Morning Commute - Work to RIDE, RIDE to Work!

I logged data and captured video of my commute this morning.

I also added a rocket to the bike (at least that is what it sounds like with the wind noise.)

Daily ELDBLOG (Electric Dirt Bike Log)

I turned down the Current to 50% and left the top speed at 100%.

Off the line acceleration suffers, but there is no other difference. I will check out whether it improves my "GAS MILEAGE." :-) It should.

Setback, repair, and lessons learned

I set out this morning to log my commute. I started logging one event per second - took about a minute to get on the bike and going - headed out of the driveway and as I turned left, wham! full "throttle!" The bike took off FAST - but the brakes won. There was smoke and the main fuse blew (goodbye 40 bucks :-( ) I immediately began cursing the controller and throttle. However, since I was logging, I saw something else was to blame when I reviewed the output at lunchtime (had to drive my car to work.) Something south of the controller must have shorted to ground. That thought was correct - When I got home tonight, I found that the inexpensive #4 cable had welded itself to the frame of the bike through the insulation. OUCH! I have encased all wires in conduit and have put a fuse on just about every wire going anywhere on the bike :-) In the graph of the data you can see me starting out - moving in the driveway - coasting into the street and then all Hell breaks loose as I ease onto the throttle. I let off the throttle when I felt it take off, and you see the throttle position is correct at zero as is what the controller thinks is the current. The telltale sign is the battery voltage which went all the way down to 8.7 before the fuse blew. This says that the current was not going through the controller - but somewhere else. The culprit is the crappy insulation on the #4 cables coupled with the fact that I'm using a 3 wire 48 - to 12 v DC - to DC converter that forces me to ground the 48v system to the frame of the bike due to the 12 volt system being negative ground. Unfortunately, the negative side of the 48 volt system is the one that goes through the controller - the positive is directly connected to the motor - therefore anything "going to ground" from the negative side of the house past the controller is going to send upwards of 500AMPs to the motor. 3 lessons learned - 1.) I didn't go for the kill switch, I reached for the clutch which no longer exists - therefore I may install a spring loaded clutch that kills a seperate contactor that kills all onboard power - 2.) I had a big, thick, unfused ground strap from the battery negative to the frame of the bike. I have installed a 10AMP fuse so that if anything more than the onboard lights, horn, blinkers draw through that wire, it will open the fuse. 3.) The cheap wire was pierced by rubbing on some sharp welds and a bolt - I have encased it all in conduit.

Log of a rainy night run

After a bit of a false start tonight that included a lot of smoke from a wimpy ground wire(replaced with a number 6 wire,) here is a night run around the neighborhood - about 25mph... then to a stopsign... then 35mph for a bit... then turned around and headed back (it had started to rain.) I'll log some more tomorrow.

I have traveled over 120 miles now as an electric - that used to take 2 gallons of gas at about 2.55 a gallon - I have charged 5 times from stored solar and 5 times from the grid at 14ish cents or less per charge - so I've saved almost 2 bucks over the last two weeks :-) Haven't polluted much either!!!

48 volt connector added

I decided to just stick with one 48 volt connector through the gas cap - will put dongled rubber dust cap over it when not in use. Wired it up with some beefy wire and 2 inline 20AMP fuses.

5 days on the electric Dirtbike makes one WEEK! :-)

I'm averaging about 13.5 - 14 miles per charge now. Pretty happy with it. I would like to tweak something - but it is running perfectly. I will add data, A/C , and a 3 pin charging jack inside the gas schnozzle under the cap this weekend.

Mileage may vary

The Maiden Commute was just about exactly 10 miles and it was limping by the time I got home. Voltage when I got home was 11.7x4 = 46.8.

I had shut off the charger last night prematurely when I measured an inflated surface charge on the batteries.

I will let it charge tonight until it shuts off and make sure they get totally filled up this time.