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The Colony: Electric Bike

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BlackGT97

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OK, so here is my seconde question (first was about the spark gap)

In this video, the colonist made an electric bike. Now im very aware of the mechanics on the machine, but my question has to do with the lever that control the volts. How is it wired so it can switch betweed 12-36volts? i know that the lever makes contact with the contact point, but from there how did they go about it?....any idea.

Here is the video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-cUi3IjFRM
 
The throttle is nothing more than a tap switch, each tap wires in another section of batteries. It's horribly crude and the batteries wouldn't last for any practical length of time, even if they were new. Scrounged old batteries and you'd be lucky if you didn't start having cell spewing sulfuric acid all over.
 
Knew a guy that made one similar. He used 2 Etec motors (one for each rear wheel) and a chain drive for gear reduction. His "shifter" was 3 rings around the stearing column and went 12, 24 and 48 volts. He used large copper strips wraped around the stearing column as the contacts and a large spring loaded lever that he could lift from one contact to the next. It made lots of sparks when shifting, but basically worked ok. Of course the first gear battery would always go dead first. Ran for about 45 minutes on a charge and covered about 12 or 13 miles. He added another Etec and a gas engine and made it a hybrid;). Quite a bit smaller than the one in the video.
 
Yes the switch is switching between 1 or 2 or 4 battery's at 6 volts each. The 1st battery will get used all the time and will die soon. The last battery will hardly get used unless you run it full throttle all the time and may never die. It is vary crude in keeping with the show. One way to even out the battery life would be to rotate the battery's once in a while.
 
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personaly I would have used a basic electric Golf Cart PWM speed controler and a off the shelf electric bike throttle pot.
Used parts for such a simple design can easily found on eBay for less than a $75 investment and result in something far far more efficent and practical to run.
 
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I think that anyway you look at this type of battery switching system you will always have uneven loading issues between battery's.
But hay it worked for the few days they needed it.
 
pesonaly I would have used a basic Golf Cart PWM speed contorler and a off the shelf electric bike throotel pot.
Used parts for such a simple design can easily found on eBay for less than a $75 investment and result in something far far more efficent and practical to run.
I dont think you will not find that stuff on their TV show. LOL
 
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Those batteries are definitely going to die pretty quickly. I don't think those solar panels are going to recharge them in an efficient way. Also, a motor that size is going to draw hundreds of amps, so it's going to kill the batteries right away. I wouldn't be surprised if they even start overheating and spew acid everywhere, like Scead mentioned.

For the fact that they made it from junk they found lying around, though, it is fairly impressive. I just don't think it's going to work as well as they think it will.
 
One word of note; I thought they said the motor was 110 volt, but it looks more like something they pulled out of a fork truck witch should be a 48 volt DC and as DerStrom said could draw "hundreds of amps" with a heavy load. Maybe under a light load they are OK on flat ground but I bet they let the magic smoke out on the 1st hill. LOL
 
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