Stripping her down

My friend Jim came and took some video of the bike riding around with full fairings. We both rode it and filmed. He’ll cut the video this week, and I’ll post to youtube ASAP.We took the bike apart last night and are going to be modifying the motor mount due to fairing clearance issues, add a motor support and clean things up.

We also lowered the battery cage a tiny bit due to frame clearance issues. The front batteries were hitting the frame a little bit. We’re also installing battery hold downs, and painting the frame. We’re not going to go all out on this frame or the motor mount, since we’ll be “transplanting” the guts of this one to the other bike eventually. We got lots of ideas on motor mounting and will be remaking another mount, as well as a new battery cage for the lifepo. We don’t know if it’l be 72V or 144V yet, all depends on what batteries I get. If I go 144V, I only need 20-30Ah or so. If I go 72V I’d like to do 60Ah. I’d like something near a 4000Wh pack.

Right now, while Loni is doing the battery cage, I’ll be soldering the boards for my charging system. We got them in last week, and I’m going to be putting them together. There is once module for each battery to monitor and charge cells individually. The front end of the charging system is ~700W, so it’l charge the motorcycle just fine in ~4 hours (~2500Wh pack right now). The charging system for LifePo will be completely different.

We’ve got to work on how to fit the charging system inside the frame. There’s still lots of room, so I’m not too concerned. It’l all be temporary anyway.

Also still need to get the Aux battery and DC-DC converter integrated, as well as the lighting (got some White LED’s for turn signals and brake lights). It’l be another month or two of 1 or 2 days a week until she’s finished, but she’ll be LEGAL!

Called insurance yesterday, waiting to hear back. Registering it won’t be a problem, already talked to Salem, OR and they said Motorcycles are excempt from DEQ, but they might need to see that its electric. I’ll post updates to this matter as I find more information.

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1 Comment

• By Eric, August 2, 2008 @ 10:59 am

  Hey Travis,

  It’s great to see the eVFR on the move. Looks like it turned out great! One comment, you said

  “Also still need to get the Aux battery and DC-DC converter integrated, as well as the lighting (got some White LED’s for turn signals and brake lights).”

  From what I understand about LED’s (I’m no expert though, just going by what I’ve read), I believe that LED’s are not broad spectrum emitters, so if you get a white LED and put it behind a orange or red filter (like a turn signal or brake indicator, you’ll get very little light out of it. The manufacturers websites I’ve seen (sorry, no links handy on me right now) seem to recommend that if you want to put an LED behind a colored filter, you get the same color LED as the filter (i.e. Red LED for Brake light) as that will produce the most light…

  Anyway, just wanted to say “GOOD WORK!” and way to inspire others. =)

  Eric

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