Guest Bike Conversion

[Benjahmin]

Panda Eco kit ordered 11pm Wednesday night, arrived 11am Friday morning, pretty good.
New quill stem is 'rost frei', so spent the morning with sovol autosol on the handlebars. Can't resist shiny things. Perhaps I was a magpie in a previous life!

 

[Benjahmin]

Got most of the kit mounted, but I am struggling to find a location for the controller. There is a box supplied which is supposed to take the controller + all the plugs packed in. It's a 15A controller with fluted sides to loose heat, and I'm not sure it's a good idea to pack plugs and cable around it and seal it in an unvented box strapped to the frame. Any thoughts?
They also provide a Rosewheel bag for controller and spare cable, but this won't fit the frame.

 

[anotherkiwi]

What size box is it? I have the huge one and there is plenty of room for the cables. My Mxus kit came with an under saddle bag, great for warming the seat in winter!

 

[Benjahmin]

When I put the controller in it, the plug from the motor wedges it in across the width. That's before I put all the other plugs in there. Not sure how much free air would be left tbh.

 

[Deleted member 4366]

It'll be OK at 15 amps. Lots of bikes use that box and cram in all the wires.

 

[Benjahmin]

OK, thanks d8Veh. Think I may just about be able to get the frame bag, just above the bottom bracket, to hold extra cable length.

 

[Benjahmin]

Enjoying myself routing and rerouting the cables - getting there. Was just going to drop the bike off the stand and realised I'd forgotten to order tyres. WOT,,,,,REALLY? I know. I put it down to a mixture of age and childlike excitement. Marathon plusses to be ordered forthwith. £22.99 seems to be current best price
Anyway, can anyone tell me what these are called please:

I need to get some so I can match the battery terminals to my own bike

 

[Nealh]

Ben they are Anderson powerpole connectors.

 

[Benjahmin]

Thankyou very much.

 

[Deleted member 4366]

When are you going to tell us about the new bike then?

 

[Benjahmin]

Well it's still on the workstand at the moment, mainly 'cos I forgot to order tyres.
Ordered those and Anderson connectors today. Jimmy wants to sell me a 48v 21Ah battery but I've told him that my bum only has a 15Ah 36v range.
The kit's on, wiring mostly in place. The Panda pas is certainly easy to fit but I'm finding it gets knocked out of line very easily and can end up coming into contact with the sensor. Although the spring clip stops it coming apart, it actually doesn't grip the shaft very well. Have to keep an eye on it.

As you can see, I managed to get the Roswheel bag into the bottom of the frame without fouling the front changer. Because of the L.H. pas I've kept all three front rings, this thing should climb walls!

The new quill stem is well long and brings the handlebars nicely into old fogey position.

New changers are all set up and working nicely and the Magura is ready to go. The motor has two tabbed washers, on it's shaft, which fit nicely into the bottom of the dropouts. Not sure if I need a torque arm or not. What do you think?

So waiting for tyres and battery.
You may notice that I have the poshest workshop ever, with oak floor, fridge and oil lamp. Trouble is, she who must says she wants it for cookin' an' fings. Really, there's just no stopping the liberated woman is there

 

[Nealh]

Are they just tubes on the rims ? If so take them off and find some narrow gauge rail lines to have a play on .

 

[Deleted member 4366]

I would fit a torque arm as soon as is convenient. You can ride it in the meantime, but make sure that the nuts are nice and tight.

 

[Nealh]

If you had a bit of steel 1- 2mm thick you could make your own one piece T/A making sure the axle fit was nice and snug and shape the finished T/A to suit the drop out and fix it to the mudguard stay fixing point with a longer fixing .
All my bikes have one piece homemade T/A's the beauty of it is you can shape them nicely to blend in with the drops outs and fix then to the local fixing point available, paint them up and they are barely noticeable.

 

[Benjahmin]

I've ordered a Cyclezee one. I know it fits, in fact the picture on his site is this very bike when it had the Ezee kit on it.
I'm a carpenter and electrician by trade and, although making one is not beyond me, I don't think I'd make a very good job of it.

 

[Benjahmin]

Having read another thread about somebody's pas problems, I decided to apply D8veh's fix to the wonky pas disc.
I fitted a 16mm washer to space the disc away from the bottom bracket.

Then used a piece of 22mm plastic water pipe between the disc and the crank.

There are some bad paint chips on the forks and I was considering painting them. But past experience tells me I wouldn't be likely to get a good finish. Then I remembered I had some large heatshrink left over from a job, so I did this.

Jimmy tells me the battery should be ready next week. Slight hiccup is, I've just had the money for my Anderson plug order refunded, with no explanation. Gotta search again!

 

[Deleted member 4366]

If you ordered the Andersons from Aliexpress, the supplier has x days to confirm shipment. After that time expires, you get an automatic refund.

 

[Benjahmin]

Ezee torque arm arrived and fitted.
Battery is due to arrive tomorrow. I received the following from Jimmy, I don't fully understand it, but it may prove informative to others. I bit the bullet and went for the Boston power swing cells. Ya pays ya money and makes ya choice, we'll see if I've chosen right, over time.


Hi Ben,

I have now completed the build of your battery and the test results were excellent.

The capacity is actually 15.8Ah at 2.85V low voltage cut-off. I measured the total internal resistance of the pack including the interconnects which was 54.4milliohm which is excellent. The battery was fully charged at 42.0V and the instant 10A current is drawn, the voltage sags by slightly less than 1V which is about 0.5V higher than what I'd expect. This is obviously due to the much lower resistance of the copper interconnects. This produces an extra 5W of power. This means the battery would be hotter by 5W if it were made with nickel interconnects.

The data is the best I have recorded for a similar battery and it is obviously due to the use of copper instead of nickel. Discharging at 10A, and still attaining 15.8Ah of capacity is simply outstanding.

I am attaching an image of the battery as it was being capacity tested using an electronic DC load at 10A continuous current.
The length is about 290mm and it will be PVC shrink wrapped (White shrink wrap).

I am also attaching the screen shots of the discharge curve and another that I have created using the Excel log file which shows a second by second account of the discharge process. The left column represents the time in seconds as the DC load updates the data every second. I have also attached the xls file which is the full discharge data from beginning to end.

I am certain you will be most pleased with the results.

Best regards,
Jimmy


This guy obviously loves what he does, and that's the best you can ask for really, isn't it? Communication has been good, even got a call from Mary today, to say it was being despatched.
Andersons have been despatched, so hope for a shake down run by the end of the week. (Where's the pathetically excited emoticon?).

 

[Benjahmin]

So the battery's arrived and I suspect that Jimmy thinks I'll be running a milk float with it!

As far as I can make out, that's a 175A connector. He did ask if I was OK with Andersons and I never thought to ask,'What size?'. I'll be swapping it for a 30A, to match my Ezee. Just need to find a nice bit of multi-strand cable to go from rack to controller. Anyone got any sources? All mine is twin and earth solid core.

 

[Deleted member 4366]

http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2047675.m570.l1313.TR0.TRC0.H0.X14g+silicone+wire.TRS0&_nkw=14g+silicone+wire&_sacat=0