Saturday, November 9, 2013

It's Been Awhile- Time to make E-Bomb Roll

It's been a long while.
Can you identify what is missing in this picture?
If you guessed batteries and a charger, then you are correct? Do I sound a little sore? Oh yeah!This hiatus wasn't intended. It really started when I had everything ready on the E-Bomb for batteries.
Since I didn't want to wait for them to ship from China, I shopped around and compared battery options and found a local supplier that had US stock(?) to hopefully save on schedule and shipping costs....
After placing my order on their website, I didn't get  a response for a couple of days. That should have been a cue to cancel.
About a week after I had placed the order and paid, they contacted me for another $200 shipping. That was after I had already paid shipping at purchase. I was assured this shipping was to expedite the charger (which apparently was being programmed in China. I thought it was US stock). The $200 was so that it would get DHL shipped and I would have it in a couple days. Hah! I got it about 4-6 weeks later...
 
 

     Now to the batteries. Turns out the company I ordered from was in dispute with the battery distributor (on the East coast no less) and so my batteries got shipped after about a 6-8 week delay. Shipping took a long time. I suspect they shipped from China anyway judging from the wooden crates the smell of China.
    In the frustration of the delay, I moved to another project and now am wrapping that one up and am rolling up my sleeves to make this baby run. Too bad we are experiencing freezing temperatures every morning. I might not get too much use out of it for a few more months.
The charger is very big and a lot heavier than I expected. Hopefully that equates to rugged Chinese durability... Hey, they built that big heavy wall and it is still around after a few millennia. So this thing should be good for a few decades as least :-) I will have to get creative on an installation location or just opt to leave it at home or work.                                                                     The next step is to make a 3d model of the batteries and figure how to package them on the bike so as to be the least obtrusive. I have looked at a few options and no matter how you cut it, 120 lb of batteries is hard to package. Things should be moving next week on this. Forgive me for this delay as I forgive this deadbeat supplier.