E-Bomb Gets Brighter

I know I have mentioned the headlight several times. I have had a pair of headlights from a 1938 Chevy that I have been saving for something cool. I was originally thinking I would put them on my street rod, but it turned out one was pretty rusty and so what do you do with only one old headlight? You put it on a motorcycle of course.

The headlight had apparently been mounted to a lot of things in a number of different orientations as evidenced by the number of broken out holes on the bottom of it. I actually harvested it from a Model A Ford 1 ton truck. It is pretty cool and has a brass g-682 tag.
Here's what it looked like at first:

I added a piece of 18 gauge steel to fix the holes and reinforce it for a mount.

 I then ground it off.

 After fabricating the mount and painting, it looks like this:

 

 





 I am pretty happy with it so far. It is fixed to the frame so it looks a bit odd when turning as it stays pointed straight ahead. I kinda like that. It is also just strange enough looking on this bike that it begs a second look.

 

 

The LED lights look pretty bright. We will see how they do on the road soon. My sense is that they will be OK for daytime running lights, but would need some focusing optics to be useful at night.

Side View

View with Tank Installed

Mounting the Motor

I got the motor mount parts roughed out on a CNC plasma machine and then we put them on our mill to add the hole pattern and detail for the motor mounting. Once that was done, took everything to Fab-Tech where Josh TIG welded the motor mount together. It looks pretty good I think. This shot is looking from the bottom of the bike up while we are welding and fixturing.

A Sprocket Finally

It turns out that the fifth sprocket I ordered actually fit. I ordered a couple from a few different dealerships only to find out a 5-10 days later that it was out of stock and no longer available. It must take a long time to walk back to the shelf and look... Must be a BIG warehouse. I am working on the motor mount today and the front sprocket should be in today as well. I have the controller and contactor installed and most of the low voltage wiring. Also the DC-DC converter came in which will get me 12VDC out with input of 70-150VDC input. I installed that last night. I am missing headlight and front signal lights and associated wiring and batteries and charger. That is about all. I suppose I could pull batteries out of every car and motorcycle I own and string them all in series and make the motor spin. It would be a lot of work, but is sorta tempting. 

 

 

 

 

 

E-Bomb Gets a Brain

In addition to a lot of wiring, I added a micro controller for the E-Bomb to allow for computer controlled effects (lighting). I used the "Omni-Board" from invenscience:
http://www.invenscience.com/index_files/omniboard_controller.htm

It worked pretty well. Initially, I just hooked up signal lights and brake lights and signal and brake switches. That allowed me to pulse the brake lights when applied and sequence the signals a bit. Here is a pic of the wiring panel.

 

 It is getting busier. I also received and installed the contactor as well. I wired it to the motor kill switch that remained from the gas engine. That way if something goes wrong, it is right next to my thumb.

This week should see the motor getting mounted, some progress on the LED headlight assembly, and batteries getting ordered.

From the bottom, you can see the contactor and motor controller mounted in place underneath the bracket.