Good to hear.
 

Its good to hear that things are going well for you with your little gas saver. I am still on the fence myself about buying a scooter, or converting a mountain bike into an E-bike. And actually I am looking at a full blown dirtbike at the moment for some weekend fun time. There is a used Honda 250cc motocross bike for sale at one of the local shops here in Prague, but they want 65,000 Czk for it, which is about $3600. The good news is that because of our Diplomatic status here we get all of the VAT/taxes back on it, which would end up being approximately $1,000. $2600 is not bad for a bike like this one. Its all tricked out for racing, and has just been fully serviced. I have to do some checking with State8Honda stateside and see what kind of deal I can get from them. They send a shipment to Germany evey month and the shipping would be $300.

I thought I would put this in here. I just ordered a Razor E200 scooter for my son for Christmas.

http://ep.yimg.com/ca/I/razorama_2178_4940609

It runs on 24V (two 12V 7amp batteries) If I wanted to replace those SLAs with a couple of 6S 5000 mah lipos, what could I use for a Low Voltage Cutoff?

Or could I replace the controller
http://www.electricscooterparts.com/...K2430HB-FS.jpg
With a CC MMM and use that MMM's internal LVC? But what to do with the throttle twist grip?

A very simple, cheap solution would be a lipo low voltage alarm/buzzer like this:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1S-6S-LiPo-B...item43aaa3aac4

The fact that you (I mean your son) is riding it would mean you (he) would definitely hear it (not like a rc vehicle at a great distance) - so it should be very reliable.

Anyway, just a thought.

Nice device, cheap, effective and simple. Thanks. But I don't get how they say it can be used with LiFe batteries if it starts screaming at the 3.3V mark (3.3V per cell I presume). But for lipo, it's looks nice.

The throttle is probably a typical 5k ohm pot. The MMM wants to see PWM pulses. Easiest way to do that would be to get a servo tester and replace the pot in the tester with the wires from the throttle. Might want to give some thought into how the ESC will react if the throttle goes bad though; I don't think you want your son to suddenly be running at WOT if something goes wrong...

He can always put a relay between the motor and controller. The brake handle has a switch that can trigger the relay to an open circuit. Or use A123's and don't worry about modding anything.

I own a few of those LVA's. They are adjustable by increments of .10 volts. 3.0-3.8 alarm voltage range per cell IIRC. Loud little suckers too.

I didn't know they were adjustable. That is cool. I'll see how good he is with it and decide then if I'll upgrade the thing with lithium. I'm scratching the MMM idea, better to keep it safe for the boy. Thanks guys.

Correction
 

I doubled checked it's 2.7-3.8v per.^

The razor scooters already have a low voltage cutoff. At 6S it should be fine. I run 7S on something similar and it works fine too, but lvc will hit at a lower voltage than you would probalby like. It probably wont work over 7S because they have a high voltage protection, but your kid will always want to go faster. The 5k pots are only used on the brushless motors. I'm pretty sure thats a hall effect throttle. I havent figured out a way to get that to talk to a CC controler. TNCscooters has some good deals on different controllers if you wanted to swap it out, but there is good info there on how they work since they have all the spec sheets.
LVC on those type controllers are around 20.5 volts according to a bunch of spec sheets and they are usually plus or minus a volt. You cant run SLA's down either or they go bad too. I've been running lipos in my scooters for a while and they work great. Those controllers limit the voltage to keep accelleration under control and keep the motor from burning up. If you put a CC controller on that thing it will probably wheelie on demand.

Well if it already has a LVC set for 20.5V + or - 1V, then it's all good. Even if it cuts out at 19.5V, that's 3.25V per cell on 6S so I'm ok with that. He already knows that once you loose power, no more throttle, he's pretty good at it from running his E-Revo since he was 5.

getting close to 2800 km on the scooter. Man it is cold! :lol:
But I have some very good winter wear to keep me warm so all is fine. But the end of the season is coming fast, I had my first taste of riding a scooter in snow yesterday night. Snow was falling heavily last night but since the ground is still not frozen, it would semi melt into a slushy mess on the pavement. I could get some studded winter tires for the scooter but I don't want to venture into this kind of craziness. Although there are some brave souls in Toronto who will be doing it :yes:
The forecast is sun for the rest of the week so I should be good to use my scooter this week and maybe I will have to store it for the rest of winter in hopes that I can get it out again at the end of March for a new fun season.
Next spring will be exciting as I plan on upgrading to a Lithium Iron Phosphate battery. I already started prepping the scooter for it, I modified the shunts inside the controller which gave the scooter tons of torque, I also changed the phase wires to 10 gauge instead of the 14 gauge that was there. I did the full mod, starting from inside the motor. What a dirty PITA job that was!
Next will be the battery wires, I'll go with 8 gauge on this one. Now I still have to decide about the voltage on that battery, stay with 48V and be legal or go with 60V and have some fun and pretend to be legal.

Now let's be clear on what's legal here and what I have for performance right now. Being legal means a top speed of 32 km/h on flat ground. Right now with tired 48V 34ah SLAs in the bitter cold, I go 45 km/h on flat ground. So I'm not legal even with the stock crappy battery. Going to 48V 30ah LiFePO would get me closer to 50 km/h top speed, maybe 48 or 49. I would get more than double the range I have now which I would very much like. Going to 60V 30ah would probably get me to 55+ km/h. Not crazy fast, enough to keep up with traffic if need be but enough to get in trouble with some anal cop also. I still have time to think about it, but right now, 60V sounds really good to me :lol:

Legal shmeegle
 

I doubt seriously that the police have the time to bother with that kind of crap, but to be on the safe side I would check what the fine might be if you got caught, and they actually felt like taking action against you:rules:. I would still go for more voltage and have a good time driving it with room to spare in the power aspect of the ride:party:. You have done well so far and adding a little pep is a good thing:whistle:. Following your experience has been informative and entertaining. I plan to keep watching, but its been great up to now. Thank you for sharing with all of us.:yes:

Glad you enjoyed it. I sure hijacked BrianG's thread good eh! :lol:

There's a bit of a gray area concerning the law with pedal assist bikes and scooters. A loophole that some cops like to take advantage of. If they find you running without the pedals for example, they will assume that it is now a motorcycle and not a pedal assist scooter so they give you tickets for not wearing the proper helmet (if you just have a bicycle helmet) a ticket for not having the proper license, a ticket for no registration, a ticket for no insurance. It ads up to quite a sizable amount. Now they are trying to stick you with a whole bunch of infractions but it doesn't hold in court as a few have found. Just because the pedals were not on doesn't mean that the pedal assist scooter magically becomes a motorcycle. So people get out of court without paying the fines. But they did loose a day's pay and wasted their time going to court.

Today is a bit of a sad day. I noticed ice patches on the streets so the scooter stayed in the garage and I took the car to work this afternoon. :no: First time using a car to go to work since May. And you know what, driving a car is frikkin' boring. :sleep:

Like crash has brought up, there are some legal restrictions to consider. I've tossed around the idea of an E-Bike and looked into the regulations. Even in Montana you can only go 20 MPH under the bike's own power without having to register it as a vehicle (doing so makes you add stuff like a windshield and stuff). Pedal-assisted speed can be up to 35 if memory serves. Kinda put a damper on my plans, most of the way to work for me is a 60 zone. Granted it would take a cop with a serious bug up his ass to stop you on your E-Bike, but don't they all seem to be asswipes anyway? If I can get stopped 3 times in 1 year for not having a front plate I'd be concerned about riding a bike that triples the legal power limit.

Could be fun for your little girl, get a big wheel and replace the front wheel with a little 100w hub motor or something. Would make a Christmas present she'd never forget! :party:

I'm still riding. 3100 kms on the counter and the snow is not stopping me. Roads are salted anyway so it's mostly riding on wet asphalt. But I do have to watch out for ice patches or thick slushy stuff. My commute to work is only 1.8 km on back roads so that's why I decided to continue riding. The only problems I had was the ignition switch and signal button freezing up. I will have to assess if the salt damaged metal components like the frame and stuff like connectors this spring.
I'm still looking around for a new battery this spring, for now I'm pretty settled on a ''Cell-man'' battery made of Headway cells.

Keeping up
 

Thanks for keeping us up with your progress and wear and tear as well. Those batteries look pretty good, and I like the way the ebike kits are progressing as well. Technology will just keep getting better and better as time passes.

I found a guy that can get his hands on used/rejected 18V Makita Lithium Ion battery packs. These packs use Konion 18650VT cells, 10 per pack. From his experience of working with a lot of these used packs, you get at least 8 good cells out of every pack. I plan on building a 14s14p Lithium Ion battery for my scooter. The beauty of these is you don't need to balance charge them, you can monitor them but balance charging is not necessary. I should be able to build this pack for under $500 total and have enough cells to fix my three cordless drills :yes:

I made a 14S16P Lithium Ion battery pack out of used makita tool packs. They use Sony Konion 18650V cells. Can't wait to try it but I have to wait a month.

That's a lot of cells. For some reason I can't see the pics on my screen.

It's because I didn't put any pics. And since I don't want someone to say that if there's no pics it didn't happen. Here's some pics.

The used Makita batteries, 30 of them
http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w...ion_packs1.jpg

The cells all separated, there's a few more in another box.http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w...nion_pack1.jpg

14 strings of 16P done
http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w...nion_pack7.jpg

One block of 7S16P done
http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w...nion_pack8.jpg

The two blocks of 7S16P connected in series, 7S balance connectors installed and getting a nice balance charge on the new Hyperion 1420i
http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w...nion_pack9.jpg

I'm waiting for the large heat shrink tubing to come in to finish this pack nice and beautiful.

Exactly. :whip: :whip: :whip:


That looks like a pretty serious battery pack - nice work - hope it performs well for you. :yes:

Wow, you are not playing around.

From a man who went 28S2P with A123s? :lol: Are those the prismatic cells at 20 ah each? 90V nominal and 40 ah :intello: I don't think you're playing around either.

I enjoy this stuff :D

I have enough cells left to make a 7S7P pack for my kid's Razor E200 stand up scooter. I'm going to try to make it this weekend.

Is gonna be a sweet Razor.

BTW, I'm running my old A123 packs in my Ebike. But I just switch over to 15s2p (10000mah) Lipo for a top speed of 31mph or so. I then added a 3 speed switch set at 50%, 80% and 100% power. The 50% setting maxes out @ 19mph, making me legit in an instant.

I have a three speed switch on my scooter also, this is a great thing to have when cops in your town don't like E-Bikes.

Could you experienced guys reccomend a good starting point for a e-bike n00b?

My thoughts are, i got a offroad bike that needs a new rear rim/wheel anyway, so i might as well buy a new e-bike wheel with motor..
I couldnt care less about staying legal, but a maximum speed of 45mph would be plenty.
I do on the other hand like if it could pull kinda strong uphill...
Dont need ALOT of range either.. 15-20km would be sufficent.. (or is that alot?)

Is there a complete kit to buy, that`s good enough?
I dont need the fastest most expensive bike in the world, but it has to pull strong enough to make it alittle fun hehe..

I`ve got a powerlab pl8, and 6x paralell cables for every cell size from 3s to 6s so the charging part is no problem..

Configuration
 

There are already a lot of different configurations one could put together for an E-bike and make it work. The real concern for me would be the safety factor involved. If you use just any old bike frame you may be asking for trouble right off the bat. As noted in several of the threads that have been posted over the last year some bike frames are made to be super light and open the door for enherant weaknesses in frame structure and welding joints that could kill you if not avoided. I have been watching the industry pretty closely on this and since I very much value my life the first thing that I would do is conduct some research and make sure that you acquire a solid bike that is built to take a beating. Putting a high torque motor on a cheap bike frame just will not hold up and will more than likely cause injury to the rider. Also going 45mph on a bycicle in traffic is not only pretty scary, but very dangerous even for a seasoned biker. Some of the best frames I have seen are Trek, and Cannondale off road bikes. Built to take a beating and last years doing so, but also come with a comperable price range $500-$1000.

As for the elctronics there are many products on the open market today that can provide exactly what your looking for for a fairly reasonable price range. It all depends on what you plan to use it for, how long you want it to last, and how much you want to spend on it. Top speed, hill pulling torque, and overall range can be met in several ways. You can go cheap and pickup a complete kit from China (Amazon.com) for about $400-$500. But if you want to build something that will last more than a couple of months you would be better off doing more research and purchasing a solid product from a company that specializes in this type of application, and also provides some kind of warranty for whatever you buy. A really good kit will run you about $1000-$2000, plus lights, horn, mirrors, and saftey gear.

So for a really good setup your looking at spending around $3000 or more depending on how serious you want to go with your project. Considering that a lot of us have spent this much on building one really nice R/C truck to play with I would not go cheap for anything that I would put my life on the line riding on the road where many idiots drive a 4000lb vehicle. For that price you can also go in a different direction and purchase a well built scooter with everything already built in. Just my two cents, and for God sakes wear a helmet so you can arrive alive. Good luck with your quest.

Check this project out. (http://www.rc-monster.com/forum/show...651#post419651) Notice the solidly built frame. Intended to take the torque and punishment provided by the electronics used.

If your requirement weren't so high, I would say go for it. But 45MPH should not be attempted on a cheap bike. Disk brakes at least for the front is highly recommended. A good front suspension is a must. The frame or at least the rear part of the bike should be chromoly. If not, increase the strength of the dropouts to deal with the torque.

30mph is the most I would go on a regular frame bike, with the use of torque arms at the dropouts.

There are a few motors out that are torque monsters, but I chose the Torque monster Magic Pie for the slim design.

There are many controllers out there to get and Ebay has plenty of cheapy ones that can be modded. I didn't want to do all that after my initial Ebay kit, so went for the Lyen controller. His controller can be modded and you can ask for additional features to be installed. You can also tweak his controller with the provided software.

The 15-20km range is doable on 5000mah, but not at 45mph. 7000mah is a safer bet for that range @45mph. Go slower and your range greatly increases.
I can go 5.5 miles on 1Ah at a slower speed vs 3Ah at max speed.

snellemin, I see "6kw A123" in your sig. Is that with the prismatic cells or the cylindrical cells from Dewalt tool batteries? I'm asking because if it's the prismatics then I'm curious to see how you joined the cells tabs together. I'm too lazy to search for one of your posts that would give me the answer. Thanks.

There's been a lot of discussions on ES on how to join the tabs together without spot welding. A lot of ideas were brought up but I feel that the perfect solution hasn't been found yet. Something simple, cheap, sturdy, light weight that enables to hold the cell tabs securely to make excellent contact and yet it can easily be taken apart or opened to take just one cell out. Maybe Monster Mike could think of something.

I used dewalt cells to make 2p packs and used regular novak battery bars to solder 6s1p and 4s1p bundles together. When you take the Dewalt packs apart, you get split packs of 4s1p and 6s1p. So minimal soldering was required. 3P packs would of been nice, but I'm just going to save up for 8 6s1p 5000mah lipo packs from fmadirect, to run either 24s2p or 12s4p configs.

Thanks!

When i think about it, 30mph probably is enough anyways..
What im worried about is climbing hills.. Would a typical magic pie kit feel strong in a rather steep hill? im not expecring 25mph uphill, but its gotta feel like its no problem at all, to make it real fun :-)
Accelleration is more fun than top speed.

5-7000mah you say, but at what voltage would this be?

Read some about the magic pie, but alot o q`s raise in my head :(

Should i aim for MP III with internal controller, or MP II with a lyen controller?

I was thinking about using my 5s 5000mah nanotech 45c batteries for this. I`ve got 4 of them, so i can run 42v 10Ah if that`s an option?

And i`m happy with 25-30mph, if i can get it to do uphill kinda strong.
Problem is, i have no idea what 1-2000w will do to a bike uphill, and i cant find videos to compare.

I`m not expecting 30mph in a 10% uphill ofcourse, but i`m hoping it will do a decent job without pedal assist. Say, faster than i would do it manually atleast :)

Would a standard MP III kit do these thing for me, or will it feel week on power?
And kan a 42v battery be used with this kit?

I don't have any experience with bicycle hub motors. But if I were to get a Magic Pie, I would get the II with an external controller of my choice, not the III with integrated controller, which is convenient I agree, less wiring and no worries about finding a spot on the bike for a big controller, but still I would prefer an external controller.

Hi there,
I'm planning to convert my bycicle to an e-bike with a direct drive rear motor, 12s LiPo. I believe my bike has a 28" wheel (not sure to be honest, tire says 28x1.40, but is that a 28" wheel or 26"?) and I'd like 45+ km/h and at least 25 km reach. Regenerative braking would be great. I'm planning to use 12s2p 5 Ah LiPo, resulting in 44.4 V and 10 Ah nominal. Which motor, controller and shop can you recommend?

I would like powerful and reliable components, not something cheap and upgrade later. So far I've seen Magic Pie II, E-BikeKit.com and other shops, but can't decide on one without customer recommendations.

I love my Magic Pie II motor. That thing has lots of torque and doesn't get hot like my older smaller motor. The slim design makes it easy to install in nearly any regular frame. I suggest you head out to the Endless-sphere forum and ask for more details. I'm considered a noob when it comes to Ebikes.
I like the controller that I got from Edward Lyen. Easy to program and has great add on options. Check out Lyen.com

http://www.gizmag.com/audi-wortherse...ototype/22511/

Audi have made their own trillion dollar machine...

Seat looks a tad small :oh:

I have an ebike I converted 2 years ago with a Nine-Continent wheel motor ran by an Infineon controller that can handle 100V peak, and 45amp current; all powered by a 16s 15Ah prismatic cell A123 battery pack I built myself with a charging BMS built in. I get between 35 and 40km (25miles) range @ top speed, with a high end of ~55+kph (34mph). The bike is a 2008 GT Bikes Avalanche 2.0. I custom made a bolt in torque arm to the the drop out brake mount, and disc brakes front and rear, with a 180mm disc on back, for clearance reasons.

The thing I love about the bike the most is the battery, FANTASTIC, same top speed from freshly charged, to almost dead; worry free charging with a 3Amp/58 volt charger and BMS; and so far has treated me well with almost 3000km traveled on it.

Let me know if you want pics.