A usefull build.

[stts]

Woohoo. And so it begins. Got this bike from Craigslist in my town. Great bike. So how high is a wall socket from the floor? I already took the front tire off and pulled the shaft and bearings out. I kinda got ahead of myself. Hah. Its like brand new without a scratch. He said they cost $200 on Amazon. I believe him. But I told him he wasnt Amazon. Hah. So as you see, this thing is tiny. 16 inch wheels. So I was talking his price down. He said it was aluminum and its steel. So price came down. Then I realized the big bonker. Can you spot it? Its so obvious that its invisible. Actually it is invisible. A bike with parts that only exist in the twilight zone. Can you see it? Or NOT see it? Hah. Theres no pedal drive at all. Hah. No chain or crank or anything. Hah. I never seen such a thing. It was mind boggling. I said OMG, its almost unusable. Maybe I can stick a chain on it from an old bike. The guy said yea man, you got it figured out. I said but the price will have to come down BIG time. The guy said oh man, he paid so much and his kid outgrew it. I was thinkin, yea right. Not a scratch on it. So I offered him $25 or I have to walk away. I got to buy all the chain and pedals and stuff. So he took the deal. After all, he knew there aint no way anybody was putting a chain on this abortion with not even a hub to put a crank into. He probably thought I was a total putz as he took my $25. Hah.

The reality is that I bought me some super sturdy wheels. Look how many spokes this thing has got. They must have built this bike for 200 pound super fat kids or something. Theres twice as many spokes as any of those bike trailers they sell on Ebay. Yup, my topic is "Useful build". That means Im building a trailer for my Ebike so I can bring home all maner of stuff with my ebike trailer combo. I pulled out the bearing shaft and the hole is 3/4 inch. A perfect size for a sturdy trailer axle. And the trailer will have a motor too, so it will be a live axle with pillow block bearings. I will also split the axle and put a freewheel on it so its like a differential going around corners. So its going to be a trailer unlike anything that they sell on Amazon.

As for the rest of the stuff, my bike is in the garage and the first wave of conversion parts has arrived from ALIexpress. Got the BBS02 motor kit and lights and folding pedals and a bunch of other stuff. Some trailer making parts are also on the way. Unfortunately, ALIexpress canceled the second wave of parts that I need. Buck converters, trailer motor controller, fan temperature controllers, headlights, terminal kits, wire and cable, fuses, etc. Lots of stuff canceled. Seems they decided that my money is the wrong color. Paypal shut me off for shopping there saying they are frauds. My bank gave me all kinds of crap canceling order after order for fraud reasons. I went to my bank and read them the riot act for interfering with my purchasing. I got the fraud blocks removed but the damage is done. Aliexpress got fed up with payment being blocked and they canceled any further orders from me unless I do wire transfers. I aint doing that.

So now I got to reshop for all the rest of the stuff I need thru ebay and Amazon. What a pain in my arse. Well, the good thing is I know I need new bank accounts. And I didnt find out this debacle way out in timbuktoo somewhere. My bank can only clear fraud blocks with a personal visit by me to a branch if I loose my phone. So how many loose their phone on vacation? That is totally unacceptable. In my case, I had a sprint phone. And the sprint system was shut down. So I got a new phone and number. Which made clearing the fraud block imposssible for 30 days over the phone with a text verification. I have to clear it in person with in person identity verification. All because I shopped at Aliexpress. Paypal been giving me trouble for years anyway. So time to cut them loose and setup all new banking in this new age economy. Before I go on my next vacation.

As for Aliexpress, they are pretty slow. So theres that. And indeed I did get hit with some fraud. I have an open complaint because one LED light set I received was not LED. It was Xmas tree light bulbs inside. Hah. What a rip off. They are dim, and will burn out when I get bouncing around on my bike at those higher bike speeds. The store has so far refused to refund the fraud sale. He claims the light bulbs are LEDs. So thats some of whats on ALIexpress. The adds there are also very deceptive. Showing the item you want at a super cheap price and it turns out the price is for the accesory gizmo for the item you wanted. Like battery tabs for the batteries. Or an included crimp tool with the connector kit. That turns out to be a basterd tool standard that wont fit any other of the crimp dies that Aliexpress offers. You really have to pay strict attention to the pictures and all the links you press all the way thru the purchase journey so you dont end up being surprised.

Anyways, at least the Bafang kit was totally as advertised and recieved before my economy was cut off. I can get the rest of what I need elsewhere.



Heres 2 of the lights I got. The ones on the left are the light bulbs. You can see the bulb filament lit low enough to see the filament shape without blinding the camera. They are Christmas tree bulbs. Hah. The one on the right is real LEDs. And they work pretty good. Good for up to 60 volts. But I know electronics. These are running at their prime at 40 volts. The higher the voltage the more they overheat. So I plan on hooking a small buck circuit to keep the voltage at 40volts no matter what. So I dont get burn outs. People putting LEDs on cars are seeing tons of burnouts. Thats because those units are being over voltaged. On top of that, these things are in no way water proof. Hah. So I plan on giving them the silicone rubber treatment.

So you see, you can get great stuff on Aliexpress. But it works best if you know what you are doing.


And I even got the circuit all worked out. This is on top of all the Bafang wiring. Bafang is a trip. The system is 48volts. The headlight power is 6 volts. The signals that run brakes is 5 volts, and all that cool motorcycle stuff is 12 volts. What a cloodge. So I had to use relays and buck circuits to get everything to match up. Now if I can only get it all to show up in the mail...
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A few more things about ALIexpress. Being Chinese, they are part of an adversarial society to the US. So you never know whats going on. I kept getting emails in Chinese text that said please resubmit photos of my drivers licence, bank card and latest bank account statement. They had me do this 4 times. I guess they were hoping I would keep sending them even more financial documents to try to gain their favor. Nope. I already gave them too much. They are Chinese, after all. they want to know everything about everybody. They even want all our DNA. I am certain Covid was the result of Chinese and their plans of world domination. And the pandemic was likely a premature accident while cultivating their nasty bug banks. So my patience level with china is rather low, since we got other avenues of purchase. If China works and its easy, fine. Elsewise Im bailing.

Other annoying factors about ALIexpress. Theres tons of discount coupons all over the place for them. But very few work. Like bait and switch. And they got timers running on some of their sales. I put a bunch of timer stuff in my basket. Then I found my pay hit endless snags. Then all the timers ran out, and the sale items auto deleted from my basket. Dont you just hate it when people at the grocery take stuff out of your basket? And then theres the searches. Its not easy like in Ebay. Its a pain in the butt like in Amazon. only 10% of the stuff shown is related to your search. So you have to sift thru pages after pages of stuff to find the cheapest version. And if you organize it by price, 3/4 of the stuff vanish from your search. Why do they do that? Its a trick. Because a message frequantly pops up that their "intelligent search is at work for you". Yup, I get it. Chinese Intelligence. Just because I dont know their plan doesnt mean there aint no plan. And watch out for the wording. I click on free shipping items. Over and over again. Passing over items and finding identical ads that say free shipping. Only to find out later that I was charged shipping. Say What? Then I spotted the gotcha. Not free shipping, Free returns. Hah. Sneaky. Or just plain bait and switch. Free shipping on the search page but full shipping and even higher price on the item page.

So you see, you really cant turn your backs on these people. They just got so many tricks going on at the same time. And Im sure the more you buy, the more tricks you will discover. But then again, its what you have to expect from the Chinese. We may have chances to get stuff cheap, but they get chances to get something too. Your personal info. I never use their phone app and I will soon be closing my bank account. Chinese have it, and it was broken anyway.

On the good side, ordered stuff is all stateside now, and ALIexpress issued a refund to me for those fake LED lights. The vendors claims that they are truly LEDs fell on deaf ears. I bet light bulb scams were rampant when LEDs first started to get popular.

[stts]

Here's my differential "blue" print. Hah. We got scrap metal all over the shop so that part is no big deal. Aluminum cuts easy. The shaft is stainless so it wont have much of a corrosion issue. I turned it up last night. Making all three pieces on the shaft so it stays true. The lath is old and wonky so its best when all cutting is done at once. I got a freewheel thread die from ebay for $25. At the store they are over $100. The freewheel I got is the rare metric version from an old old battery scooter. I ordered an english thread version from Ali before they cut me off. Its in the states at customs right now.




Oh and more stuff showed up from AliExpress. I still got bunches they wont let me order. Still havent figured out what to do about it. When life gets complicated, I back up and do what I know. Save the head bangin for another day. Got the left side controls. Its got turn signals and horn and lights button. Bafang has lights button so I can use this one for high beams. The idea is to get another powerful headlight. The Bafang one is weenie and good for when the battery is low. I got a bunch of strip lights too. Got brake and turn signal built in. Wasnt able to order the power supply.
So now I can power these up and see what current they draw. Then I will know if I can use a smaller DC-DC Buck module. Still got lots headed my way. Battery capacity tester, differential hardware, and other stuff I forget. I spent a whole day hunting Amazon and Ebay for all the stuff AliExpress refuses to sell me. It was very tedious and I was finding lots of what I needed. At twice the price. If I simply grabbed whatever was at the top of the search, it was almost 3 times the price. After all that head ache, I said screw it. And went and mowed the grass. That was more fun. Ill decide something eventually.

[stts]

I got more stuff done but been pretty busy. Ill do more part carving tonight. Already cut up 1/2 thick angle aluminum and milled a working hinge into it. The whole box is like a tank. Not even a thief pry bar bashing on it will be able to mess up anything inside. I need to weld sides on it and make a pry proof lock mechanism to lock it closed without much hassle.

In the mean time, I got a Atorch battery testor in the mail. One of the things sent before ALIexpress canceled my buying power. With all the questions about battery problems and used batteries being offered, its clear that a powerful battery tester is a necessity. It's a newer version with the crummier looking fan. I saw a vendor say fans may vary because of covid disruption, so I figured get the new version since they all will likely have the crummy fan. I have had it running for about 12 hours now sinking 100 watts. Seems to be doing fine and the fan is really pretty quiet. I could put a noisier fan on that can really move a ton of air. If need be. But there has been much more upgrade than I was able to detect. The heat sink was highly dumbed down, and that was my main concern. But its got no problems quietly sinking 100 watts. The bigger surprise was on the back. They moved the "tube" to the back and cut a square hole thru the PC board. Hah, They must still use tubes in the foreign lands to be calling transistors "tubes". Anyways, the heat part of the Trany no longer touches the PC board. It goes thru the board cutout and bolts to the heatsink on the other side. So the whole unit is much more compact and doesnt want to tip over easy. Its got the same 50 amp Trany that they always been using, But now they have 4 of them on this board. At first glance it looks like one big heat sink under the fan. But its actually 4 smaller heatsinks for the 4 tranys. With the one fan over all of them. Dang. This board seems like its ready for 600 watts right out of box. Well, no doubt it would have to have more heatsink and fan for that. But its a very impressive upgrade in any case. Theres no USB connection any more, so its entirely bluetooth for getting at the performance data. With all the postings of how the older versions were blowing up, it would seem the the designers took a hard look at what was needed to end the meltdowns. Looking more like circuit upgrades were the key, rather than more heat sink. Im glad I went for the black board upgrade.

[stts]

Bummer. It seems that the tester shorted out at 44hours. In that whole time it was sinking a regulated 100 watts split between all 4 of the Tranys. And the power supply is acting like its feeding a short. The supply still works when I disconnect the tester. So its pretty evident that the Tranys quit. They are all cold, so maybe they all blew out. But you cant tell from a visual inspection. Ill complain to the vendor. But I don't expect much out of it. It keeps a log of all the data, so Ill download it with blutooth. I assume it will be perfect data until it just quits all the sudden. But I can fix it myself with better parts, if I get no help from the vendor Atorch. My power supply has short protection, so the tester didn't catch fire. But if I had a battery hooked to this, the battery would have cooked the crap out of it, before over current cut off happened. So Ill have to test it for a week or 2 after it's repaired before I put a battery on this thing. I could pick any voltage or current I wanted to get my 100watts. I chose 1.9 amps at 55 volts. I figured to keep the current small and use a higher voltage. Each of the Tranys were good for 200 volts. I figured that combo with be an easy test to break this in. So much for the easy test. I never saw thermos go over 45 degrees C. The data download will show for sure.

[stts]

Hah. check out this video of a bike trailer. I have seen it before. The version where he actually built this live-in trailer that's bike towable. But I was thinking that it would kinda suck to pull with human power. Even if your in good shape like I am NOT. Hah. Its not very useful if you get a heart attack trying to haul home a surprise grocery sale of tons more groceries than what you went out to get. That's why I thought that I would make mine electric powered. So it could power its own weight. Way smarter. And it would seem that the gung ho nature biker has finally had enough of human powered trailer hauling. So hes tearing it apart and turning it into an electric trailer. WooHoo. So I get an advance look at what I will be enjoying one day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SL7l2tN3fw

Hes not doing it like Im doing it, but its still a fun look at whats heading my way. A USEFUL bike that will also save me on gasoline as the years roll by. Hes using a direct drive hub motor. They are very quiet like the Bafang mid-drives. But the down side is that they suck huge amps to ramp up from stop. Huge amps. So wiring has to be better, and battery has to be bigger. There's more losses to excess motor heat. Geared hub motors don't have this issue, but they are noisy with gear noise, and they suck when the gears strip. They are a drag to service.

I'm also motorizing my trailer. I don't want the trailer to be loading down the bike motor. These motors are already wearing out gears from just hauling a person. No point in building something that will be continually over stressed. Also the trailer connection I was shipped is just a big spring. If the trailer wasn't powered, Every bump and obstacle the trailer hit would be trying to pull the spring hitch apart. But you can see the awesomeness of a trailer for battery mounting. He spent a $1000 making that monster battery. And it fits great on a trailer.

Unfortunately, my parts buying has been cut off. The drive train hardware is almost here, so I will be able to build on my trailer. But AliExpress up and cancelled my second order for non payment. Bunch of ass holes. I paid. They just wouldn't take my "major Credit Card" that their website says they take. So I am doubly annoyed with those jerks for wasting my time and effort. So more stuff will trickle in as I figure out where to buy what I need elsewhere. I had a battery system decided and ordered, but even that was canceled. So Im back to being wishy washy at what is currently available. Thinking of those Headway cells, but the prices are too rich for as old as they are. The 8ah ones are priced cheaper but they are really big for the charge they hold. The 15ah ones make better sense, but they cost even more per watt than the 8ah ones. And there's 5 year old Youtube videos testing out those 15ah batteries. So they are just old old, and not worth the price they are listing right now. So I got no reason right now to be in a hurry. I got plenty in life going on the way it is, since gas is coming down some.

[stts]

My center console Vault is coming along. It has enough room for the computer, dash camera, tracker, and whatever buttons. It will bolt to the center screws then be locked closed. So thieves cant take the steering off. Wires going in can be vandal cut, but that's an easy fix. But its going to be hammer proof. Cant bust up the electronics. And there may be a loud alarm noise maker in there too.

[stts]

More vault work. Got the sides welded on, and made the latch mechanism. its 2 stainless pins on springs. Close the lid and the pins snap into the lid holes. There's 2 button screws on the bottom that slid the pins back to open the lid. And you cant see them to figure how to open this when closed. The sides are on a lip all the way around. So you cant beat the sides in with a hammer. This thing should be bash proof and keeps the sun and rain off the goodies on the inside. Still got to drill holes here and there and radius all the sharp corners. Also got the rest of the Aliexpress drive train stuff. So I can work more on the trailer now. Still haven't ordered what Ali canceled. I still haven't gotten a new bank account. Id rather build shit than mess with hassles and paper work. And life other chores demand attention too. Like cutting down my 30 foot tree. Its got 20 ton straps on it holding it up. Ants ate the crap out of it so I got to get it down before it falls on my house.

I been trying to send my Atorch video to Aliexpress but they only allow me one try and then I'm locked out for further communications. And the countdown timer to send more info runs out tomorrow. I'm sure they didn't get the video. There's no acknowledgement and I saw no upload activity when I uploaded it. And it wont let me try again. So I guess Ill see what happens when the timer runs out. This whole thing sucks when crap happens. Oh. And they sent me the wrong freewheel. I order the english thread and they sent me the metric thread. So the freewheel I got it too big to fit on the threads I cut. I may just JB weld the dang thing on. The chain and sprockets are all good though. The bearings looked twice as big in the pictures. I was surprised how small they ended up. But they will still work.

[stts]

Did a little bit but not much. Work got busy and homework got busy. Got these lights along with the last stuff from Aliexpress. These are turn signals for the front. And they are spectacular. They work on a wide battery voltage range yet the LEDs are not overdriven thruout the range. So they should last forever. My circuit will feed all my lights 40 volts to baby them all and even the builtin flasher works at any voltage. They seem to be well water proofed and the base is even flexible to you can't break them off if bumped into. They have several colors but I picked the colors for the front.

Aliexpress complaint department pretty much sucks. The process timed out without letting me input complete evidence on my Atorch and they denied my claim. I filed an appeal with very angry language blaming their incompetent process. They came back and said they reconsidered. $11.50 refund. Hah. Full refund if I sent the unit back. Bwahahaha. I said I'm sending it back. I didn't figure out how yet. I'm just fed up with it. This morning I got another email. They reconsidered again. Saying I got such good credit that they will just refund me since it will cost more to ship than the item is worth. Good Credit???? They canceled half of my order. I really don't know whats in their brain. Maybe they forgot that they canceled my order and figured that I canceled my order. Bwahahaha. You have to be a pretzil to keep up with how those Chinese think. Anyways, I' m not holding my breath. But I can't just close my old bank account now. That's annoying. I wanted to slam the door on those idiots at my old bank. Oh yea, the next paragraph...

I got a new bank account finally. Its been along time coming. Ali was just the last straw. Don't know if the new bank is any better but it is a Visa debit rather than a Mastercard debit. Ali says Mastercard is worse. Anyways, Ill do more bike part building this week. Picked out proper aluminum pieces to press on with. We got so much scrap aluminum that I could build cars with it. The boss threw away a couple tons to a scrapper that walked into the door, and we still got tons and tons laying around. The scrapper was overloaded. Hah. And I told the boss it was dumb throwing away great metal like that. But we do have space issues. So I told him I would hurry up and build lots of stuff to use it up. Actually Ill have to start reorganizing the stacking method.

[stts]

Still kinda stalled on progress. But I worked out more ideas on where to install stuff. Mounted the Vault on the handlebar and its rock solid. It takes about 10 minutes to polish all the scratches off purdy but I got more ideas I need to machine on it. The vise will make more scratches. Gonna put an alarm inside to squeel while thieve try to cut locks off. But the speaker has to be outside to be heard. So Ill put the circuit on the inside with wire holes drilled to put the speaker on the outside underneath. Ill recess the flat speaker into the aluminum and mount a guard with holes over it for protection. So more machining. Ill also drill a slightly larger hinge pin to fit. Its 1/8 now and 3/16 will be alot stronger. Ill also put a fake lock into the aluminum. That will keep thieves attention and prevent them from looking all over it for the secret door opener. Its going to be a slick piece of protection.

Ordered a few things from Amazon with my new Visa Debit. It works good. Gave it a try on AliExpress to order some stuff I cant find any where else. And it was denied with the same baseless reason. New card cant be validated. I appealed and the appeal was almost instantly denied. I got on live chat and told them nice that they wont let me pay for my order. So Ill buy from Amazon if they don't fix the problem. The chat person was typical super duper extra ordinary nice like all way too nice Chinese act. They said they would have their supervisor fix my problem. But all I got was emails saying my item orders have been canceled. I looked up complaints to see if there's any info on Aliexpress cutting people off. Seems there is posted info that they cut people off for entering fake coupon codes and filing complaints on merchandise. I did try a few dozen coupon codes trying to find any that work. There's a million of them on the coupon search sites. And I filed 2 complaints on fraud items I received. So maybe that is the real problem. But I also found news that Trump ordered a ban on Aliexpress along with TikTok for national security threat. That being they were sponging personal information to a degree that they could keep detailed records of Americans. So who knows why I'm being locked out. They wanted Visa, they got Visa. And it aint enough. I had a feeling it wouldn't solve anything. Chinese know whats going on and they are not going to say. I might try and have a buddy order stuff for me. With an initial order of the hardest stuff to get. And then a second order of lots more convenience stuff to see if they cut off the second order till they "fish" for more personal information.

I know the world if full of facebookers that gladly hand over all that they are. But I never was one of those. And indeed I am banned from facebook and twitter. Facebook because I was a Trumper and I flatly refused to send them pictures of my identifying documents. And it worked great. Cops had a warrant for my arrest for nearly a year and they couldn't find me. Seems the color of my house was offensive but they only had an old address. Clearly incompetent record keeping. But I have no mail service at my current address. That also amps up the privacy factor. But they eventually got me with a plate scanner driving by and hauled me to jail for various charges of a most diabolical nature. All of which were made to be thrown out by a public defender that the city had no choice but to pay for. Hah. Jail was a trip, But I got thick skin. But I sure wish I was lots more hairy. Jail is kept like a friken meat locker with very little toilet paper. And what was available was stuffed into the air vet to slow down the ice cold air. Its clear that cops enjoy their torture games on the inmates. Good thing it was before covid. It made the news that most everybody in that jail got covid. Word leaked out that cops deliberately piled groups into the same group cells. And the inmates that died got zero sympathy from anybody with authority.

Anyway, I did get the Atorch running again. I can fix anything. One of the 4 load fets was shorted. When I removed it, the other 3 were unleashed. And its sinking current from my test power supply again. If a battery was hooked when it shorted out, it would no doubt have blown all 4 and the board they are mounted to. I found a web page that calculates watts a heat sink will dump. And the heat sink they are now using is only good for 100 watts. Thats what I was sinking when it blew. But I also found that there was just a tiny dab of sink paste on each fet. that only covered half the surface. So this thing was not up to even 100 watts of power. I have extra CPU heat sinks that are good for way more watts. Ill use three of those for the 3 working fets. Then I can get the full 75 watts out of each fet for over 200 watts. Yup. These fets are heavily derated when run as DC load devices. I might get better fets down the road. But I got too many problems just getting stuff right now.

Oh. and I got a good look at the circuit in this thing. They use separate op amps for each of the 4 fets. So they have no problems splitting up the load equally. So I could go with the true linear mosfet ITXN90N25L2 which is good for 550 watts as a DC load. And since this board can drive 4 devices, I could amp this up to over 2000watts. Now that is some real world battery drain. Especially when people trying to pump 4000watts into these motors. But those mosfets are rather pricey, And so is the heatsinks for 2000 watts. 32inches x 5inches x 2inches. You need room for that much heat sink with fast fans to cool it. According to a heatsink calculator I found online. And I believe it. Also the terminals, wiring and shunt parts would all have to be beefed up considerably and on a separate board. You can't put 2000 watts thru this Atorch circuit board. But it is capable of controlling it. Something for another time when things get cheaper. Its just not a practical idea right now.

[stts]

Wow. Stuff is just flying in now. I got 2 whole mirrors from Amazon. They are pretty cool mirrors though. They had lots of plastic mirrors on Aliexpress that were being sold singley, so they "seemed" like better deals. But I was skeptical of plastic holding up for very long. These cost abit more from Amazon but they are all aluminum and you can crank the mounting bolts tight to stay in an adjusted position. And the mirror is acrylic, so it wont shatter. I got an Abus frame lock on the way too. I didn't realize it was coming from England. So there's customs and all that crap again. Reviews say the frame lock is one way to slow thieves because its hard to cut without cutting the bike. And its pretty convenient to use quickly. I also saw a cool idea I could improve it. Grinders hate aluminum. It loads up the wheel and they stop cutting. Im amazed that the top "cut proof" locks don't use any of it. Thieves will get frustrated at not seeing any sparks and will jack around on the slot the wheel cut in the aluminum. Then their fragile wheel will shatter. Then they stand up and kick the bike. Hah. So I'm going to make an aluminum sandwich with inch thick stock to surround the lock. Bolt cutters cant get to it and the grinder wheels will load up something fierce. It will be pretty cool and very usable without hassle. I saw Lobster lock and thought that was just brilliant until I saw a youtube of it being cut off in just 5 seconds. Holly crap. So you can figure my head is spinning round and round from watching a ton of lock videos trying to find something that will last an hour. Hah. So frame lock and vibration alarm squeeler is what I decided so far. I figure another long wrap lock eventually, but its clear I'm not in a hurry.

I deleted my Aliexpress account. And cleaned out all their cookies and ad ware hooks and registry anchors and browser extensions. I saw an article that Alibaba is the single biggest source of ad ware on PCs right now. And they really had me hooked up. But CCleaner and Superantispyware did a great job of kicking that crazy stuff to the curb. All the stuff I bought was plastered on every web page I used. You would think they would show stuff I didn't buy. Well actually they were showing stuff I tried to buy, like they were laughing at me or something. Since they wouldn't actually let me buy it. I made printouts of all the stuff I couldn't get so I wouldn't forget what I needed, and then deleted the account. There was just no point in it. I complained thru their chat 3 times over the span of a month and they never did fix whatever the problem was. And they never really told me squat. I was first aware I was blocked from buying after I complained that the LED lights were fake and went thru the process to get my $14 back. The Atorch took forever to ship to me so I hadn't even gotten to that big stink complaint. So the Chinese are either super jerks about the tinyist stuff, or my bank really ticked them off somehow. But I got a new bank and it's made no difference. So it's pointless and I went thru the process of wiping out all the information that I could. I tried to log back in and indeed it says no such account. So I am no longer at the top of any Aliexpress computer activity.

So now I talked a buddy into letting me set him up and I told him all the cheap stuff he could get and all the points he will score by letting me buy my stuff too. I am so shameless. But I don't see how they could assume this new guy is me. Except a big order of all that stuff I printed out will be heading their way again. Hah. I hate to shop with jerks, but nobody anywhere has what they have for as cheap as it is. And if I get ripped off on something, I don't want to be loosing an arm or a leg as well. I asked a bunch of other people if I could make an account for them but it was a rather creepy idea to them. They were thinking it was bizarre to be ordering stuff from China and maybe getting the china virus and stuff. The more I tried to convince people the more I got the old "ill think about it" brush off. People are just so hooked on Amazon and prime and all that inflated American pricing for the convenience. My neighbors live on Amazon with tons of Saturday and Sunday deliveries.

Anyways, Ill do more bike part building soon. But Ill beef up the Atorch tester sooner. Still running on 3 transistors sinking a measly 80 watts. I want to get it redone with bigger heat sinks and get it started on long term 200 watt testing asap. I have to know if it will hold up before I put batteries on this thing.

[stts]

Heres the latest progress. Making improvements to make the Atorch usable. Using CPU heat sinks to make it workable. Each sink is 95watt rated for intel CPUs. They are left overs I had for years and years. Getting a new life. Ill wire it up soon and hope it holds up. The Abus lock came in too. Its abit chinsier than it looks in the pictures. It will certainly need to be sandwiched in aluminum to be more robust. Still chopping and tree burning. Will chip away on that too. Its 4 foot thick at the base and ravaged by mutant ants. It will sap my time for a few more months.

[stts]

OK, I got the Atorch upgrade running now. Didn't buy a thing extra. Just used stuff laying around. I got lots of stuff laying around. Hah. Used a car stereo wiring kit with 8 and 10 gage wiring that I got from SUN TV and Appliance store. They had a big sale when they went out of business a few decades ago. Hah. I was big on car stereo, till my hearing started going bad. Then I started thinking twice about my hobby, then thieves broke in and stole most of my car stereo stuff. Then I was left with these wiring kits that never got used and nobody would pay good money for. No good for factory uses, but the heavy wire is ultra flexible. That made it ideal for this purpose of soldering directly to MOSFETs without making the fragile terminals flex. Its still not 100% done, I left long loops to eventually fuse the 4 mosfets. I had fuse holders in my Aliexpress order that was terminated. Also, the CPU fans are running at a disappointing low speed. Seems that's the speed if you don't use the PWM wire on the motors. But no sweat. In my junk pile I have a speed controller for fans that use the PWM wire. Ill dig it out and have a pot to run the fan speed up.

But just the way it is, it's been running for hours at over 130 watts and the thermos been sitting at 40C. My home power supply only good for 130 watts. The one at work is abit more and I will swap them next time I go in. I thought I used my bigger one at home. I will probably just put them both together and really crank up the watts. But first I need more fan speed. But I will let it burn in for a few days at this cool 40C thermo level. After all, these are still the wrong MOSFETs for this purpose, and they can still fail. But my setup makes it easy to replace the FETs. And a FET fire with a battery would not really be any big deal. After I have the fuses installed. So no battery testing till its 100% done. The power supply is current limited and cant be harmed.

There's plenty of room to put taller CPU heatsinks that sink more power, if they come my way. And with faster fan speeds, only testing will reviel how much power this thing can sink. Not with these MOSFETs, but with better ones. But for the really big numbers, there's no doubt that much bigger sinks and parts and expense will be required. Because thousands of watts is tons of heat very quickly. Too much heat for a scrap plastic setup. But this is still a useful setup for a useful build. And that's what I'm about. :)

I retrieved my work power supply and put them both together in series. so now its still 2.1 amps but 125v into my tester. That upped the wattage to 262 on the 3 MOSFETs. and the thermos are only 54C and the fans are still running at low speed. They really book at high speed with lots of noise. So this setup has some pretty big potential. All 4 mosfets and top speed fans could get this to 600 watts. Or beyond. Thats only 150 watts per device and fast fans make a world of difference. Better devices will perform the same, but give guaranteed relyability. Bigger heat sinks yield even more sinking power. If I come across taller variety of CPU fans, for cheap, Ill snatch them up.

[Retrorockit]

There are 2 versions of the DG168.
The oroginal plastic version with 7 blades and 5 curved motor support arms. They are almost square to support their special 150mm x 4 hole 1/4" drilling. they have the Dell prorprietary 5 pin plug.
There is a metal housing version also. 5 blades with 4 straight motor arms and rounded corners. It has a 140mm x4 hole 1/8" drillling. It has a white connector so may have a standard 4 wire fan pinout.
You can find both types on Ebay if you look closely.

[stts]

Hah, yup, That jet fan would probably keep them at room temperature. The way my build is now, you dont even hear the fans running without sitting right next to it. And its still running and sinking 263 watts at 55C. Something wrong with the time though. Its been running since last post but only shows 55 hours now. So time must have a limit of 200 hours before it resets. And these Mosfets are still hanging in there. But is low current and high voltage. High current is where the rubber meets the road and the zone where these mosfets are likely to fail. But its good to see that the control circuits seem to be of sound design. These little Intel fans are very deceptive. They will run very fast if I hook a fan controller to them. I havent gotten to that yet. Then they will certainly be louder but cooler. Also, they are nasty sharp and took a bite out of my finger. My finger has broken CPU fans in the past. This is the first time one sliced my finger. I will have to put a gard fence on my unit.

[Retrorockit]

You won't be breaking a blade on a DG168 with your finger..There is another # for this fan, but I gave this one so you could get the screen. They used to be $5-$10 from computer scrappers, but I guess the word is out, they're more like $20 now. 260cfm. They cooled 2x 130W CPU workstations so 1cfm/Watt

[stts]

I got side tracked some more. A project that got shelved when COVID hit has woken up all the sudden. But I did get abit more bike work done. Got the vault fitted to the handle bars. Totally bash proof from typical bashers. Heads are carrage bolts and nuts are locked inside. Also carved out half of the aluminum plate to fit the bike lock snug like. Clearly its hand carved as I don't run the CNC machines. But the carved out part will never be seen. Only the outsides, so that part will be smooth and better looking. Still have to carve out the other sandwich half. Then I will have a bike lock that bolt cutters cant get around. And grinders will hate.

I rarely have safety accidents but I went and stuck my finger in an Intel fan. The fan usually breaks. This time the fan won. Hah.

[stts]

My eBike tub is slowly filling up. Got the Tannus liners and they are all kinked up in shipping. May have to heat them up with a hair dryer to get them to straighten up. They also came with 4 inner tubes. Either they are being generous or they don't have alot of confidence in their tubes. Hah. Gonna have to paint the fenders. They are metal instead of the plastic ones. So extra paint will make them even more rust proof. Still on hold for a ton of Aliexpress goodies. Can't get anybody to help me out on that. Nobody asking for favors lately either. That is unusual. But the last few months have been off the rails for everybody. After the hollidays things will hopefully get back to normal and people will be in favor trading mood.

I used my hair dryer stuffed in the the insert and slid it along to heat it up along the entire inside all around. It got as hot as a hair dryer can get. And that was enough to get it to straighten out. I have a heat gun, but it's way too hot and has much lower air movement. The hair dryer made sure the heat was even throughout. Now they should install much easier with no kinks.

[stts]

Finally made more progress. If it aint one thing it's another and these weeks are flying by. Mounted the kick stand. I picked out this particular one on Amazon and by coincidence, somebody was selling the same one on ebay for half the price. I jumped on it and it seems good. There was wear going on with alum against steel that I would not have spotted on a brand new unit. So I made some steel inserts to eliminate the aluminum wear. Lubed it all up good and did minor grinding to get it to fit. So didn't have to cut off the Huffy stand. I plan on making bigger Aluminum feet that are wider. The complaints in Amazon is that this falls over too easy. Wider feet will stop that. I had this kind of stand as a kid and loved the hell out of it. I'm much heavier now so I will be mindful of its capacity. I may weld alum rods to the legs to double their thickness. Aluminum is so easy to weld. But steel welds easy too, Hah.

I also made up V brake mounts out of steel. These pics can't tell the difference. Also made simple studs to mount the lock too. Way stronger than the silly hose clamp mount that they wanted $25 for. Ill weld all these on this weekend. The plan is better brakes, tires, kick stand, fenders, lock, and folding pedals to be ready for my Feb florida trip. Hopefully it won't look too inviting to thieves.