Guru
Joined: 15/07/2006
Location: AustraliaPosts: 676
| Posted: 03:48am 23 Dec 2019 |
Another quad bike converted to electric.
I have wanted to do this experiment a long time ago ...like years ago, but... well anyway it is done now. We had it finished enough to drive it just before the 'Dads Day in the Valley' car show in September 2019.
The bike was given to us many years ago from a friend. He said the motor was on its way out and wasn't worth spending any money fixing the motor. Perfect for my experiment. The rest of the bike was in pretty good shape.
Dale had stripped a lot of the bike not long after we got it, so sat in pieces for a long time. He gave up stripping when he couldn't get the motor out. And I didn't have time to put on to it.
First thing for me (early July) was to get the rear swing arm off and exhaust off to finish getting the motor out. This was a spare time project.
Then work on the swing arm to hold the hub motors. Lots of ideas were tossed around but end up deciding to just cut and rebuild the back section to suit better. Both swing arm and frame is not symmetrical. So we assembled the swing arm onto frame and sat the plastic mud guards in place as a gauge to get the 2 wheels about even from the 2 sides.
Battery mounting had to happen quick to make it to the show (as mentioned above). The alloy plate was originally made to mount the speed controllers in T-Rev but never used for that purpose. It was perfect size to drop in the batteries, once in the electric zero turn mower, but later used in the electric boat testing. Quickly connected up with some unused wires from other places. Make up a throttle from a joystick once used on the electric mower. Program the controllers. Get all the covers back on, so it looks complete. Dale did really well to remember what came off where. Show time.
The quad was driven around the farm a lot after the show. Used a temporary cable to charge from solar. Dale loved it, and wanted it. He is now, too big for the Quad we built many years ago.
https://www.thebackshed.com/forum/ViewTopic.php?FID=15&TID=6186
Late November, I got back to finishing it off. Meanwhile, Dale had another quad driving on electric as well by this stage. I did help Dale a bit but not a real lot. He is really good at a lot of stuff now. I will do a separate page on his Quad conversion.
Fit up the battery pack that I wanted, 60Ah x 48v. And the boat gets the 100Ah x 48v back again. I cut the alloy base down to suit the smaller batteries. Fix up some of the temporary wiring. Wire in a reverse switch. Made a vynel cover to keep the batteries and balancer's clean and dry hopefully. Wired in some monitors to see all the single cell voltages, used as a fuel gauge. And fit the Anderson plug to make the solar recharging much easier.
The project has turned out to be very valuable. It is an excellent bike for the farm. Good acceleration, without throwing you off the back. Good torque, able to climb up steep hills. Good for pulling a trailer. Good speed, not excessive speed. Quiet. No need for idling when getting off to do fence repair or something. No need to restart if you switch it off, just thumb on the throttle and away you go. It is brilliant.
Anyone interested in buying my Polaris Scrambler, 500cc. This thing has excess in all areas, including the cost to run it. Washed up ready to sell.
Edited 2019-12-23 13:52 by Trev
Trev @ drivebynature.com