Well if it already has a LVC set for 20.5V + or - 1V, then it's all good. Even if it cuts out at 19.5V, that's 3.25V per cell on 6S so I'm ok with that. He already knows that once you loose power, no more throttle, he's pretty good at it from running his E-Revo since he was 5.

getting close to 2800 km on the scooter. Man it is cold! :lol:
But I have some very good winter wear to keep me warm so all is fine. But the end of the season is coming fast, I had my first taste of riding a scooter in snow yesterday night. Snow was falling heavily last night but since the ground is still not frozen, it would semi melt into a slushy mess on the pavement. I could get some studded winter tires for the scooter but I don't want to venture into this kind of craziness. Although there are some brave souls in Toronto who will be doing it :yes:
The forecast is sun for the rest of the week so I should be good to use my scooter this week and maybe I will have to store it for the rest of winter in hopes that I can get it out again at the end of March for a new fun season.
Next spring will be exciting as I plan on upgrading to a Lithium Iron Phosphate battery. I already started prepping the scooter for it, I modified the shunts inside the controller which gave the scooter tons of torque, I also changed the phase wires to 10 gauge instead of the 14 gauge that was there. I did the full mod, starting from inside the motor. What a dirty PITA job that was!
Next will be the battery wires, I'll go with 8 gauge on this one. Now I still have to decide about the voltage on that battery, stay with 48V and be legal or go with 60V and have some fun and pretend to be legal.

Now let's be clear on what's legal here and what I have for performance right now. Being legal means a top speed of 32 km/h on flat ground. Right now with tired 48V 34ah SLAs in the bitter cold, I go 45 km/h on flat ground. So I'm not legal even with the stock crappy battery. Going to 48V 30ah LiFePO would get me closer to 50 km/h top speed, maybe 48 or 49. I would get more than double the range I have now which I would very much like. Going to 60V 30ah would probably get me to 55+ km/h. Not crazy fast, enough to keep up with traffic if need be but enough to get in trouble with some anal cop also. I still have time to think about it, but right now, 60V sounds really good to me :lol:

Legal shmeegle
 

I doubt seriously that the police have the time to bother with that kind of crap, but to be on the safe side I would check what the fine might be if you got caught, and they actually felt like taking action against you:rules:. I would still go for more voltage and have a good time driving it with room to spare in the power aspect of the ride:party:. You have done well so far and adding a little pep is a good thing:whistle:. Following your experience has been informative and entertaining. I plan to keep watching, but its been great up to now. Thank you for sharing with all of us.:yes:

Glad you enjoyed it. I sure hijacked BrianG's thread good eh! :lol:

There's a bit of a gray area concerning the law with pedal assist bikes and scooters. A loophole that some cops like to take advantage of. If they find you running without the pedals for example, they will assume that it is now a motorcycle and not a pedal assist scooter so they give you tickets for not wearing the proper helmet (if you just have a bicycle helmet) a ticket for not having the proper license, a ticket for no registration, a ticket for no insurance. It ads up to quite a sizable amount. Now they are trying to stick you with a whole bunch of infractions but it doesn't hold in court as a few have found. Just because the pedals were not on doesn't mean that the pedal assist scooter magically becomes a motorcycle. So people get out of court without paying the fines. But they did loose a day's pay and wasted their time going to court.

Today is a bit of a sad day. I noticed ice patches on the streets so the scooter stayed in the garage and I took the car to work this afternoon. :no: First time using a car to go to work since May. And you know what, driving a car is frikkin' boring. :sleep:

Like crash has brought up, there are some legal restrictions to consider. I've tossed around the idea of an E-Bike and looked into the regulations. Even in Montana you can only go 20 MPH under the bike's own power without having to register it as a vehicle (doing so makes you add stuff like a windshield and stuff). Pedal-assisted speed can be up to 35 if memory serves. Kinda put a damper on my plans, most of the way to work for me is a 60 zone. Granted it would take a cop with a serious bug up his ass to stop you on your E-Bike, but don't they all seem to be asswipes anyway? If I can get stopped 3 times in 1 year for not having a front plate I'd be concerned about riding a bike that triples the legal power limit.

Could be fun for your little girl, get a big wheel and replace the front wheel with a little 100w hub motor or something. Would make a Christmas present she'd never forget! :party:

I'm still riding. 3100 kms on the counter and the snow is not stopping me. Roads are salted anyway so it's mostly riding on wet asphalt. But I do have to watch out for ice patches or thick slushy stuff. My commute to work is only 1.8 km on back roads so that's why I decided to continue riding. The only problems I had was the ignition switch and signal button freezing up. I will have to assess if the salt damaged metal components like the frame and stuff like connectors this spring.
I'm still looking around for a new battery this spring, for now I'm pretty settled on a ''Cell-man'' battery made of Headway cells.

Keeping up
 

Thanks for keeping us up with your progress and wear and tear as well. Those batteries look pretty good, and I like the way the ebike kits are progressing as well. Technology will just keep getting better and better as time passes.

I found a guy that can get his hands on used/rejected 18V Makita Lithium Ion battery packs. These packs use Konion 18650VT cells, 10 per pack. From his experience of working with a lot of these used packs, you get at least 8 good cells out of every pack. I plan on building a 14s14p Lithium Ion battery for my scooter. The beauty of these is you don't need to balance charge them, you can monitor them but balance charging is not necessary. I should be able to build this pack for under $500 total and have enough cells to fix my three cordless drills :yes:

I made a 14S16P Lithium Ion battery pack out of used makita tool packs. They use Sony Konion 18650V cells. Can't wait to try it but I have to wait a month.

That's a lot of cells. For some reason I can't see the pics on my screen.

It's because I didn't put any pics. And since I don't want someone to say that if there's no pics it didn't happen. Here's some pics.

The used Makita batteries, 30 of them
http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w...ion_packs1.jpg

The cells all separated, there's a few more in another box.http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w...nion_pack1.jpg

14 strings of 16P done
http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w...nion_pack7.jpg

One block of 7S16P done
http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w...nion_pack8.jpg

The two blocks of 7S16P connected in series, 7S balance connectors installed and getting a nice balance charge on the new Hyperion 1420i
http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w...nion_pack9.jpg

I'm waiting for the large heat shrink tubing to come in to finish this pack nice and beautiful.

Exactly. :whip: :whip: :whip:


That looks like a pretty serious battery pack - nice work - hope it performs well for you. :yes:

Wow, you are not playing around.

From a man who went 28S2P with A123s? :lol: Are those the prismatic cells at 20 ah each? 90V nominal and 40 ah :intello: I don't think you're playing around either.

I enjoy this stuff :D