Electric Bike

When my brand new scooter got stolen from in front of my office in downtown I was really upset. Eventually I cooled off and realized it was probably for the best and set out to convert my old mountain bike into a electric daily commuter. I chose an electric bike because I can store it in my office during the day, I have a wonderful bike path behind my house that gets me half way to the city, I like the exercise and I simply enjoy two wheeled modes of transport. I’ve worked on it fairly consistently for about two months before being happy with the results. It looks absolutely ridiculous but its practical, as safe as can be expected and a great way to get a work out while shortening my commute.

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The wire management is lacking but I picked up a mid-drive kit from Luna cycle, cobbled together two 25W custom LED headlights including the brackets (made of pipe hanger and lumber). Both are 15 degree spot lights that throw long distance so it doesn’t blind motorists. I also installed a DC/DC converter to make a 10V source to power the tail light. The panniers I made from some old bags I had, some hardware and polycarbonate from the basement.

I managed to find a really large, loud 48V fork truck horn off eBay. Installed it with a push button and a 48V relay and now I can get folk’s attention! I had some issues at first with the horn causing problems with the BMS inside the battery. Since the battery vendor wasn’t very helpful I was forced to figure it out on my own. What I realized is that since the horn is essentially a solenoid it was creating a voltage spike that the BMS saw as over-charging and would disconnect the pack. A simple flyback diode in parallel with the horn fixed it.

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I took a tail light from an old boat trailer, stuffed a little custom op-amp circuit inside to make it blink and also added a toggle switch on the side of the housing. Video belows shows the light in action.