Electrified Downhill bike

[johnrobholmes]

I got in some hub motors a few weeks back and laced up a wheel for myself. I ended up mounting it into my old downhill bike for grins and giggles, and so I would have cheap transportation around town. Works out to about a penny per 9 miles of travel at 20mph.

specs:

Rear geared brushless PM motor
Castle HV110 controller
12s2p a123
Magura throttle
Santa Cruz Bullit
Marzocchi Super T fork
Built up by me

Right now it is about 20mph on 36v. I have 12 more a123 cells so I can bump it up to 48v. Yesss, feel the power!! It already pulls wheelies....

[TexasSP]

Just curious but what do you figure your total cost to be?

Nice job BTW.

[t-maxxracer32]

what is your average runtime?

[johnrobholmes]

Originally Posted by TexasSP

Just curious but what do you figure your total cost to be?

Nice job BTW.

Total cost of what? Electrics for the conversion are $800ish with the a123. Batteries are the bulk of the cost generally.

Originally Posted by t-maxxracer32

what is your average runtime?

about 12 miles best guess, I haven't ran it down all of the way. A trip to town and back (8 miles) is about half of the capacity. This is going 20mph. If I add voltage and go faster my watt/hour/mile goes down.

[TexasSP]

Total for conversion minus the bike. I know some people that are interested in doing this and since I am into electric RC they asked my opinion.

[johnrobholmes]

For cheaper electronics you can get by with $500 no batteries. For more expensive electronics $600 or more is easy to spend, and you can get lighter with RC electronics. Add batteries on top, and that will be an additional $120 to $200 for lead acid and $500 to $2000 for lithium depending on range and voltage that they want.

[DRIFT_BUGGY]

That looks sweet. Do you do much downhill? I use to have a GT DHi

[johnrobholmes]

Not much downhill in missouri. I used to ride it urban a lot.

How many kv has that motor? That looks cool btw! Make a vid of it! :D

Been thinking about converting a hardtail for a while now, but decided to spend my money on an Ibis ($2700 with XT). Gonna go and pay for it on monday. Pretty good deal I thought.

[sikeston34m]

That seat looks painful!

[Semi Pro]

thats cool

[jlustig83]

Originally Posted by johnrobholmes

I got in some hub motors a few weeks back and laced up a wheel for myself. I ended up mounting it into my old downhill bike for grins and giggles, and so I would have cheap transportation around town. Works out to about a penny per 9 miles of travel at 20mph.

specs:

Rear geared brushless PM motor
Castle HV110 controller
12s2p a123
Magura throttle
Santa Cruz Bullit
Marzocchi Super T fork
Built up by me

Right now it is about 20mph on 36v. I have 12 more a123 cells so I can bump it up to 48v. Yesss, feel the power!! It already pulls wheelies....

that is awsome you should get a crystalyght motor but how does your magura throttle run your hv110

[johnrobholmes]

Thought I would post up another little project of mine. This guy is my campus cruiser. same hub motor as on my downhill bike, but laced into a 16" wheel and overvolted to 24s a123. Mighty powerful!

It uses a china made Ebike controller and throttle. Last night I realized that the throttle grip sucks and it was making my hand hurt!

[sikeston34m]

Originally Posted by johnrobholmes

Thought I would post up another little project of mine. This guy is my campus cruiser. same hub motor as on my downhill bike, but laced into a 16" wheel and overvolted to 24s a123. Mighty powerful!

It uses a china made Ebike controller and throttle. Last night I realized that the throttle grip sucks and it was making my hand hurt!

Very nice!

I wouldn't mind doing a few projects like this myself.