Revolting Project 1: Electric Bike

Yes, I meant to put "revolting" instead of "revolutionary". While we are redesigning our American Dream, why not redesign some language, too? It's too rich of a play on words to pass up.

1. I am revolting against society's expectations of a contributing adult.
2. I'm revolting against society's expectations of a woman (repeat after me: Women are not allowed to touch anything that smells like STEM!) STEM= Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.
3. People might find my hacked-together bike "revolting" to gaze upon.
4. REcycling an electrical system (volt).

If you can think of any others, go ahead and comment, I'd love to hear them.

Anyway, back to the point of the post: I am making an electric bike. More accurately, I am making an electrically-assisted bike, that still has peddling options, but also has an electric motor (24V) on one of the gears (or 7 gears, depending on how you want to look at it), to assist when you just don't want to pedal anymore, or you're on a hill and need some help, or you just want to get somewhere.

Why a hybrid bicycle? There are these very large, very steep hills between me and my 9-5. I would love to ride my bike, but I'm still too fat and weak to make it up the hill, and I personally don't want anyone laughing at me or shouting derogatory comments while my fat ass is walking my bike up the hills (I get enough derogatory comments when I'm running, even though I wear clothes to hide my fat jiggling around, people still feel the need to comment out of car windows).

With a hybrid bicycle, I can practice biking up the hills, but I have a back-up if/when I get too tired. Then it becomes a game (as opposed to becoming torture): how high up the hill can I go before I wimp out? I like games. I like bikes, too.

Also, since I thoroughly enjoy making this bike, perhaps I can make more of them and sell a few, thereby financing a few more projects, like turning my electric bicycle into a solar-powered bicycle, or converting my car to an electric (or getting a new frame and converting that car to an electric). Or making an electric trike-plane.

I also don't have to register a hybrid bicycle in Colorado, where I would have to register a fully electric bicycle.

The Making of the Beast

So, how do you make a hybrid bicycle?  (and yes, I will post an instructable once this is complete).

1. Get a bike.
2. Get a non-functioning electrical vehicle (I got a Razor Electric Chopper that wasn't working but had all the electrical components (except a charger) for $25.
3. Strip the electrical components out of the non-functioning electrical vehicle
4. Fix the vehicle's electrical components (thank you, AP Physics and the Internet).
5. Install the electrical system onto the bicycle.

. . .and that's as far as I've gotten.

It turns out that it's really helpful to have (in no particular order)

• A bicycle with straight wheels
• The correct sprocket for the bike chain
• A drill bit
• bolts and nuts
• wire coat hangers
• duct tape
• pliers
• wrenches
• allen wrenches
• functioning batteries
• a patient and supportive husband who is willing to take your motor to work for you, use a pneumatic wrench and vice grips to take off the non-fitting sprocket, and then re-assemble your motor with the correctly-sized sprocket you took off your non-functioning bicycle's derailleur.
• IcyHot
• Lots of soap
• A few weekends with nothing better to do
• a burning desire to "goof off" with your electric bike project to get out of doing household chores.

The first set-back was getting everything rigged up, and then realizing that you can't reasonably expect a motor to turn a bicycle chain if it's only held onto a cylindrical surface with coat hangers; there's too much play and it will simply rock out of the way.

The second set-back was realizing that I can't re-rig the brakes to ignore a seriously bent wheel.

The third set-back was realizing that even after I addressed the first two setbacks, the half-sized sprocket introduced fatal design errors, such as a sweet-spot where the small sprocket failed to engage the large chain at all, and the realization that in order for the small sprocket to clear the chain when the chain and the sprocket tooth were passing one another, the sprocket had to be far enough away to always clear the chain (this is where the coat-hangers fooled me: the coat hangers allowed the small sprocket to flex into the chain, but pop out of the way when there was resistance from the bent wheel. The bolted-on motor had very little play, so it couldn't engage the chain).

Several other victories, however, keep me going:

1. I can switch gears to and from the electrically-assisted gear.
2. I still remember how to ride a bicycle
3. I did manage to repair the circuits of the Electric chopper
4. The motor is going the right way (I would have had to strip the connectors and wire the motor backward if it had been spinning the wrong way)
5. I have enough clearance that I will not be bumping my knees into the batteries when I ride the bike.

So, while I'm awaiting the return of the re-sprocketed motor, I'm pleased with the progress, even if I am disappointed with the timeline of said progress. This is, however, just the prototype, and prototypes are necessarily fussy things.

Once I'm done, I will have gained knowledge of one more way to buck the dream: I will have gained independence from petroleum fuel for my commute (not having a commute would be even better; we're working on that), refreshed my knowledge of electrical systems, so I can work on bigger electrical projects (I only started three fires and haven't shocked myself yet. . .although I did have to pluck out three metal fragments from my foot after all that drilling), mastered some new power tools, and gained confidence that I can see these projects through. 

Oh, and doing the physics and math stuff is a big middle finger to my ex-husband and every member of society that looks down on girls doing STEM activities (which I still run into, by the way. Really annoying).

What about you? Have you rigged up anything to save yourself time/energy/money? How did your project go?