New 96Ah battery for the Super Soco CuX

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Svara

I’ve been riding the Cux for a bunch of years now and been really happy with it. The only downside I’ve seen is the range of the original 30Ah battery. Going carefully I could get 70km range on a good day but when exploring the surrounding area I constantly had to keep track of the state of charge to be sure to make it back.

So, what’s the solution to that? Of course – a bigger battery! 🙂

I removed the small storage compartment under the seat and made a prototype design. After test fitting and some redesign I figured I could fit a 17s17p pack of 21700 cells, so I ordered a bunch of LG cells with 5800mAh capacity. That set me back around $600, so not too bad.

As usual I printed cell frames and figured out the cell configuration for the pack. The tricky part here is that 17s is not an even number, and I’ve got 2 sides – which is.. so I had to split one cell at the joint.

Since this battery will peak around 60A I didn’t use a copper sandwich but put down just enough nickel to handle it all. 17p gives a lot of connections anyways. Glass fiber insulation and time to fold the pack together.

I’m using a 300A ANT BMS, since I had that at home. It’s a load of overkill but it works. I used a chinese communications module to talk SuperSoco-lingo to get the state of charge to show on the display and printed a case for the pack. It did turn out that the case didn’t fit, so I had to wrap the pack like it was and install it in the moped.

After a test fit and a wrap the battery charged fine with the original charger. The BMS however does not limit the charge to 4.1V like the original soco BMS but charges the pack to 4.2V. The result is that I now can ride 20km with the battery showing 100% charge. 🙂

So, the result then? On a full charge, at full throttle, going up hills and on gravel roads, I easilly get 160km range. Going a bit more carfully I get more than 180km and I don’t think 200km would be impossible with some gentleness on the throttle. Riding for 5+ hours is a bit much though but now I only charge the battery every 2-3 days. Huge success!

Update on the house project

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Svara

So it’s time to finish the house renovation that’s been going on for the past 15 years or so. We’ve totally rebuilt the entire house, from basement to upper floor with tearing out all the inner walls, doing new insulation, under floor heating and a three floor 50sqm extension to the house. So it’s been a project.

The last bit of renovation was to tear out the old kitchen and build a new livingroom. Unfortunately it turned out that the carpenter who did the old extension to the house took all the shortcuts possible, so we had to tear it all down and build a proper extension.. Now, 2 years later, we have a proper extension with good drainage and a concrete slab for foundation, and we’re starting to finish the project.

The livingroom turned out real nice, and the entire lower floor is without walls. There’s a fireplace in the middle of the floor, the kitchen is behind the camera on this photo and the dining area to the right. We’ve got huge decks on the front and back of the house which is awesome in the summer.

The new entrance to the house incorporates a large wardrobe which we missed in the old one. We’ve got 4m+ to the ceiling so we figured that we needed a sleeping area for guests and built a loft with a proper bed.

The bathroom by the entrance turned out real nice. All we need now is a mirror to go over the sink and it’s done.

Our bedroom in the extension with a walk-in closet and a huge bathroom with sauna.

This project is the reason for the slow progress on all my other projects. Now that it’s almost done I’ll be posting more frequently about the other fun stuff I’m doing..

Throttle prototype for the ePPG project

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Svara

So, since I’ve picked up the hobby of paramotoring of course I’ve got to build one of my own. And since I’m kind of into electric I’ll be designing an all electric paramotor, mostly from stuff I’ve got at home.

The idea is as follows:
* A 72v setup using the same batteries and chargers as my bikes initially
* Using an LR XL motor, producing approx 17kW peak that I didn’t use for my latest bike
* Got a FarDriver 72680 controller as it was dirt cheap and should suffice
* 130cm 2-blade propeller that fits my Moster185 so I can use the same on both
* Some old scrap frame or whatever I can conjure for a reasonable price until I make one

To keep things simple and lightweight the first version will use the motor extrusion as the load carrying body of the package. There are extra bearings in the yellowish part helping to take the load from the propeller. The reason for the tiny propeller mount is that I’m using 20×60 aluminium stock that I’ve got at home for prototyping. When I see that it works I’ll make a more proper one.

The RPM of the motor should be close to what the propeller needs and we can adjust using field weakening on the controller. If the motor spins to fast I’ll make a belt reduction but first we’ll try out the simplest version.

I’ve paired the motor with the controller and it seems fine. Haven’t dared to hook up the propeller to it before I’ve got a proper mount for it though as that would be a disaster waiting to happen.

To control the motor I’m making a hall sensor throttle that’ll be 3D-printed all the way. I’ve tried to keep it simple and switchable so the same throttle can be used for both right- and left-hand control. I’ll print a prototype and there will probably be a bunch of changes for this before it’s done too..

Just for the fun of it I designed and printed a chasecam too. This one is of similar size and weight as commercial ones and is kept together with locking tabs in the base and TPU clips round the perimeter. It’s very flexible and bounces around when you throw it. I’ve got some paracord on order to try it out..

More to come on this subject, stay tuned…

Talaria Tail Tidy

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Svara

So, it’s been awhile.. this winter has been hectic with the house renovation and loads of private crap that’s been going on, but it’s all getting to be sorted so maybe this spring will render more time for hobbies.

The house is starting to near completion, to see more about that follow @casa_de_la_runsten on instagram where my wife is documenting that project.

As spring is coming closer it’s time to look over the two wheeled toys again and highest priority among those is the Talaria tail tidy. Since the kid doesn’t want to drive illegaly I needed to fix the tail with all the lights and everything, and it turned out pretty nice.

Don’t mind all the crap in the background. The garage has been storage for loads of my ongoing projects this winter..

Everything works and this should be sorted. One project complete, next up is the electric EC250 which I’ll be building in paralell with the electric ppg..

Until next time..

Tail Tidy for Talaria Sting

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Svara

So, we got the kid a Talaria Sting for his 15:th birthday and soon thereafter he flipped it while trying to wheelie. It’s bound to happen and with the original tail ”extension” on the Talaria the entire rear is scrap after such an incident. Tail light, indicators, subframe.. everything is scratched, crushed or bent.

I didn’t get to take any pictures of the bike in that state but after removing the damaged parts and making a quick fix, this is what it looked like.

It’s mostly alright and usable but unfortunately the plate hits the rear wheel when compressing the suspension all the way, and that won’t work. So I started working on an upgrade.

Since the tail light got shattered I started designing a new light that would integrate to the rear part:

I then designed a plate holder with the integrated tail light and holders for the indicators. I made the indicator holders from TPU so they’d rather bend than cause the indicators to break when hitting stuff..

The light casing is made from transparent PLA, even though it looks more white. The light shines through OK but I’ll try tweaking the settings to getting a more transparent print. The lower threads are for bolting the plate to and the light has three integrated white LED:s to illuminate the plate.

Everything is connected using JST-connectors so next crash it’s going to be a quick job replacing whatever’s broken

I’ll post an update when this is mounted on the bike. I might have to adjust the angle of the plate to get it perfect but with this being the longer fender we’ve got a lot more clearance than with the original short one.

New hobby

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Svara

The EC conversion has grinded to a bit of a halt. This is mostly due to the house renovation project but a few weeks ago I picked up a new hobby:

I’ve been wanting to get back up in the skies for awhile and paramotoring is just a cozy way of doing so totally idependent of anyone else.

Of course there’s going to be an electric paramotor build coming but I’m going to get the EC conversion done first. One major project at a time..

Motor mount for the NoGas EC with the QS180 motor

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Svara

The summer has all but gone, and I’m still not nearly done with the electric conversion. The house on the other hand is a lot closer to finished and when that’s done there’ll be much more time for hobby projects like this. 🙂

The QS180 motor is a heavy beast and to be able to mock the location for the motor in the frame I 3D-printed a shell with the same dimesions as the motor.

This makes moving the mount around to find the perfect alignment much easier than using the proper motor.

Before starting the building of the bike I had to do some maintenance to the frame though.

The swingarm bearings were long past their due date and consisted more of a rusty goo than actual rollers. The bushings did not rotate in the bearings, so these had to be replaced.
The bearings in the dogbone were in better shape and after a good rinse and lube were working alright.

After replacing and restoring the bearings I could mount the swingarm on the frame to check for motor alignment..

To get the swingarm to sit right I needed the shock absorber and it was fitted with a spring I didn’t like, so the next project was replacing the spring on the shock.

I made tools for this a long time ago and even if they’re a bit bendy they still work just fine. Taking the shock apart, cleaning it up and putting it together took no time at all.

.. and then the shock absorber got back in the frame ..

Since I want to do as few modifications to the original frame as possible I started designing a motor mount that’d mount to the same points as the 250cc motor, ie four bolt holes in the front and the swing axle in the back.

I’ve got some old forks for a tractor that I don’t have, and those are made from 6mm steel tube. Perfect material for a motor mount I thought, and the plasma cut the forks like butter.

Making some wierd shaped parts to mount the motor to the frame.

.. and some regular shaped parts to weld to some other parts..

Using 20x2mm square tube I made a mount mockup like this..

The regular shaped parts were made holy and bolted to the motor..

.. and then used to bolt the motor to the mount ..

With the mount bolted to the frame I could then mount the motor to design the forward attachment points and make a corresponding bracket..

.. and this is what it looks like with the motor mounted to all the attachment points..

Unfortunately the motor is quite wide and the chain runs inside the frame, so in order to not have a two stage transmission with an intermediate shaft I had to position the motor quite far to the right side..

This picture is taken a little bit from the side, so it looks worse than it is.. but yes, it’s noticably heavy to the right side. We’ll see if that’s a problem when riding, if so I’ll have to remedy it somehow.

That’s all I have done so far, next step is to fit the controller in the subframe. Unfortunately the controller is quite a big and heavy piece of equipment and .. well.. it didn’t fit. I’m currently in the process of replacing the steering bearings and putting the front end together. After that I’ll mount the wheels to check what clearance I have to play with and I’ll modify the sub frame to fit the controller after that. Just have to make sure it won’t hit the rear wheel when the suspension bottoms out..

I’ve been thinking of making a youtube video of this build, but with the little time I have for the project it just adds to much work to it all. Please leave a comment if you think I should make a video anyways. I still haven’t gotten around to editing and publishing the previous build I filmed so.. 🙂

And here’s a little video for you to enjoy of my CNC plasma cutting a cover for our chimney.

To be continued..

Teardown of the GasGas ec250f

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Svara

Now that the motor for the NoGas project has been liberated from the previous conversion the fun is about to begin. But before I can start constructing and building I’ll have to remove everything gas-related from the bike..

Since I’ve never owned a GasGas before it took a bit of fiddling to get everything off the bike. First to go was the seat and tank..

Then goes the plastic parts..

.. to get further the subframe is next on the removal list ..

To make the electric motor mount as similar to the original sprocket position I took a picture to try to reference the placement when that’s up. Since the shaft on the electric motor is in the center of the motor I won’t get the sprocket as close to the swing arm without using a transfer shaft, which I don’t want to do.. so..

There’s quite a lot of stuff on a bike like this..

.. and I’m just getting started!

To get to the engine I removed the rear swing and shock absorber..

.. and once that was done there were only two more bolts holding the engine in place..

I could’ve stopped here and started making a mount for the QS motor but since the paint on the frame was in quite a bad state and the steering bearings didn’t feel too good I decided to do a proper restoration of the bike while I’m converting it.. so, off with the rest of the stuff..

Now that the frame is naked I sand blasted all the rusty areas and removed all the loose paint. Here I’ve just primed it for paint and this is the state it’ll be in until I’ve got all the welding and modifying done. Then I’ll do a proper paintjob to get it all protected from rust and whatnot..

Since a lot of the stuff I removed was in a pretty bad condition I’m getting a lot of new stuff to go on the bike, like footpegs, levers, bearings and stuff like that. More on that when I get to it. The next step is making a mockup motor since the QS is just too heavy to play around with. Then the manufacturing of mounts will begin. I’m going to try to modify the frame as little as possible but I’m counting on having to make some welding and modifying of the frame to fit the QS.

There’s quite a lot of cleaning still to do, teadious boring work that I won’t write about so next post will be making electrical stuff fit.

To be continued..

XXL Avant conversion ”complete”

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Svara

So, after having made the physical conversion with the mounting plate all that was left was the electrical..

To fit the ASI BAC-series of controllers the hall sensors and thermistor needs a 6-pin molex plug. Those are super hard to come by. Sure, I could buy a complete adapter from the US, but that’d take far too long.. So I 3d-printed a molex plug, the crimp connectors I already had.

A resin printed plug with TPU seals will have to do. It’s pretty sealed and I could fill it with hot glue if needed later. Here I made a mistake though. I used the schematics for the BAC855 controller to deduce the pin numbers for the different hall sensors, and I got it wrong..

I opted to mount the controller under the seat instead of in the motor well. There it’ll be a bit more protected and it makes for a cleaner installation.. there is however far to much wire in the engine bay..

After having connected everything and made a new battery tray to fit an extra battery pack, the motor didn’t run. I loaded the correct settings file and modified it to fit the Avant, but the motor just jerked and sounded real bad and the controller had warnings about the hall sensors..

One reason I wanted to run the XXL motor with hall sensors was to be able to use the ”Speed” setting on the control algorithm. This would let me choose the RPM and the controller would adjust the current to stay at that RPM no matter the load. However, what I didn’t know..

SO – while having problems with the hall sensors causing the controller not to be able to sense the speed it was running I set speed mode without setting the switching frequency and the bluetooth connection I’m using to configure the controller simply crapped out.

I couldn’t connect to the controller, and the controller wouldn’t run. 😀 *yey*

To solve this I had to remove the controller to get it into my office to connect it physically using RS232 to my computer. From there I could, with a lot of help from ”Mr High Voltage” from the High Voltage discord, restore the Switching frequency, the control mode and the bluetooth baud setting. Having measured the hall sensors I figured I had just switched two cables, an easy mistake to make especially when all the other motors I have have custom wire looms that I’ve made myself:

After a bit of rejoicing at the revelation that I hadn’t bricked the controller I put everything back on the Avant.

I shortened a few cables and tidied the wiring up as much as I could. Fixed a small leak on the hydraulics, made a washer to fit the belt wheel on the motor as it sat too low and touched the bottom plate of the machine and then the motor just spun like a kitten.

It feels like this motor is a much better fit for the avant. Even with the smaller belt wheel I get more RPM so the machine moves faster. It’s got a cooling fan so it can hopefully stay cool and with room for an extra battery pack I’ll be able to remove the snow from the driveway with volts to spare. 🙂

The only thing I’ve got left to do now is replacing a few joint shafts to get it a little less sloppy, and then the FUN project will start.

TBC

New motor mounting plate for the Avant XXL version

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Svara

So after spending 5 minutes on the CAD, just as long on the CAM and 20 minutes on the mill I had a new mounting plate for the XXL motor.

I really like the finish of the milled aluminium, with chamfers and all. (It looks better IRL, the camera catches all the scratches and dings)

The plate fits the motor perfectly and mounts with 3pcs M6 bolts and 2pcs M8 bolts, holding it all securely in place.

Since the motor is a lot smaller than the QS180 motor I’ll probably be able to fit another battery pack in here. I’ll just have make a tray for the battery that I can bolt to the chassis.

I’ve got the parameters for the BAC4000 controller to run the new motor as well, so in theory I should just need to optimize the parameter file a bit and start the machine up again.. I’ll do a proper oil and filter service first though and replace a lot of the axles in the joints that’s worn out.. And I’ll try to be better at lubricating the joints in the future..

That’s all for this post, just a small update. To be continued..