the scrap yard and a couple of really light aluminium oxygen tanks so I can revalve one of them and get it recertified for acetylene or propane, and use the other for oxygen. With that, my comprehensive dremel collection, and a few hand tools, I'm hoping to have a 250lb mobile machine shop/electronics dev lab/crap hauler. We'll see how it goes but I can see it in my head.
I have almost all of the parts for everything except solar panels and batteries, which I'll be selling my gas sucking pig to fund. The best scrapyard I've ever found is four miles away down a dirt road and I put in 40 hours so far helping my friend, who's also a fabricator/engineer type, get ready for baja, so he's going to help me get it all built in his shop that has MIG/TIG/plasma, a tubing bender, my old lathe/mill combo, a small emco lathe, and just about every other metal working tool you can think of so unlike the sustainable trike that will be made out of hundreds of little pieces cut/glued/laminated together, which will require the perfect weather for curing, this build will go fast and easy and isn't weather dependent at all!
My internet has been super slow lately and I'm a little burnt on the internet too so I might not be able to post comprehensive build threads here until I get everything done and can get to better internet but I'll definitely be documenting the builds and will post threads here when I can because this community is largely at fault for my e-craziness!
