Chainless Bicycle Will Turn A Few Heads

August 2, 2011 by Mike Szczys 26 Comments

Someone let [Tane] play around with welding equipment and bicycle parts and look what happened! He built a diminutive velocipede. Now that’s just a term for a human-powered land vehicle, but the term fits a bit better as this is missing most of the stuff you’d expect to see on a bicycle.

He started with a mountain bike and a kick scooter, then went to work on both with a hack saw. A bit of welding and angle grinding left him with what you see above. It’s still steerable, but missing are the cranks, chain, and brakes. That’s okay though, the bike is low enough for your legs to reach the ground – you start it up and come to a stop Fred-Flintstone-Style.

[Tane] originally meant to add electric propulsion but didn’t quite get around to it. There’s always the option to add a hub motor to the rear wheel if he has the time and motivation.

Awesome Fan-powered Frankenscooter

May 5, 2011 by Mike Nathan 22 Comments

fanscooter

We believe that some of the best things in life are built from half-assed ideas and held together with duct tape. Take this fan-powered Razor scooter [Charles Guan] built, for example – it’s chock full of both.

Having built a ducted fan-powered shopping cart in the past [Charles] is no stranger to ridiculous ideas. After a friend sent him a mockup of a fan powered scooter, he felt that he couldn’t “…take such an absurd image not seriously.”

Determined to make his fan-powered dreams a reality, he hunted around for Razor scooter parts, and managed to scavenge just about everything he needed. Parts of three scooters were welded together, forming the wide-stanced trike you see in the picture above. He mounted a fan and some battery packs onto the scooter, both similar to those found on his Fankart. Once everything was in place, he hit the streets.

As you can see in the video below, the Fanscooter looks as fun as it is loud. [Charles] says they have hit a top speed of about 10 mph thus far, but they should be able to blow past that once they balance the blades and have a ~~victim~~ tester willing to suspend his babymakers over the fan duct. Keep your eyes on his site, we’re sure to see some tweaks and improvements over the coming weeks.

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Building A Wooden Vespa

November 12, 2010 by Mike Szczys 19 Comments

Scooter fans should start sharpening their chisels if they want to undertake this project. This Vespa is the work of a master carpenter and a lot of time. Through the build log photos you can see that it all started with a frame made by bending and laminating wood layers together. Veneer adds the stylish stripe and a lot of carving and turning brings the curves associated with the classic scooters. Even the hand grips, brake handles, and saddle are made out of wood. There’s springs for some shock absorption but we’d bet you don’t want to ride this for too long, or park it outside. Now it just needs an electric motor retrofit.

[Thanks Blair]

Electric Scooter Sings As It Travels

August 25, 2010 by Mike Szczys 34 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaQuRnZYKPc]

This scooter has been fitted with a three-phase induction motor. It reminds us of the sound effects from vehicles in the Jetsons. Right now they’re using lead-acid batteries and get about 15 miles of range from one charge. Once they switch over to lithium polymer they calculate the range will be closer to 45 miles due to the reduced weight and increased capacity. Not bad for $600 in parts, and we’d bet it’s both faster and more stable than the one-wheeled-wonder we saw last week.

Touchscreen Scooter Computer

June 28, 2010 by Mike Szczys 38 Comments

[Kurt’s] scooter computer started off as a way to use a couple of LEDs to show the battery charge on his hog. It was based on a Arduino and used a voltage divider to judge how much juice was left. But then he ran across a touch-screen OLED shield for the Arduino and the project started to take off. Now he’s got battery, temperature, real-time clock, and GPS running through the slick-looking display. It may not be a full-blown motorcycle but it gives the computer interfaces we’ve seen for other bikes a run for their money.

[Thanks Mowcius]

Build Your Own Hub Motor

February 18, 2010 by Mike Szczys 52 Comments

Hub motors put the power inside of the wheel. [Teamtestbot] goes deep into the hows and whys of building these motors, from parts, to windings, to the math behind the power ratios. The working example puts an electric motor inside the rear wheel of a Razor scooter. Past projects used belts to transfer the work of the motor to the wheel of the scooter. By integrating the motor and the wheel you end up with a much cleaner looking product. Check out the motor testing and the scooter test drive after the break.

For more tips on building your own electric motors take a peek at the Fly Electric page we covered back in November.

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1480W Scooter Motor Guarantees Head Trauma

October 18, 2009 by Mike Szczys 79 Comments

[Jerome’s] been working on some improvements to an electric foot scooter he picked up from a friend. He ordered up a powerful brushless motor and some lithium batteries. His system uses a belt drive and at 33 volts it can reach 25 miles per hour.

He had some problems with too much torque when the motor was first started. This resulted in unintentional wheelies, which sounds really cool if you’re not the one trying to hang on to the scooter. [Jerome] is using an Arduino to control the system so he built in the ability to gradually ramp up the speed of the motor and also added the ability to control the speed via remote control. You should note in the video after the break that [Jerome] is test-piloting his build sans-helmet.

So, we spend a lifetime and countless sums of money filling our noggins with knowledge. This is a precarious investment since a rather small bump to the melon could corrupt all of that data and end the once spectacular cognitive power. If you’re smart enough to build a foot scooter that can go 25mph, be smart enough to wear a helmet when you ride on it!

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