The latest thang here

The Sunday after Thanksgiving 2014 I experienced a bit of a life changing event... my shop along with 30 plus years of handyman collectibles went up in smoke... still recovering from that...  most of my time of late has been spent on the latest rendition of the shadetree proa... and adding a  florida room to my house.... still adjusting to life without the the great shop I once had. But I have come up with some workarounds. Recently bought a ready to fly quad copter.... aka drone by the misinformed... that will do hd aerial video that you can see real time on the controller.

 It is a great piece of work. I have been fooling with scratch built quads for quite some time.... without video capability... the off the shelf versions are now cheaper than you could build yourself.

First Hub Motor

Hub motors for bikes have become so plentiful and cheap that I finally got around to buying one. You can get a 1000 watt hub motor with everything but the battery for under $250 off Ebay. I got the 26 inch rear wheel which comes already laced to the hub and includes a tire as well.

I had an old junker bike that the guys at the bike shop gave me. It was pretty rough but had all the parts just needed a new chain.

This was enough to test the motor out with just 2 6S 5 amp/hour batteries in series for power. I've since made a bracket to mount the controller under the frame and I think I can get 15 amp hour 12S worth of batteries in the space in front of the rear shock.

MoonLander

I've got quite a few motors coming from China for these bikes and also a scooter that I've been fooling with. I found this bike on the Wal-Mart website and had to have one. I'm calling it the MoonLander. It a 20 inch bike with 4 inch wide tires. This seat is off of a the dirt bike just for testing. I'm making a similar one as this bike is so short that almost unrideable for an adult with the stock seat. I've added a better crank set and a taller adjustable handlebar quill. I've found some better rims too and may opt for those as well. Some Weinmann DHL101 20 x 4 inch. I'm thinking of mounting a 8085 KV 170 motor and reduction drive off the seat post and the rear seat stays. 

Mocking it up

Checking to see how this would look... Planning on putting two motors on here but will probably start with just one. Need some more parts and one may surprise me. Hard to believe how much power these motors produce for their size.

Dirt E-Bike

I just bought a Kawasaki KX 85 dirt bike for converting to electric. Over on the Endless Sphere forums I've read quite a bit about folks putting motors on mountain bikes... they are not quite beefy enough for the amount of power available from the new motors.  And most look like a bike with something on them that shouldnt be there. While there are quite a few different implementations of electric... mine will be RC airplane type brushless motors and their drives. I'm also using LiPo type batteries that are also RC airplane origin.