Built instantly by me

[Carl Clark]

I built this in an NYC apartment, so if you guys need tips or might help me some, I'm all ears. Simple setup places motor inside triangle for serious off road work - no it aint beautiful, I only spent two hours max building it, and then a ZILLION hours riding on the holiday weekend. I will make it all sexy and add a chain guard this week.

[Christian Livingstone]

Nice,

I like how you got the motor in the frame triangle and ditched the included brackets. You could probably ditch the chain idler too, and just move that channel up, along with the motor (unless it permanently fixed now) to cinch up the chain tension.

[CraigAustin]

Jesus, that looks great compared to most of the Cyclone Frankenstein builds. I like your style too - ride the hell out of it, worry about improvements later.

[Carl Clark]

Yeah, and I'm using the cheapest possible bike for the build. My total cost involved is still below 1,250 as i paid $100 for the bike itself barely used on craigslist (the previous owner had no idea how to assemble it and it needed attention badly) Honestly that big aluminum plate is not even straight against the frame that's how fast I built, but the motor is on there perfectly so the plate can be removed and cut down, adjusted, sent to a water table to have the silhouette of Bettie Page carved into it.....and as far as the chain tensioner goes, man, there's some sexy ones on Amazon for sure, and constantly unmounting the motor to move it a few millimeters to adjust the chain is a total pain in the rump. That said, I could run a single locating bolt through the plate into one of the water bottle braze-ons and that would locate the motor laterally on the frame to prevent torque from ripping the motor out of its spot....the other thing that you don't see in the photos is the torque strap on the far side of the motor bracing it against rotational forces. I saw a guy on you tube mounting his motor below the main tube with two handmade aluminum clamps (you can get fork tube clamps for motorcycles to serve this role) and that guy was planning to just bolt the motor to the frame with two of those clamps with the same mounts on the bolts on the motor......trust me, that did not work and that guy probably came up with a torque strap of his own. What I really need here is either the right box or bag to hide it......and another advantage of the 'in frame' design is the stealth: people don't know its electric until you tell them.....the final test will be a blast through the streets of NYC on the thing, but that will wait until i get my go pro.

[Carl Clark]

Probably going to go with this as a test housing. does not look very sturdy, so the battery will have to be located inside on a hard mount, and the case used as a slide on cover. Throw on some phony carbon fiber wrap, cut down that plate, and I'm as pretty as a sondors! LOL

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01ADZOTZS/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

[gman1971]

Indeed, that looks fairly clean! Nice work.

G.

[gman1971]

You can just hardwire everything, like I did, which reduces the mess quite a bit... but thats if you feel courageous about splicing cables and connectors. :D

[Carl Clark]

I was in too much of a hurry to enjoy the holiday and did not solder every last thing, but I'm sure thinking that's a good idea.

[Carl Clark]

Here's my question: If I'm not running anything other than the throttle, motor, battery, and controller, can't I just dead end all of those wires, or perhaps remove them completely by opening up the controller and really getting into it?

[Rodney64]

Yes thats ok, I have removed all the cables in the past that I haven't used. Just may void warranty if the controller blows that all.

[Carl Clark]

In addition, I have found the ideal chain guard: A "Cold Steel Medieval Buckler" I know what you're saying, but when the rest of this build arrives UPS I think we'll have something interesting to look at for sure.

[gman1971]

Here's my question: If I'm not running anything other than the throttle, motor, battery, and controller, can't I just dead end all of those wires, or perhaps remove them completely by opening up the controller and really getting into it?

Well, I didn't cut any of the other cables as I didn't, initially, know what I was going to do with it.... so I stashed all those extra cables inside a sealed bag between the two bb plates, so these mount plates did serve a purpose for me, beyond holding the motor, of course :)

On the trikes the controllers are all behind the cowlings on their own internal mount protected from the elements so the extra wires exposed don't matter much.

Would be interesting to see this "chainguard" you speak of. :)

G.

[Carl Clark]

Its round, thick, plastic, and when I take the handle off the back I might use it on the bike too. This would have the right size/shape for the job with some mods of course, and would look cool too. I'm slowly getting nearer to what I want cosmetically from the item, and that will be lots of circles and squares.

[Carl Clark]

One other thing that occurred to me is just taking a large piece of plastic, like a roll up sled, and wrap that around the critical area of the bike like a small fairing or Ducati Supersport body. I may try that tonight.

[Carl Clark]

All of that is to keep me from going further down the Northern Tool approach to building e-bikes!

[spinningmagnets]

Well done, sir! I really like the steel pipe half-section to spread out the clamping forces of the u-bolts. Then, adding thick aluminum square-channel as the base is brilliant.

You could have used a flat aluminum plate, but...the sides of the square channel provide a mounting surface for side plates. Add another set like this to the seat tube, and you can solidly mount sideplates to form a battery box, and also hide the wires.