So, early this summer season I did something really stupid. I replaced the brake pads on my ebike and took it out for a test.. Riding 50m on the street outside our house being a little bit too tired. The bike was in second gear, I thought it was in third so when I pushed the throttle it wheelied.. a little too much.. Tired as I was I slammed the brakes.. both of them.. so when the front wheel hit the ground it was locked sending me over the bars. Never let go so when the neighbor found me in the ditch I had scratches on the outsides of my hands, my elbow was bleeding badly and I had hit my head pretty bad which knocked me out for a bit. Since I was just going to test the brakes I was not wearing a helmet.. :/
When I regained consciousness I was pretty out of it and after talking to my brother a bit asking the same question over and over he sent me off to the ER. A few stitches, a couple of shots and a complete brain scan later I got to go home with orders to REST.. which of course I did not.

My daughter turned 15 this summer and she got an electric moped for her birthday. Since the bike can fit two batteries I of course had to build one from cells I’ve reclaimed from old scrap ebike batteries..

These are Samsung 30T 3000mAh 21700 cells, good for 35A a piece.

Since the moped and charger says 60V I built this 16s10p pack which would fit the battery compartment in the moped easily.. but then I checked the voltage of the charger and realized it’s a 17s system.. :/ So, I had to put an extra 10s cell on top of the pack making the fit pretty tight, but it still works.

I’ve made the pack in such a way that there’s a SuperSoco connector connected to the 60A BMS and I’ve got 2 XT90 connectors that bypasses the BMS so that I can use the same pack on my future LightningRods BB builds..

The problem is that the SuperSoco uses a serial connection to talk to the battery to display the correct charge state and such which makes this pack show 5% charge even when fully charged.. I’ve ordered a connector that should solve that problem, still waiting to test it.

So.. since I didn’t rest enough after the head injury it kind of never got better. I’ve now been diagnosed with ‘fatigue’, when the brain kind of gets overloaded way too easily. This can happen after a serious head trauma I’ve been told, so I need to let the brain rest A LOT for some time to come. This totally sucks. I have not been able to ride my bike this summer as my brain has not been able to keep up with offroad riding..

In order to be able to get some 2-wheel action me and my wife got one of these each.. not as quick or agile as the Swoop, but it’s super cozy and quite fun to glide around on!

So, it’s been quite a boring summer due to me not wearing a helmet and having a bit of bad luck.. So, if you’re reading this – take it from me.. wearing a helmet when riding is a super good idea, like EVERY time!

Keep safe – have fun. I’ll soon have more fun projects to share!