Friday, October 10, 2014

Water Bottle Battery Mount for the Tidalforce M-750X electric bike

I've been agonizing for quite a while on how to best place a 3rd party battery pack on the Tidalforce M-750 or M-750X frame. Having a rear rack is challenging since the bike folds and using a beam rack seems unreliable since the weight on a beam would naturally want to move off axis (swing left or right).

Mounting it on the front of the bike isn't practical either, however, with a front rack, it might be easier.

I finally happened upon perhaps an ideal placement for a small 3rd party LiPO pack. Right on the water bottle mounts!

I bought an adjustable water bottle cage and tried mounting the LiPO pack to it. It seems to work quite well. The weather hasn't been cooperating and I haven't had a chance to ride it yet, however, I'm very hopeful that it will work out well.

This obviously won't be the final packaging of the battery, however, It did look snug and held tight with just Gorilla duct tape.





Battery Choices

I recently picked up a couple of batteries for my Tidalforce bikes. One of the huge advantages of having Tidalforce bikes is the ability to use 3rd party batteries. You are never stuck with the company's original battery when it's time to upgrade. You can use any decent battery that can support approximately a 30A draw. That isn't just any battery, but choices available at that rating are pretty wide.

I picked up a Headway LiFePO4 12.5Ah pack and also a 10Ah LiPO pack. Here's a comparison shot of the two side-by-side. The smaller one is the LiPO and the larger is the LiFePO4.


The LiPO pack is about 1/4 the size of the LiFePO4 pack, however, the LiFePO4 pack has a much longer life expectancy than the LiPO pack. The LiPO pack has the advantage of more even power output and much higher power density...