News & Blogs Ebiking through Alberta.

[ohmegatron]

I made a post about converting my bike into an ebike, and the conversion is finished. I had to jerry rig a connection to the battery by just plugging the raw wires into the battery and using hot melt glue to hold it in place. Everything is running smoothly, and I've been out on a few rides. My motor is a 500w 48v bafang rear hub motor, and my battery is a 48 volt 10.7Ah. I got a pretty good deal on both of them getting them from facebook messenger, but your mileage may vary.

The battery is smaller than the one I'd hoped to get, so I'm getting 26 km out of a full charge. The full trip I normally do is 40 km, so I stop once I get into Edmonton to charge. Which is not ideal: it takes quite a long time to charge, so it's best to have a battery that has enough juice to last for the whole trip. I'm hoping to get another battery once I start getting paychecks, and I'm not sure if I'll keep my current battery as a backup, or just use the new one.

Pros:​

I don't pay for gas.
The cost is a fraction of what you'd pay for a vehicle: The kit and battery together were $500 CAD, including $50 shipping to get the kit from BC.
If it breaks down or the battery dies, it's still a bike. I can pedal to the next charge point, or finish the ride to my destination if it's close enough.

Cons:​

It does require a bit of figuring to get the parts to fit. Conversion kits are universal, not designed for any one bike in particular, so they do their best to ensure everything will fit onto whatever you're working with. But my battery is held on to the bottom of my downtube with cable ties, and in fact the whole kit is pretty much held on to the bike the same way, aside from the display which is my speedometer, battery charge indicator, headlight switch, etc.
Pedaling is much more difficult. While I can pedal, and do while the motor is running to extend the range, its much more difficult. Partially because it's the start of the season and I haven't been riding, but also because the kit is pretty heavy, and the motor does produce drag.
Killing the battery on the highway sucks balls. It makes it hard to plan an arrival time so my friends can coordinate their plans.

All in all, this is great. I have no regrets, and I plan on using this until I build another one. This is great for zipping around the city, doing small errands, visiting friends, just like you would with a normal bike. The motor is a great help with hills; a hill that I would have to get out and push, I can ride up with no issues. There is quite the learning curve; if you don't know how volts, watts, and amps work, expect to do a bunch of reading. One thing I've found helpful is that volts indicate rpm, while watts are torque.


When I made the original post about it, @Forth was interested in hearing an update. So, here you go!

I have a short video I recorded testing it in use, but it doesn't seem to be uploading. I'll try again in the comments, and see how that fares.

 

[ohmegatron]

Facebook marketplace, not messenger.

 

[The Toecutter]

I'm hoping to get another battery once I start getting paychecks, and I'm not sure if I'll keep my current battery as a backup, or just use the new one.

Assuming the battery is in good working condition, you could find another battery of exactly the same kind and configuration, and then wire it in parallel with your existing battery. Then keep adding more of the same type of battery systems wired in parallel as money permits. This way, you don't ever waste a battery or end up with a battery you do not know what to do with.

But IT MUST be the exact same manufacturer/model of battery and configuration of battery, or you will introduce balancing issues when trying to charge all of them at once while configured in parallel with a single charger. Also, do be sure that if you do this, both batteries are either fully charged, or completely empty, with matching voltages, before wiring them in parallel.

If you want to get more range out of your bicycle, I suggest also finding some used election signs and some zip ties, and building a rear wheel disc cover for the rear wheel, and make a tapered storage box under the seat. The power to overcome wind resistance varies as a cubic function of speed, whereas the power to overcome rolling resistance induced by mass is a geometric function. So anything over about 15 mph or so on a bicycle, most of your power consumption is from pushing air out of the way(at least on flat ground). For a bicycle, a large percentage of the aerodynamic drag is generated by spoked wheels beating the air around. Do not install this cover for the front wheel unless you want crosswinds blowing you all over the road, although an outer ring instead of a full disc might be feasible for the front wheel, and both could also benefit from some custom fairings.

I did my first ebike build on a limited budget due to lack of funds, and found a 46.8V 10.5AH battery for cheap. I paid $60 for it in used condition. It really delivered closer to 9.5-10 AH, but was very usable. My "bicycle" is a three-wheeler and has an aerodynamic body shell I custom designed, so it got about 50-60 miles range at 30-35 mph on that battery, and could top out at 45 mph with 750W of motor assist combined with hard pedaling. Of course, it is closer to a car than a bicycle. I decided I needed more range for the amount of use I put on this vehicle. I was about to purchase another battery exactly like it, but the seller didn't respond soon enough, and after a month of no response I found for sale the two used Greenway 46.8V 15.5AH packs that I'm currently using, both identical, also both used, at a price too good to pass up. I wired them in parallel, and now I have a 150-200 mile range per charge and 3 kW of power on tap. That second pack cost me all of $200, and I got them from batteryhookup.com on the cheap.

I now have a spot welder, and when I get enough free time off of work, I'm going to build a high voltage pack to allow my vehicle to top out at over 100 mph and output 10 kW so that this thing can accelerate like a sports car. It's still very pedalable with the motor disabled and its bicycle drivetrain is fully functional. Thanks to low aerodynamic drag, in spite of its weight, I can maintain rolling averages of about 20 mph with the motor shut off and even climb 20% gradients at walking speed in low gear while the trunk is full of camping gear.

Building this thing is one of the best decisions I ever made. It's given me over 70,000 miles of service.

 

[ohmegatron]

If I do have two batteries on set up on my bike, I'll just have one connected at a time and switch to the other one when the first one dies. I'm not confident I can monitor my levels accurately, and I don't mind stopping on the side of the road for a minute to swap the connectors. I can get a female plug without any wires connected to protect the hookup from dirt and water from getting in.


That's a pretty good idea about the windshield, I think I understand what you're saying. Something like in this picture? It's election season here in Alberta, and conservatives don't bother cleaning up, so I'm sure I will have no shortage of signs.

 

[The Toecutter]

Something like in this picture? It's election season here in Alberta, and conservatives don't bother cleaning up, so I'm sure I will have no shortage of signs.

Do that to your rear wheel, and you'll likely see a 5% improvement in range or thereabouts from that alone.

The front wheel is a bit trickier. You do not want a full cover for the front wheel due to it imposing crosswind vulnerability, since that is the wheel you steer with.

For the front wheel, I'd recommend making a cover that looks like this composite spoked wheel:

AeroCoach AEOX® TITAN aero wheels - https://www.aero-coach.co.uk/store/AeroCoach-AEOX%C2%AE-TITAN-aero-wheels-p201809989

You'll see most of the aero benefit of a full disc(the spokes on the outer edge spin faster and push more air than on the inside of the wheel), but crosswinds will have less surface area to push against and will have a place they can be routed through, allowing you to retain straight-line stability in windy conditions.

Doing both wheels appropriately, you could easily see a 6-8% increase in range, just from that, without adding more battery. Zip ties are cheap and used election signs are free. It's just a matter of labor.

Before I made a body shell for my trike, wheel discs increased my flat ground cruising speed from 15 mph to 17 mph for the same effort, by themselves. I didn't have a motor on it yet at the time, either. Do note that because I had a suspended trike, that I was able to get away with full disc covers on all three wheels without it adversely effecting crosswind stability, and had three wheels instead of two, so the benefit was more pronounced. A normal bicycle will have issues if both wheels have full discs.

In a previous post, I had also mentioned fender fairings. Look at these overpriced things for inspiration:

AERODEFENDER Bike Wheel Fairings

Slice through headwinds with patented AERODEFENDER™ Bike Wheel Fairings, which dramatically minimizes vehicle drag.

thegadgetflow.com

Except if you make a mold/plug out of foam, with some corrugated plastic and a blow dryer for hair, you could melt the coroplast into shape around a mold, and drill some mounting holes in appropriate places to have fender covers. There is also an airfoil database you can use to get shapes in order to craft these:

Airfoil Tools

Airfoil (aerofoil) tools and applications. Search for airfoil coordinates and dat files. Plot and comapare airfoil shapes

airfoiltools.com

You will need to make a shape that can cover the front of the wheel for certain. The goal is to keep the airflow attached to a solid, unmoving object, in order to keep turbulence down. Isolating it away from the spinning wheels is the goal. This is more complicated than a wheel disc, and will yield less benefit. But there will be some measurable benefit if you do it right.

A front windshield or fairing, while yielding a massive benefit, is not advised on an upright bicycle. It will not only induce crosswind vulnerability, but because you pedal it, you will quickly heat up. Motorcycles can get away with dustbin fairings because they have heavier wheels/tires, which as rotating mass, can greatly increase stability when there are sidewinds. Lightweight bicycle wheels/tires do not provide the same amount of stability for your bike when they are rotating and you are being buffeted by crosswinds. The upside is that lighter wheels take less energy to accelerate to speed, which is generally what you want on a bicycle.

The body shell on my trike cut the drag to roughly 1/4 what it was naked. This is how even though it weighs 91 lbs lugging around a battery pack, motor, controller, DOT rims/tires, I can still turn the motor off and reach 35 mph in a sprint on flat ground, with nothing but my legs propelling it. This in turn yielded absurdly good range. 1.5 kWh gets me 150-200 miles at 30-35 mph, with about 100-150W of pedaling and the motor doing the rest. Albeit, I do have regen for downhills and stops. Take the body shell off, and my range would likely drop to 50-60 miles with the same battery pack and riding conditions.

If you ever decide you want to build a full-on streamliner, you will either need 3 or more wheels, or will have to go to a 2-wheeled recumbent(being low induces less frontal area for side winds to blow upon). The following website has excellent resources regarding the construction of aerodynamic bicycles:

The Recumbent Bicycle and Human Powered Vehicle Information Center

Recumbent and Human Powered Vehicle Information Center

recumbents.com

The current world record for a pedal-powered vehicle, completely unmotorized, on flat ground, is 89 mph. Something like that with an ebike drive system would be as fast as a car, and in some states, perfectly legal without a drivers' license, insurance, title, tags, registration, plates, ect.

 

[AncientSentient]

Assuming the battery is in good working condition, you could find another battery of exactly the same kind and configuration, and then wire it in parallel with your existing battery. Then keep adding more of the same type of battery systems wired in parallel as money permits. This way, you don't ever waste a battery or end up with a battery you do not know what to do with.

But IT MUST be the exact same manufacturer/model of battery and configuration of battery, or you will introduce balancing issues when trying to charge all of them at once while configured in parallel with a single charger. Also, do be sure that if you do this, both batteries are either fully charged, or completely empty, with matching voltages, before wiring them in parallel.

If you want to get more range out of your bicycle, I suggest also finding some used election signs and some zip ties, and building a rear wheel disc cover for the rear wheel, and make a tapered storage box under the seat. The power to overcome wind resistance varies as a cubic function of speed, whereas the power to overcome rolling resistance induced by mass is a geometric function. So anything over about 15 mph or so on a bicycle, most of your power consumption is from pushing air out of the way(at least on flat ground). For a bicycle, a large percentage of the aerodynamic drag is generated by spoked wheels beating the air around. Do not install this cover for the front wheel unless you want crosswinds blowing you all over the road, although an outer ring instead of a full disc might be feasible for the front wheel, and both could also benefit from some custom fairings.

I did my first ebike build on a limited budget due to lack of funds, and found a 46.8V 10.5AH battery for cheap. I paid $60 for it in used condition. It really delivered closer to 9.5-10 AH, but was very usable. My "bicycle" is a three-wheeler and has an aerodynamic body shell I custom designed, so it got about 50-60 miles range at 30-35 mph on that battery, and could top out at 45 mph with 750W of motor assist combined with hard pedaling. Of course, it is closer to a car than a bicycle. I decided I needed more range for the amount of use I put on this vehicle. I was about to purchase another battery exactly like it, but the seller didn't respond soon enough, and after a month of no response I found for sale the two used Greenway 46.8V 15.5AH packs that I'm currently using, both identical, also both used, at a price too good to pass up. I wired them in parallel, and now I have a 150-200 mile range per charge and 3 kW of power on tap. That second pack cost me all of $200, and I got them from batteryhookup.com on the cheap.

I now have a spot welder, and when I get enough free time off of work, I'm going to build a high voltage pack to allow my vehicle to top out at over 100 mph and output 10 kW so that this thing can accelerate like a sports car. It's still very pedalable with the motor disabled and its bicycle drivetrain is fully functional. Thanks to low aerodynamic drag, in spite of its weight, I can maintain rolling averages of about 20 mph with the motor shut off and even climb 20% gradients at walking speed in low gear while the trunk is full of camping gear.

Building this thing is one of the best decisions I ever made. It's given me over 70,000 miles of service.

What a cool creation! I'm impressed with the speed and milage you can get out of it. I see you built the body out of coroplast, been wanting to build a boat out of the stuff. I'd love to see a video or more detailed pictures of the build. Do you have anything on YouTube?