A friend of mine who lives in the Gold Coast and has been visiting Melbourne recently has asked if I know anyone in the Gold Coast Area, who can build him a bolt-on E-Bike conversion using a Brushless motor system.

He has seen some of the bikes people have building using hobby RC gear on youtube and likes the look of them. But isnt technically skilled enough to quite build his own.

He knows basic electricity (ex Electronic Musician), but high power motors speed controllers and batteries are outside his experience.. He's not particularly impressed by the factory offerings, with their heavy lead acid or nicad batteries, brushed motors and 200 watt power limits.

If anyone up that way has some spare time and wants to earn a few dollars on the side putting their robot power-train and fabrication skills to use, he would love to talk to you.

You will need to assist him with selection and purchasing of a suitable brushless Motor, some form of drive system, anything from a friction roller on the tire, to a freewheel coupled crank drive, depending on price, batteries to suit his budget and range requirements (flexible), Speed Controller and throttle, Charger and the associated bracketry to hang it off his existing bike.

He might want you to come up with sort of system for limiting the power to the legal max of 200watts for onroad use, with -of course - a method of disabling such for off-road use..

Hes a friendly guy, easy to work with, and has a reasonable (not huge) budget to work with, so depending on how much work you want to do for him, vs how much he has to do, it could be a reasonable earning one-off job.

I suggested a robot builder, because we have the right sort of high power drive experience and custom fabrication skills without being a traditional bike shop that try to charge thousands for low powered junk.

If anyone is interested in taking on this job, let me know and Ill put you in touch with him and you can negotiate the details..

thanks
_________________
Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people

How urgent is this?
I will have some time available for such a project mid January.
_________________
https://www.halfdonethings.com/

hey there I don't have enough time on my own atm for something like this but if a few ppl want to team it I wouldnt mind helping out.Im not bad on the tools

I dont believe there is any huge urgency to it.

Obviously he would like it sooner rather than later, but I think January would be acceptable to him.

If you have time to have a bit of a talk/plan with him before then, Ill put you in touch, and the two of you can discuss schedules and price options etc then.Might be an idea to have a chat first anyway to give him an idea of expected costs and arrange a time/meet etc.

Bastor - Thanks for the offer, its appreciated, but since I dont personally know you or your work, Id probably prefer to refer him to someone I do know. If Aaron would like to engage your assistance, and make it a team effort, Ill leave that up to him.

Look forward to seeing what you come up with, sine Im about to do the same, but on a Recumbent Tricycle.
_________________
Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people

I currently have too much time, but I have no money for parts.

@spocky-tech: did you say you were going to be powering a 3 wheel recumbent yourself? I ask since my father built a powered one from scratch a few years ago. My parents are retired and big recumbent enthusiasts, and have cycled across Europe twice on velotechnik scorpions just recently:
http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/directory/?o=1&user=jveitch&v=2

I'm not involved myself but they made the the covers and panniers themselves, and dad just finished building a 2 wheel recumbent, so he's pretty keen on the modding/cycle scene.
Anyway, he might have some useful info. I believe he used a 24v motor in the one he built, thats all I can recall atm. Let me know if you're interested, I'm sure he'd be happy to help

Yep, thats the plan..

Just researching stub-axle designs and front wheels at the moment. Got a couple of donor bikes, and hoping to get started in the next week or so..

Add in a big brushless somewhere, possible a surplus Galaxy S2 phone for some on board cams, gps, etc.

Shuould be a fun little project. Pity your dad is up in ipswitch.
_________________
Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people

Hi Daniel. You might be an option as well. I know you build good stuff and know your gear.

Aaron got in first, but given your employment situation, he might be willing to yield it to you..

I'll PM Both of you with his details and you can both call and arrange to meet him and see who likes the sound of the deal..

Cost of Parts would be covered by him and Im sure he would be willing to negotiate some up-front dollars to get things rolling since Ive reccomended both of you as experienced builders with a proven track record.

Good Luck and Hope something fun comes out of it.. Ill be interested to hear, since ill be doing something similair soon !
_________________
Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people

We can probably collaborate on this to be honestly. Daniel has oodles of time to design and tinker with ideas, but no fabrication tools. While I have less time, but a workshop full of tools to make things and a 3D printer to prototype with.

My initial pondering was a 500-600 sized brushless motor with a planetary reduction in a box tube, with a right angle reduction (grinder gears) at the end. Then a chain reduction from there to the crank/pedals with a 1-way sprocket on the right angle reduction to allow free wheeling. This would then clamp to the bike frame with some U-bolts and a steady.
_________________
https://www.halfdonethings.com/

quote:

---

Originally posted by tetraPark:
@spocky-tech: did you say you were going to be powering a 3 wheel recumbent yourself?
I'm not involved myself but they made the the covers and panniers themselves, and dad just finished building a 2 wheel recumbent, so he's pretty keen on the modding/cycle scene.

---

Im contemplating drive options myself at the moment.

A redrive to the crank with a freewheel is one option. Im not sure about planetarys though. I was thinking of mounting a small- chain-size third sprocket with a freewheel drive to the crankshaft and driving it from there.

The el-cheapo method is a sandpaper-covered roller directly onto the rear wheel and it seems to work reasonably well. Ratio is about right for a brushless reduction too with a small diameter drum drive to a large rear wheel.. one guy had it setup so it is spinning in a direction that it pulls itself *into the tyre and thus auto-tensions which I thought was clever.

Right angle grinder drives sound potentially troublesome, and likely crunchy/noisy sounding - although to be fair, they survive in grinders for years, just my experience with them with I.G. eating one every event or two may have turned me off them a bit unfairly.

Regen braking is tempting, although probably too much trouble to do with brushless controllers, be good for a long downhill roll though.

all sorts of tech micro-control possibilities like cruise control come to mind - - set a speed and if you manage to pedal to maintain it, or roll downhill, the motor stays off. slow down too much and the controller automatically says "here let me help" and starts driving with more power depending on the difference between the set speed and the current speed.

Fancy battery watt-hour and arduino-oled display capacity/power gauges, or perhaps an older Galaxy S1 or S2 phone (nice bright OLED screen) with an IOIO Usb interface. Gives you GPS speed, Logging, Track recording, Navigation, Mobile Phone, Camera, Weather.. all sorts of fun stuff.
_________________
Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people