Building A Mini Electric Bike In Between Projects

June 26, 2018 by Steven Dufresne 13 Comments

What do you do when you suddenly find you have some free time because you’re waiting on parts or have run up against other delays for your current project? If you’re [James Bruton], you design and build a mini electric bike.

Being a prolific builder, [James] already had the parts he needed. Some of them were left over from previous projects: a small motor, a 24 volt LiPo battery, an SK8 electronic speed controller, and a twist grip for the handlebars. He cut a wooden frame using his CNC machine and 3D printed various other components. Normally he uses ABS for motor mounts but this time he went with PLA and sure enough, the motor heated up and the mounting screws got hot enough to melt the plastic. But other than that, the bike worked great and looks like a polished, manufactured product. How many of us can say the same for our own unplanned projects using only parts from around the workshop? Check out his build and watch him whizzing around on it in the video below.

As for the former projects from which he had leftover parts, he says that some came from skateboard projects such as his pimped out electric LEGO longboard.

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Extending The Range Of An Electric Bike

December 6, 2014 by Rich Bremer 19 Comments

Cruising around town on your electric bike is surely a good time…. unless your bike runs out of juice and you end up pedaling a heavy bike, battery, and motor back to your house. This unfortunate event happened to Troy just one too many times. The solution: to extend the range of his electric bike without making permanent modifications.

Troy admits his electric bike is on the lower side of the quality scale. On a good day he could get about 15 miles out of the bike before it required a recharge. He looked into getting more stock battery packs that he could charge and swap out mid-trip but the cost of these was prohibitive. To get the extra mileage, Troy decided on adding a couple of lead-acid batteries to the system.

The Curry-brand bike used a 24vdc battery. Troy happened to have two 12v batteries kicking around, which wired up in series would get him to his 24v goal. The new batteries are mounted on the bike’s cargo rack by way of some hardware store bracketry. The entire new ‘battery pack’ can be removed quickly by way of a few wing nuts.

Connecting the new batteries to the stock system go a little tricky and the stock battery pack did have to be modified slightly. The case was opened and leads were run from the positive and negative terminals to two new banana plugs mounted in the battery pack’s case. The leads from the new batteries plug right into the banana plugs on the stock battery pack. The new and old batteries are wired in parallel to keep the voltage at 24.

Troy found that he’s getting about twice the distance out of his new setup. Not to bad for a couple on-hand batteries and a few dollars in odds and ends.

Hackin’ The Junkyard: Electric Scrap Bike Projects

December 17, 2011 by Jesse Congdon 6 Comments

[Brad Graham] wrote in to let us know about his electric bike data dump over at atomiczombie.com, written just for us! Last we heard from [Brad] he was building some serious robots and freakishly tall tallbikes but since the weather has turned for the chilly its time to focus on indoor projects. Using a combination of robot parts, electrical conduit, and OEM bikes for the frames [Brad] takes us through several of his builds and all the various complications trying to drive the (often very powerful) electric motors. The builds range from scrapping motors and controllers to full blown drop in hub motor systems that can combine human and electric power. There is even an electric pusher cargo cart designed for a cooler, because beers are not going to haul themselves around.

Don’t forget to check out the AtomicZombie website for a ton of useful tips to chopping up bikes for your own mutant transpiration projects, we know we will. Thanks [Brad]!

Human Electric Trike Project

April 24, 2007 by Will O'Brien 9 Comments

While I’m waiting for my last stepper motor, I’ve been pondering my electric motorcycle build. While eyeballing batteries, I ran across a really impressive human/electric recumbent bike project. [Bob Dold] built this for his M.S.M.E. Thesis project. The frame was built from bonded aluminum. The flat parts were cut via waterjet service, and the rest were machined by the college’s machine shop. The 1000w motor (and controller) came from a Schwinn X1000 electric scooter. Looks like a four link suspension (plus steering and shock linkages). Interestingly, he’s using some USB data loggers for voltage and current(with a shunt) and combining it with GPS data to track real world performance.