Quick Meetup Today

I invited Skippic and Opimax from the Endless-Sphere forums over to the house this morning to chat about ebikes. They are both in the market in the next year or so to go electric.

Skippic rode a gorgeous DH bike, a Sette Vexx in black that looks just perfect for a conversion to a Stealth clone. It has a long wheelbase and was fully suspended with an oil filled rear shock assembly and a long travel double-mount front fork. I kept drooling over that bike!

Opimax just loves to bike at a leisurely pace, but wants to go 40-80 miles on one charge! That's a tall order for an off-the-shelf bike with upgradable components. I suggested the Pedego Interceptor since it can handle a double stack of batteries and should provide the range he's looking for, but he wasn't sure he wanted to ride a cruiser style bike. His biggest concern was buying something without trying it first. I recommended that he visit "the Green Commuter" in Takoma Park since they have a large selection of ebikes.

All-in-all, a fun way to spend the morning.

More later,
Ambrose

Controller case Before/After shots

I found a similar picture of my Lyen's Edition in the silver case to the case after I swapped it for the black cover. Here's the before and after. The silver case photo is a bit overexposed so it looks even whiter than it actually is.

Before - in silver 

After - in black

More later.

Ambrose

Changing the case of Lyen's controller

I've had the 9 FET 35A Lyen's Edition controller for quite a while now. One thing has always kind of bugged me about it. It comes in the natural aluminum finish rather than the black anodized/painted finish. My ebike is almost all black or "Titanium" color with very little chrome or aluminum on it. I've wanted a black case for it for a while but in terms of priorities, it wasn't up there on the list! This past weekend, I had a few extra minutes so I decided to swap it out. The black case was donated by a spare controller I had. It now has the silver case.

While I had them open, I decided to take a look at the innards of the controller to see what differences there were between a 36V 22A controller and Lyen's 72V 35A controller.

Lyen's 72V (100V max) 35A controller (notice the massive number of wires along with the huge power lines and the hot glue holding the capacitor in place)

The 36V 22A controller has a much simpler and less crowded layout inside. Both have 9 FETs but this controller's FETS are unmarked.

Both controllers side by side.

36V 22A controller on the left and Lyen's 72V 35A controller on the right. The Lyen controller's circuit board is actually a bit smaller than the 36V one!

Here's a picture of the bike with the new controller box mounted between the seat post and the rear Topeak rack.

Here's a shot of the whole bike with the new black controller. It's much less obvious than before.

The bike looks much cleaner now with the black controller. The controller now disappears into the background rather than stick out of the visual lines of my TF S-750.

More later,

Ambrose

New 42.2V (36V marked) Li-ion Charger from LESSSS from ES

I saw an ad on Endless-sphere.com's forums that stated the poster wanted to trade a Li-ion 36V charger for a 36V sealed lead-acid battery charger. I happened to have an e-bikekit 36V SLA charger that I hadn't used for along time so I thought I'd give it a shot. I knew that I would use the Li-Ion charger much more than the SLA charger...

Well, LESSSS sent his to me and I sent mine to him. I received the Li-Ion charger today and it looked very familiar. You can see the pics below.

 The 36V Li-Ion battery charger made by High Power

The power switch and AC connector

The fan, fuse, LEDs, and charger output cable

Here it is on the right alongside my 24V lead-acid battery charger on the right, and the 36V NiMH battery charger in the middle. All made by High Power. Do you see a family resemblance?

The power connector side

 The 3 chargers showing their labels

The Li-Ion charger's label

The NiMH charger's label

The SLA charger's label

 The three labels on the sides of the cases

The other side label

More later,
Ambrose

Flat tire!

I came back from last week's ride with no issues. My daughters and I went for a long ride around the neighborhood. It was very hot, but the bike worked perfectly. I went down to get the bike this weekend and found the back tire flat! This is only the 2nd flat I've had since owning the bike.

I took the wheel off the bike and removed the tire and tube and couldn't find an obvious leak. I don't know what to make of it. Was it caused by the heat? Did I suffer a very small puncture which isn't obvious unless I do a long leak test by putting the tube under water for a while?

I didn't wait and just tossed the tube. I did discover to my surprise that I never put in a puncture resistant tire liner between the tire and tube so that did not help. I found another tube and put that and a liner in and have reinflated the tire. Time will tell if this setup will hold up.

It's too bad it happened now before Doctorbass' torque arms showed up since the bike was all set for them when I had to take off the tire!

More later,
Ambrose

Doctorbass' Torque Arms

I saw this ad on Endless Sphere...

http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=29129

and thought, "I don't have torque arms on my motor!" I ordered a set and the good Doctorbass just confirmed that he is sending me a set of the newly machined torque arms. He suggested I either mount the arms via bolts or via 3m Scotch-Weld DP-420 epoxy. I ordered it and am awaiting both at this time.

Here's a photo of one of the round ones.

Here are the drawings of the torque arms from DB...

He also has posted a video on how he uses them on his bike/trikes. He's French Canadian so listen carefully! :)

More when they arrive and I install them!

Ambrose

Off-Topic - Google + (Plus) Invites

Sorry for the off-topic posting, however, I've been able to get a Google + account and want to pass along my good fortune to others who may want one. Just send an email to my Gmail account here:

ambroseliao at gmail dot com

Of course, remove all the spaces, replace the "at" with an "@" and replace the "dot" with a "."

If you don't know what Google + Plus is, it's the new social networking site that's a direct competitor to Facebook. It is a bit more open and seems to be a bit more secure than FB as well as being more capable and infinitely less burdened with ads, "pokes" and other fluff.

I'll try to get the invite out to you as quickly as possible.

One note:After giving out invites for a day or two, I've found that Gmail and Yahoo email accounts get an invite almost immediately and others either are delay or don't get them at all...

Keep that in mind when you send me the request.

Thanks,
Ambrose