Battery Pack Containment System 3D Model

Now I have just burned about 30 hours of my life to design a battery containment system for the 24 LiFePO4 cells that will power it. Here is the 3D model:

It will bolt in on the same mounts that used to attach the engine. This will be laser cut and tab together with a little bit of TIG welding. The transparent end caps are polycarbonate. The rest of the structure will be aluminum. I should have the parts back in hand in about 2 weeks to TIG together.

No Load Speed

Last night I was able to finally measure speed of the rear wheel with a laser tach. I got 1194 rpm which equates to 85 mph. My targeted speed range is 60-70 mph. It will be interesting to see what I really get with the significant aerodynamic loading.

E-Bomb Comes Alive! Electric Motorcycle First Run

Yesterday I was finally able to get the controller programmed. I used the Alltrax software and had no problems whatsoever. It was very simple to use. I then spent most of the day wiring with 4 gauge cable. I custom built all the wires because I could not buy the right lengths. I crimped all the ends and then soldered them for a really low resistance connection.
It actually runs pretty good and the speed looks pretty good. Check out the video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CzBm-dwWrY

I am planning to get a laser tach and calculate speed in the next several days. I was targeting 60-70mph. I think maybe we are seeing a it more than that at no load. I will measure and see. Now I just need to package the batteries and attach to the bike and we are ready to rip.

Connecting Up The Batteries For The First Time

Last weekend I connected up the batteries all in series and measured voltage at 80 volts (24 LiFePO4 Cells).

I then put then on the charger for the first time and that brought them up to 86 volts in about 15 minutes. I then connected the high voltage battery pack to my DC-DC down converter that provides 12VDC and connected it to all of my low voltage electronics. That all worked well with no mishaps. Notice the rubber gloves just in case I do something stupid. 90 VDC will shock and it hurts.

The goal today is to program the controller (offline from the bike) and then re-install it, run all of the 4 gauge cable (custom build) and if time permits attempt to run the motor through the controller on full voltage on jack stands.

LiFePO4 Battery Conditioning and Prep

The plan is to connect the cells in parallel and let them equalize and balance. I also measured the cell voltages and then averaged and that is exactly the voltage I get when I have connected the cells in parallel. It turns out it is 3.344 volts. Once they have had some time to equalize, I will put them in a big serial chain and then charge them all and ultimately connect them to the controller and run the bike on jack stands. 

That's 24 batteries.

I link all of these batteries today so they start out balanced at the same voltage. I am not currently running a BMS so it is extra important that I start out with balanced cells.

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.

 

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.

Electronics Mounting Bracket

I really wanted to come up with some type of electronics mounting bracket that would tuck all of the motor controller and other electronics up inside of the hollow gas tank. The tank would provide protection and still make the bike look half way normal. I created a pretty good 3d model of the bike frame and then made a solid model of the sheet metal mounting bracket.


Electronics Mounting Bracket


The electronics bracket is shown in red in the pic above. I was thinking I would send it out to be fabricated, but got a little impatient and spent a few hours Saturday and just fabbed it up.

Here's the actual Fabbed Bracket


 

 

 



I know it looks pretty boxy, but the tank still goes over it and covers everything.

Design Techniques- Kelly Johnson Skunkworks vs. 2013 Solidworks

I have debated on how to design and layout all of the components in the frame for quite some time. Is it more efficient to go to the  trouble to create a Solidworks 3D model of the motorcycle chassis or just do the old school trial and error. I finally decided that I can get through many more iterations faster and end in a more refined and optimized design if I go to the initial trouble and time investment to create the 3D model so I got up nice and early today and made a model. Take a look below.

 

 

 

I think this will be accurate enough to get the motor mounted and pack the batteries in. I will do some refinement to it to get the detail needed to create the electronics and controller mounts up under the tank. See below for a first cut at packaging the ME1003 into the frame. It really wants to be there. It looks like it really belongs there.

 



Throttle Details on Electric Motorbike

I ordered up a Magura throttle. It looks ok. It doesn't feel super precise, but it will probably work fine. I looked abroad the Web and didn't really see anything that looked awesome. The egress of the wire was a problem as i plan to use the stock kill switch assembly and the wire from the throttle ran right into it so i was able to cut a hole into the kill switch housing and run the throttle wire right through it where the old throttle cable once ran. It worked pretty slick and only required about 30 minutes with a dremel.

Supporting a Bobber Seat

The seat structure was cantilevered and was not properly supported. I added struts to triangulate the structure.

The Motor Just Came In!

UPS just brought the motor in. Here are a couple of quick pics...
It is the Motenergy ME1003. We bought it from Cloud Electric.

Fixing a Hacked Bobber

The back part of the frame had been hacked off by a previous owner leaving it looking very un-finished and sharp edged. It also did not have a proper mounting for the back of the seat (sort of important). See what we did below. Thanks to Josh from Fabtech for the late night work!
One more thing... The previous owner didn't run with all the motor mounts connected so one of the mounts broke off. Josh TIG'd that on last night too.

Fixed motor mount

Here is the before picture.

Another before picture, no way to mount seat.

 

Motor mount fixed.

 

 Here is what it looked like after adding a few parts

Here is the new seat support

The back surface will provide the mounting for the signal/tail/brake light



Just linked to www.invenscience.com

Since Invenscience is paying for the E-Bomb fun, we need to link to the Invenscience website and it is linking here. www.invenscience.com

Low Voltage Wiring

I retained the handle bar electrical controls for the most part. Bright, dim, signal, horn, engine stop will all be retained. I had to ring it everything and then change out the connectors to something that is readily available. I went with the Delphi weather pak stuff since i had some  around. Done of the signals were not needed and were isolated and tied back. I also retained the key switch and lobotomized it as well and changed to friendly connectors. See pics.

Big Day! Ordered the Motor and Controller

Today we ordered the motor and controller.
For the motor, I did a lot of trade study work and comparison. I really wanted a BLDC motor, but in the end, it added about $1000 in cost and I can buy a new set of brushes for $100 so I ended up going brushed, permanent magnet. Once the motor was selected, it made the list for the controller search pretty short. Here are the motor trades. I went with the Motenergy ME1003. For the controller, it was an Alltrax Axe 7245.

I bought the motor from Cloud and the controller from EV-Drives. There is a lot of variation in pricing on controllers for the same part number from different vendors. If you are doing this search, shop around. Check ebay too as I was able to save $193 on the controller buying it from EVdrives on ebay versus buying it off their website.

Its a roller!

With the rear rotor turned (thanks to Paragon Tool) and a new set of pads in the back and a new bearing, it will actually roll around and the brakes work on both ends. Wow! We are actually ready to start the electric conversion.