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!

Everyone needs an uncle Scott!

Last weekend I made a trip down to St. George to see my Uncle Scott he agreed to help me out with the welding and I could not be happier of how things turned out! He has a natural talent for building things and has created many a contraption over the years and this was just one more to add to the list. We started out with the motor mount, the one that I had designed previously is not going to work without doing some serious and dangerous modification to the swing arm so I moved the location to up underneath. Normally this would not have been a big deal but doing so caused me to loose a spot for the batteries and it has taken me quite some time to come up with a design to still get all 6 batteries to fit.

It started with just a 3/16" aluminum plate with the holes drilled to match the motor, it was done in 2 pieces 1 for the bottom and 1 for the top.


The bottom piece was fairly easy because there was plenty to weld to but the top piece was a bit more tricky. We had to add a plate so we could have something to weld to on the top side.


We also left a flange coming off the top piece to give some added support.


As well as with the front side, we added a corner piece to increase the strength so to be able to support the weight of the motor.


This is the finished mount for the motor I forgot to take a picture with the motor mounted but you can see where it goes.


It is kinda hard to see but we took a notch out in the bottom right corner to give a little more chain clearance to allow for the swing arm travel to keep the chain from rubbing.


Now for the batteries! to start it off we dropped one of the batteries down as low as we could get it without loosing any ground clearance, This will also help to get a lower center of gravity to improve handling. To protect the battery we enclosed it in an aluminum box to prevent any damage to it in the case of any accidental contact with something like a speed bump or a big dip in the road.


You can see the finished box here and we started on the next level of battery racks.


Again for more support and to have something to weld to we added a plate so we could have a arm for the back side of the battery. This back side will actually be bolted on rather then welded doing so will allow for removal of the bottom battery should the situation call for it.


The front side of the rack is welded with the idea of just inserting the batteries from the back and just sliding them over.


Front side view.


Back side view, sorry you have to turn your head to see it.


Just getting this far took quite a lot of time so it is going to take one more trip down to St. George to finish but it is well worth the expert help, Scott is a perfectionist and everything will defiantly be done right and work in the end. So the rest of the pictures is just to show how the rest of the batteries will fit. They are AGM batteries and have 180 degrees of rotation so having them on their side like this won't be an issue. We forgot about that in the beginning and were having trouble getting things to fit because of the posts on top of the batteries, but turning them on their side gave us that little extra room that we needed.


Gas tank fit perfectly with no problems even have plenty of room to spare to mount the controller and possible even the charger.


The fairings even fit as well so I am pretty excited about that too! The project is coming right along I can't wait for the first test drive! It'll probably be a few weeks before I can make a trip back down to St. George, but there is not much left to do till then.

Volt Blochers

I finally got my kit for the cell balancing circuits to add to each battery and I think they are going to work out just dandy. I got them from www.voltblocher.com it is a great place to go and they are fairly inexpensive and easy to put together. In all it took me about 5 hours to solder them all together, if you don't feel like soldering you can purchase them assembled as well.

They simply just attach between the posts of each battery and make it so that the batteries do not get over charged while waiting for the rest of the batteries in the pack to come to a full charge.
I have ended up having to make some major changes to the design of the project. I am not going to mount the motor on the swing arm anymore to do so would require removing to much of the inside of the swing arm to provide for adequate clearance for the chain. I am going to mount the motor underneath now which I think will be better overall being that the balance of the bike will not be thrown off anymore without the 35 lb motor hanging off the side. Moving the battery to underneath has caused me to have to rethink and rearrange the placement of the batteries. I think that I have come up with a way that I will still be able to fit all 6. At least this time I had the actual batteries to size things up with rather then having to fight with just the cardboard mock ups of the battery size. I am going to have a little less ground clearance but it still shouldn't be any less then the original ground clearance with the fairings on the bike.

Batteries at last.

I've been slacking off lately and have not accomplished very much on the project lately but I've been fairly busy. I finally got my batteries they were the last expensive thing that I had to buy. There are a couple more parts that I need like the throttle, cables and a charger. I have a good contact though that may donate the cables and give me a good deal on a charge for $200-300 so hopefully that works out so I can save some money there.

I did a fit check to see how things would go together and there is just enough clearance for the chain. The motor is going to be a little tricky to mount, it is designed for a straight swing arm design, but the GSX-R swing arm angles in at the front so I am going to have to come up with some sort of insert or spacers to make it work.

I also got the front sprockets and chain that I needed. I am using a ANSI 50 size chain to match the 530 rear sprocket they are the same size and fit nicely. I Actually purchased 4 different sprockets for the front so I can play with the gearing and they are only $10-12 a piece. I got 13, 14, 15 and 16 tooth sprockets to give me a gear ratio range from 4.43 to 5.46.

It is hard to tell in these pictures, but I am going to have to do a little bit of swing arm modification to get everything to fit so there is room for the chain. I am going to have to take about 1/2" - 1" of of the inside.

It's about time.

I finally got my rear sprocket that I ordered about 3 weeks ago. I was told 2 production days and 3 weeks later I finally got it and oh my is it ever big! You can't really tell from this picture so I've done a comparison from the old to the new.

The old sprocket was a 46 tooth measuring 9 1/2" across, pretty standard.

The new sprocket is a whopping 71 tooth measuring 14 1/2" across. Surpisingly it actually is not all that much heavier. The old one was 2.83 lbs and the new one is only 3.16 a difference of only about 1/3 a lb not bad at all. I did pay a little extra to get an ultralite sprocket meaning they made a bunch of extra holes looks like it was well worth it.

It pays to know a good machinist.

I've finally got my motor mount made for the Etek. Decided to go with 3/8 aluminium rather then 1/4 steel. This worked out to my advantage for many reasons. First I can now weld it to the swing arm rather then just bolting it and it made the process much faster. I went to see my friend in the machine shop and he felt bad because he kept forgetting to make it for me so he drew it up on his milling machine found a piece of scrap and in about 10-15 minutes I had this beautiful result! The drawing that I had actually had a mistake in it and he caught it as he was putting it on the mill machine and fixed it. When I brought it home to try it out it fit perfect so a big thanks to Robert in the machine shop!

Big bad Alltrax

So I picked up my controller today, it is an Alltrax 72V 300A programmable type. Originally I wanted a 450A because lets face it who doesn't want to go fast? But the Etek-RT is only rated at 300A. But I was drawn to the programmable feature of the Alltrax that way I can tweak and adjust the way it'll perform.

I am currently planing an mounting the controller here on the outside behind the forks I have not come up with another place to mount it without sacrificing a battery.

Which brings me to my next point..... getting all the pieces of the puzzle to fit together, in my case there are 6 big pieces. Here is number 1 this was the easy one.

Number 2
Number 3 I actually got pretty lucky that it fit here I may have to take a little more off of the gas tank.

Number 4
Number 5

Now the clincher that last and final number 6!!

The gas tank fits down nicely over the battery here it is only partially lowered so you can see how it fits.
The finished product!! As you can see it should still be fairly easy to get all the plastics back on I'll just have to come up with some sort of sub frame to hold it all together.