Jonny's Senior Project!

As most of you know I am about done with this silly school nonsense and I am working on a senior project. I would like to build an electric motorcycle and to do so I need some help. I am in serious need of some sponsors. If you are interested, just leave a comment or get a hold of me. All donations big or small are greatly appreciated and are 100% tax deductible!

Insperation



Saturday, September 26, 2009

All together now!

I went and exchanged 2 of my bluetop's for these yellow's got to love Sam's Club they didn't even think twice about me trading them I could have run them completely down (I hadn't even used them) for all they knew and they exchanged them straight across.

You can see the posts sticking up on top and they have got to go! I need all the space I can get!




I will have to cover them up with some silicon or something to prevent anything from arcing across the battery.

There they are all nice and smooth!

The sides also have a slight lip that must go as well so took my sander to the sides as well to make them nice and smooth everything on here is just one tight squeeze after another.


It might be hard to tell but it really is nice and flush now.


Here is just the frame stripped down, I still have some old electrical to remove but I haven't gone through and traced any wires yet I'll I need is the lights everything else must go.



I'll go through once and put the pieces together with out the batteries and motor and then again with everything.

This is the first bolt on part which adds support as well for the middle row of batteries.


This is for the battery under the seat it didn't really need a plate there but we built it up a little to get the battery up off of the motor so it would rest on the plate and not on the motor. This will also help keep the motor from transferring its heat to the battery if it were to be sitting on it.



This is for the middle row of batteries, the hole plate is removable allowing for the installation and removal of the motor and batteries below it. It bolts to the angle iron that is welded to the front of the frame and the bulk of the weight will be supported by the bolts you'll see in the next couple pictures.


they are 7 1/2" bolts with just some galvanized pipe for spacers.




Welded some angle iron to the inside of the frame and that's where the bolts attach to. There is really only 3 parts that have to be bolted to the frame everything else is welded to it.


This is for the controller originally I was not going to put it here, but after thinking about it it should be the best spot. Having it here will prevent anything from getting kicked up from the road and damaging it.


Now time for the batteries! Here is the first one that just sits in the lower tray.


This pieces of angle iron just bolts right to it so it can be removed if necessary and as you can see it just barely fits.


There was 1 thing that we forgot to weld and that was a support for the motor. Right now the only thing holding it up is the bolts on the front and it needs some sort of support arm on the back of it. Right now it sort of rests on the battery, but with a support arm that will get it up off the battery.


The other pieces is bolted on now.


I have placed down some think rubber for the batteries to sit on to help with the road vibration. The rubber came from an old conveyor belt at is about 1/8" thick.


The middle row is where the yellow Optima's will go with the side mounts giving the needed added space.



Again I laid down a piece of rubber for the battery to sit on.


These non-spillable batteries allow for any mounting position so being on their side like this helps keep the battery a little lower so the gas tank can still fit on with out any problems.





The plate fits nicely over the batteries but I definitely will want something over the batteries to prevent arcing because it is just barely over the top of them.





The last row of batteries will sit on their side and the posts will be in the middle, 1 set on top and 1 on the bottom.



Top it all off with the controller and everything is mounted on the bike.




It sits slightly higher than I wanted it too, but should still work out ok. I wanted it to be flush with the frame that way I could have plenty of room for the charger.


I am looking at a Quic charger currently I was going to go with a few smaller chargers, but when I contacted Quic they told me that since I was doing this for a student project that I could get 50% off!!! so I figured I better jump on that offer since it is a way more efficient charger and will save me like $300 on it.

I made a cardboard mock up of it and it should fit inside the gas tank i just need to cut a little more out of it.


There are still a few unnecessary pieces left in the gas tank so I got out the trusty grinder and went at it again.




It looks kinda ugly but it is a real tight fit in there to use a grinder I will have to clean it up a little more later and see if I cant get rid of the whole thing.


This one was easy to get to so it cleaned up pretty nice.


It fits a lot better now with just a little bit more cut out of the tank. I made the box slightly bigger then the actual size of the charger so when I get the real one everything should fit even better.


With the mock-up of the charger in the gas tank it fits on the bike without a problem.



It's all coming together I am getting closer to being done, there are only a few things left to do. I need to strap the batteries down somehow so they do not move around, get the cables and wire it all together, buy the charger, install the contactor, replace the brake handle, and at that point I should be able to start test riding it to get it geared and the controller tunned to my liking.


Welding Weekend 2!

It's finally complete! All the welding is done! Have to give a huge shout out to my Uncle Scott for such an amazing job he did and all the time he put into it for me. I got done there on Friday, and when I get there he tells me that it's is birthday and that his wife is going to take him out tonight. I would not have asked for his help if I knew it was his birthday! That's just how awesome he is he will put anything or anyone before himself. So he and his wife went out that night, then Saturday we got to work, it took a while to get started there were a few interruptions so we ended up working on it until 1:00 AM! I forgot my camera so most of these were taken with my phone.

The first thing we did was fix a mistake from last time, when we put the first battery in we did not leave a way for it to come out, so we had to bolt on the angel iron rather then weld it. This whole thing would have been a lot easier if it were not for the fact that I wanted to be able to take it apart at anytime.


This is the another bolt on piece for the second row of batteries that will allow for removal of the motor and first battery.


The mighty welder himself hard at work!


Wondering how in the crap he is going to get in that small space to weld.


We basically just kept rolling the bike over on all sides to get a good bead of weld everywhere that we needed it.
So they person that recommended the Optima bluetops to me told me that they had to be the bluetop in order to work. This caused a lot of headache and frustration for us because all of the battery pegs are on top of the batteries. The bluetop is the only optima that does not come in a side mount model. After some investigation and talking with Optima, the bluetop and the yellow actually have the same specs and the only difference is that the yellow can be used for starting and the blue cant. The yellowtop comes with the added benefit of side mount which gave us the extra pinch of space we were dieing for. So I will end up swapping out these blue's for yellow's.


This is the mount for the battery that goes under the seat with some stops on the back to keep it in place.


For the finishing touch the mount for the controller! I thought I had pictures for the top row of batteries but I guess not see my next post for the finished project.

Don't know what I would have down with out Scott's help he really helped make this dream project become a reality thanks Uncle Scott you're the greatest!