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!

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.