I picked up a small electric walk behind forklift that had been scrapped.
The batteries (4 x 6v) were completely dead, so I replaced them with a couple of normal car batteries. It won’t give as long a run time as the original setup, but I only need to use it occasionally.
There were some wiring issues to correct, and I still need to fix a broken hydraulic fitting, but it’s working - and proved to be quite useful for carrying things like gearboxes around
I took my new bike (Electrocycle 2!) along, in an unfinished but ridable state.
Hopefully it will be all done and on the road soon
It’s currently a bit slow, because only half the batteries are installed, but it’s still pretty fun to cruise around on.
The other half of the batteries are in this bike for now:
It’s Geoff’s very nice conversion of a Hyosung GT250R, using a Perm132 motor and the same Thundersky lithium batteries as mine.
Since his batteries are in the go kart, we used half of mine in the bike so we could have everything running for the field day.
Takeoff is a bit quicker on my bike thanks to the larger controller and series wound motor - but the top speed was coincidentally pretty much exactly the same!
It’ll be very interesting when both bikes are 100% finished and road registered
At the field day I also got to have a drive of Kearon’s electric formula vee, which was very impressive! Now to talk him into letting me take it to the track
Last weekend I went down to Canberra for the 2009 EV Festival.
There were a fair few interesting vehicles there, from converted race cars to a home built Segway!
There were two Detroit Electrics, from 1917! These have a 5kw DC motor and lead acid batteries.
This is a Formula Vee race car that’s been converted to electric, with the usual 9″ series wound DC motor and Curtis controller. It goes pretty well, even with lead acid batteries.
The star of the show was Simon Hackett’s Tesla Roadster. These are unfortunately not road legal in Australia yet, but he’s working on that - and in the mean time using it as a great publicity generator for Internode and EVs in general!
Part of the road next to the festival was closed off so Simon could take people for rides in the Tesla, which he did for a couple of hours non stop! I jumped at the chance for a ride, and was suitably impressed with the Tesla’s acceleration! We hit about 80km/h in the short space available, and the claimed 0-100 in 3.9 seconds seems quite realistic
Geoff had brought the electric go kart down too, so we decided it was necessary to demonstrate it on the closed road - while it was still a bit damp
It would have been fun to line it up for a race against the Tesla! (I think we’d win for the first few metres :P)
LEDs have gradually been getting brighter and more efficient - but they haven’t really been good enough to replace normal halogen or HID lights for high power torches or vehicle headlights.
I hadn’t thought much about using LEDs for serious lighting applications until I saw one of these in action: http://www.jaycar.com.au/productView.asp?ID=ST3371&CATID=21&form=CAT&SUBCATID=649
It’s not cheap, but has enough light output to be used as a headlight on a motorcycle. LEDs use much less power than normal halogen lights, which is a real advantage on an electric vehicle.
After doing a bit of research I found some massive LEDs complete with reflectors and driver circuitry, so I bought four to test out.
Even powered by a half dead 9v battery, one of these is easily brighter than a Dolphin torch, with a much wider light output.
I mounted all four on a piece of polycarbonate sheet and took them out to compare against the car’s headlights.
This is the car headlights on high beam:
And this is the LEDs (same exposure settings on the camera):
The aim is slightly different, and the LEDs are only on the right hand side, but you can see that they are bright enough to realistically use as headlights. Note the house in the distance is similarly illuminated by both lights.
I will be doing some more testing and comparisons, and will hopefully be able to run an LED headlight on the next electric motorcycle!
I’ve been helping with an electric gokart project, which was initially to test out the drive train for another electric motorcycle.
The performance was very impressive, so it is now being developed further to establish a viable electric racing gokart design.
We’d changed the motor sprocket since its last run, to get some more top speed.
The initial acceleration is not quite as neck snapping, but it winds out for a bit longer now.
We also installed a dashboard to keep track of power consumption so we can work out what size battery pack a race kart would need.
Against 100cc 2 stroke race karts we have better low to mid speed acceleration, but lack a bit of top speed at the moment - at the “Butterfly Farm” track we tested at. Cornering is good, but the kart is carrying a lot of extra weight compared to a petrol one. Better batteries would improve the weight a lot.
The next step is to try some higher performance batteries, and adjust the gearing further for more top speed
Yesterday I took Electrocycle to Wakefield Park to set an official electric motorbike lap record.
Since no one has set one yet, it wasn’t too hard to make it a record!
Circuit Club very generously let me run the bike before and after their Australia Day track day, with official timing equipment.
I made the first attempt at about 9am on a cold but thankfully dry track, which was going really well until the motor controller cut out on the way down the hill into the hairpin and I had to stop and reset it before continuing (I think I bumped the kill switch which glitched the power and reset the controller - which then needs to be stationary before it’ll start up again!)
That first lap came in at 2:29.797 which is an embarrassingly slow time for Wakefield on anything more than a pushbike, but it was still a record
After plugging the bike in to recharge while the rest of the track day continued (it only needed a couple of hours max) I waited for another opportunity to have a run.
At the end of the track day, around 4pm, that opportunity came. It was now much hotter, but the bike didn’t seem to mind the morning’s lap at a nearly constant full throttle
Here’s me ready to hit the track for a second run:
And here’s me doing about 50km/h across the back of the track after coming out of the hairpin corner:
This lap was much smoother, without having to do an unplanned standing start in the middle!
The time was 2:14.623 - much better than the morning run, and a time I wouldn’t be able to improve on without a fair bit of practice.
So, I’m claiming 2:14.623 to be the Australian electric motorcycle lap record, and challenge any other electric motorcyclists to break it I’ll be aiming to break it by a large margin once Electrocycle 2 is up and running
With the weather finally looking ok it seemed like a good chance to try out the electric outboard motor.
The first step was to put it back together as I’d taken the motor off to measure up mountings to put it in a bike frame.
Jaemus came over with the “Microboat”, minus engine - and we loaded it up with electric bits.
After getting to the boat ramp we wired up the controller, coaxed the laptop into life, turned on the GPS, and put the boat in the water.
I took it for a short run:
Of course it immediately started pouring with rain, so the laptop was thrown in the car and the canopy folded up on the boat so we could keep testing
Jaemus took it for a run, and then we decided it was best to get out of the rain!
The boat performs similarly to how it did with an 8hp engine on it and two people onboard (a bit over 10km/h top speed, with easy cruising at about 6km/h - about 4hp or so according to the datalogs, and about 1500rpm).
It was an interesting test to get a real feel for how much power the electric motor makes compared to a small petrol engine, and how much power you can realistically get from the batteries without working them too hard.
Today I put together the electric outboard motor test rig.
The first step was to weld a socket on the end of the outboard shaft. This engages with the nut on the end of the motor, providing an easy drive coupling.
A couple of hardware store shelf brackets hold the motor on top of the outboard leg after having some new holes drilled. It’s not pretty, but it’ll do the job for now!
It spins!
The batteries will sit in the boat in this nice blue box.
