I rode to work on Bike to Work Day!

I had the opportunity to ride my bike to work this past Friday which was Bike-to-Work day. It was nice and warm and sunny here in the DC area. I enjoyed the ride in and found the ride home very hot!

One quick note. There is a new e-bike shop on the way to and from work. Joe, the owner is very knowledgeable and carries some of the top brands in ebikes. He has e-BikeKit.com, A2B, Ohm, eGO, Raleigh (non-electric), BionX, and many others.His shop is very busy already even though he just opened his shop in April.

www.greencommuter.net

Ambrose

First commute with rear motor and disc brakes

I rode in to work today on my new setup. It's a wonderful ride. I set it up for 36V since my 72V controller isn't working properly. Also, my 12V 18AH SLA booster pack somehow died so I went without it.

The bike is very smooth and quiet. This rear e-bikekit.com motor is much quieter than the front motor. I guess because the sound is coming from under and behind me. Whatever the reason, the motor is very nice. The lighter steering of the front wheel is also a nice benefit.

The Avid mechanical disc brakes work VERY well. It's a bit surprising when you pull on the brake handles and the bike comes to a VERY quick stop. I have to learn how to modulate it a bit. The front disc brakes make a quiet clicking sound when the brakes are applied. The rear brakes are less powerful but are very quiet. I may switch the front with the rear so that the braking pressure is a bit more equal. Right now the front brakes are more effective than the rear brakes.

Also, be sure to check the weather for the day before hitting the road on your bike! I just looked outside and saw that it's raining. The last time I checked the weather, there was no rain in the forecast. Hopefully, the weather will clear up before my commute home tonight or it's going to be a very wet home trip!

More later,
Ambrose

Rear E-BikeKit motor and Avid BB5 disc brake and Fender mount

I took my bike to the LBS and had them mount the disc brake and the fender mount since it wouldn't easily fit on my bike. It came back working relatively well but it is a complex rear dropout on the disc brake side. The brakes still need to be adjusted, but at least the Planet Bike 60mm fender does not rub on the wire any more.

To show you what I mean, look at the picture below!

The red circle is the Avid BB5. The wires coming in from the top are the fender mounts. The Black rubber tipped piece is the Topeak Expedition rear rack. The Avid disc rotor is the scalloped shiny metal piece near the back. The motor is the last item in the background. You can see the motor power and phase wires coming out of the axle near the bottom of the picture. Amazing that it all fits!

More later,
Ambrose

Chain Thong Installed

Here's a photo of the Chain Thong mounted over my bike's big crank. It's got one screw to connected the Thong to the mounting piece which attaches to the bike's down tube. The L shaped piece has a sticky piece of tape on it to help hold it in place. You simply attach the L piece to the Thong and then attach the L to your bike via two tie wraps. Couldn't be simpler. let's see how well it works in real life!

Ambrose

Beautiful Stripper (Wire Stripper, that is!)

I was at Radio Shack today and found this neat looking device. It's an automatic wire stripper. It's $17 and looks like a Rube Goldberg-like device. I took it out of the package at the store and couldn't really figure out how it worked. I bought it on impulse!

When I got it home to try it, I had figured out that you lay the wire across the opening sideways instead of inserting it into a hole or slot as I had imagined. You simply insert the wire up to the red stop piece. Squeeze the device's handle and the insulation pops off the wire. The wires remain perfectly intact and pristine, no chance to cut them since the cutter is very shallow, in fact, it's hard to tell where the cutter is located!

Any way, with this device and the Tricrimp, it's now a 5 second affair to strip a wire and a 10 second affair to put an Anderson Powerpole on!

Life is good!

More later,
Ambrose

72V hooked up!

I hooked up two of my 36V batteries in series to make a 72v battery and hooked it up to my DrainBrain to see how it looked and it showed 83.1V! Wow! This is fresh off the charger so this voltage won't last too long, however, with 8 packs paralleled, it should provide plenty of range at a very high rate of speed!

Ambrose

Key Chain Camera Arrives!

Box

The key chain video camera is actually smaller than my real key fob!

That hole on the right front of the key chain camera is actually the lens and sensor! The hole on the left is the microphone!

Here's the USB port, reset button (hole) and TF/MicroSD card slot. It also comes with a key ring.

I received the small key chain video camera on Friday which was shocking! I hadn't expected it for many weeks. I can't use it until the 8GB MicroSD Transflash cards arrive. There is another camera and memory card on the way as well.

This little camera can capture 720x480 pixel video @ 30 fps as well as stills. It can record 11 minutes per gigabyte of relatively high quality images. I've seen samples on Techmoan's site and it looked particularly good compared to the MD80 reviewed on his site as well.

http://techmoan.com/2010/04/01/mini-key-ring-spy-camera-review/

More when the memory cards arrive.

Ambrose

Bosch Fat Pack BAT836 Dissection

The Bosch Fat Pack 36V dissected.

The circuit board containing the charging connector and the LEDs (not shown)

One of the end covers (amazingly complex molding)

The bike is in the shop so I decided to take apart a newish Bosch Fat Pack BAT836 36V battery for use with my ebike.

It has four screws on each end with one of them covered by a small plastic plug. The small plug can be popped out with a jeweler's screwdriver. Just slip it under one edge and the little rubber plug just pops out.

It's solidly built and very heavy duty. The case is a thick red plastic with 2 rubber coated plastic ends. The two ends are reinforced with protective plastic strips that fall out when the two ends are removed. The top cover where the battery would connect to the charger is also held in place by the two ends. Once the ends are removed, the port and charge state LEDs lift up showing the two red (+) and black (-) wires.

All that is needed is to drill two holes in the ends and route the short red and black wires out those holes and reattach the two ends. Simple and neat.

More later,
Ambrose