Lots of trikes

Yes I have not updated the blog in a while - life has been a bit hectic!

The Aussie distributor of the Christiania has a new website and if you look closely here you may even see a couple of shots of my bike (photo 82 and 83). Indeed looking through all the great photos I may even have some more ideas about what I can do to the trike!

Another electric bike

A local company was after some test riders for a range of electric bikes they are importing and I volunteered! I spent two days with a 'townie' style electric bike with a 200 watt hub motor in the rear wheel, 36volt lithium battery, pedelec system, brake cut off and twist throttle.

I had read a lot about the pedelec system where the motor operates only when you are pedalling. On this bike as soon as you started pedalling a nominal amount of power assist was automatically applied and you could then twist the throttle if you needed more power. It took some getting used to but I quickly got the hang of it and found it very easy to use. Basically I could just hop on and pedal! I only needed to worry about the motor if I hit a hill though unless it was really steep I could just drop down a few gears and not worry about applying more power with the throttle. I did two rides over two days - 17km on day 1 and about 24 on day 2. I recharged in between and the power gauge on the throttle never got below 2 lights (out of 3). I would estimate range to be about 40km depending on how much you use the throttle.

The battery locks in to the frame for security but can be unlocked with a key if you wanted to bring it inside to charge it up. Another key turns the battery on and off. With the motor turned off this bike is a bit hard going with only 6 gears so you would want to make sure the battery is fully charged up before heading out. With a 40km range though this should not be a problem.

I was pretty impressed for my first ride on a 'normal' electric bike. For commuting to and from work one of these would be ideal especially in summer when you want to arrive relatively fresh and not dripping in sweat. And if you did not have a huge cargo bike sitting in your garage like I do you could also load it up with a handy amount of shopping with the addition of some strong panniers. I also liked the style of the bike with the more upright seating position which is common in Europe but not so much here. All in all a great way to get around!

Let there be light!

The local bike shop received a stack of lights for our upcoming winter and I liked the look of the Cygolite MiliOn 200. Unlike other helmet mounted lights I have seen, on this one the light and li-ion battery are together in one neat little unit. The velcro strap on the helmet mount could have been a bit longer though as I was unable to mount it in my preferred position at the front of my helmet due to the large spacing between the air vents. It fitted very securely on the top though -

The light output is fantastic and simply does not compare to the lights I had mounted previously. The run to Scouts with my eldest is now done one hour after sunset and I can see quite clearly on the unlit bike paths with this light. It was a good thing too as tonight I saw that someone had dumped a bunch of old mattresses on the path. Further up someone had dumped all their tree cuttings over their back fence straight on to the path as well! Honestly sometimes I think I am just better off sticking to the road!

Sheldon Brown Memorial ride

Each year the LBS holds a ride around the local lake in memoriam to Sheldon Brown - bicycle guru who gave so much of his time to helping others. He replied to one of my email questions (of which he received hundreds per day apparently!) shortly before he died - it was regarding the torque on a Shiman Nexus 7 speed hub if you change to a smaller front chain wheel.

It was a great evening for riding and I enjoyed 'letting loose' on the trike around the bike paths without having the kids on board. Though I quickly discovered that a number of the paths are on a rather severe angle which meant I needed to do a bit of leaning on the trike so as not to tip! It is not so bad with a bit of weight in the front (ie if the kids were in the box) but the camber of roads and paths needs to be watched when empty! Some of the other riders who I had not met before were also a bit amazed at my ability to keep up on the hills until they heard the motor noise! It was a bit dark on the way home and though I was lit up like a Christmas tree I had trouble seeing the odd obstacle so may look at investing in a helmet mounted light that will enable me to brighten up the path ahead properly. I can't really use handlebar mounted lights as I have no room and the light would be blocked by the kids sitting in the box.

Some shots of the trike as the sun set over the lake -

Battery range part 2

Since the recent surgery on my battery pack I have done 7.85 amp-hours without any cut offs from the battery management system. So it would seem the early cut offs around the 6 amp-hour mark are a thing of the past! The minimum voltage this time around was 32.9, resting voltage was 35.8 and I used 288 watt hours.

The local bike shop is organising a Sheldon Brown memorial ride tomorrow which will involve a bit of distance and some hills thus I'm charging the pack up tonight so I don't run out of juice half way home! I'll probably aim to recharge around the 8 amp-hour mark from now on.

Battery range

Seeing as the big trip in my last post did not flatten the battery I thought I would have another go to see how it was performing in terms of capacity. Unfortunately after not doing any top up charges last week it cut out after about 6.4 amp-hours which is where it has cut out on my previously. I should at least be getting 8 or 9 amp-hours so I sent an email query to Justin at ebikes.ca. As usual I got a reply very quickly! Justin informed me that yes I should be getting more out of the pack and that it was likely a cell balance issue. He offered me a replacement pack straight away or a chance to pull it apart and have a go at fixing it. I went for the chance to fix it as sending mine back to Justin overseas may have been problematic with our laws regarding postage of battery packs. And I was also keen to see the inside of the pack!

I was instructed to do a full recharge and then pull the pack apart and check the voltage of each battery cell. Getting it apart was fairly easy and I must say it is very well put together. As you can see from the photo it has 2 separate groups of 5 battery cells that are securely attached and wired together with some circuitry to manage the charging, balancing and low voltage cutoff (LVC) to protect the cells.

When fully charged each cell should be 4.15 volts or higher however one of mine was only 4.02 and Justin thought this cell might be prematurely tripping the LVC. To fix it I found an old charger that put out about 5 volts and soldered some alligator clips to the output wires. I attached the clips to the weaker battery cell (making sure they were the right polarity!) turned it on and waited.... and waited .... and waited for the voltage to increase. Eventually it got up to 4.04 and we were on our way. It took about 7 hours to reach 4.17 volts! I asked Justin why it was taking so long and he figured that given my charger was only 500 mili-amps, and that the cell was cutting out about 3amps short of where it should (ie at 6 instead of 9 amp-hours), that it would likely take about 6 or 7 hours to put another 3amps of capacity in to it.

So I got it all charged, put it back together and have been riding around this week to see how far it would go. Today I hit 8.5 amp-hours before it cut out! The lowest voltage was 28.9 and for the last little bit of riding (around 8.3 to 8.5 amps) it got a bit sluggish as I hit the 30 volts limit I had on the Cycle Analyst.  At 8 amps the lowest voltage was 33.3 so the last bit of use really drops the volts off quickly. The range was 42 km which I am very happy with!

So the battery is back on the normal charger and hopefully I will get a similar range next time without having to pull the pack apart again. I am confident that will be the case. As an added bonus Justin offered me 25% off any future battery pack I purchase off them in recognition of my receiving an unbalanced pack and the work I put in to hopefully fix it up! Outstanding!

A ride in the wet!

Well my 'big' (for me at least) bike ride to test the range of the battery went better then I thought it would. It was 11.5 km each way and I only used .87 of an amp on the way there and 2.24 on the way back! The trike was empty though so if I add 50kg of children I expect those figures would increase. However even if I double them that is still only about 6 amp hours for a round trip.

Though it is a hilly trip I was able to use the downhills to gather a fair amount of speed to tackle at least some of the next uphill. I have the Cycle Analyst set to a 23km/h speed limit and I found that this worked as a great 'cruise control' eg go down hills at around 30km/h then start going up the next one and as speed gradually dropped the motor would kick in around 23km/h and I could pedal in higher gears for most of the hill. After a while I could then kick down a few gears and pedal to match the gradually slower speed of the trike up the hill. By not maxing out the motor with this method the range seems to be quite impressive. The uphills are longer and steeper on the way back hence the higher use of the battery coming home.

I was not counting on the rain being as heavy as it was though! I guess this was a good test for the 'waterproofness' of the motor and all my wiring and it looks like it passed as no sparks flew!