Powerchair Motors for Bikes...Brushless this time

I used to run CrazyBike2 on brushed powerchair motors with right angle reduction gearboxes, and that was ok, with the only real problem being the repeated chain and sprocket mangling from the incredible torque I could get out of them, and misalignment problems I had due to frame twisting (because of said torque).

Well, now I've got a *brushless* powerchair motor, direct drive rather than gear reduced, to try out.  This thread on Endless Sphere documents my exploration, modification, and testing of that motor, and will eventually show it's first tests on CrazyBike2, and it's later testing on the bike it's intended to be one of the various experimental power sources for. 

That bike is not yet named, and isn't finished yet due primarily to not having a reliably-working welder anymore, and secondarily from not having enough time to do everything yet.  There's a thread on it's evolution over on Endless Sphere, showing it's current progress.   The main thing I needed from this frame was stiffness, to prevent the flexing and twisting issues I had with CrazyBike2 with chain-drive motor power, whcih I still have issues with when carrying heavy cargo.  It'll use a mid-mounted NuVinci 171 developer's kit with autoshifting for a "transmission", to help keep power usage down (although it might not actually make it any more efficient due to the losses the NuVinci itself incurs internally). 

Also, to start it out from beginning as a full-suspension, since CrazyBike2 has broken lots of rear wheels while loaded down because of unavoidable bumps, potholes, and road debris, which shouldnt' cause such problems on a suspended wheel.  It will also use a motorcycle (Suzuki dirtbike, acually) rear wheel, which will take a lot more abuse than the bicycle wheels I have used so far.  I just need a good narrow "slick" tire for it, as the wide knobby it has now isn't really suitable for my purposes.

That's my update for now, hopefully I can keep coming back and adding info to the blog more frequently--but if you are a reader of it, and need more, I tend to post on at least one of my project threads on Endless Sphere ebike forums every day, and sometimes on several of them. 

Christmas Bikes For Parts

I wasn't expecting any presents this year, but I ended up with a few. Those NiMH packs in the previous post were a couple, and these two bikes as well. Pardon the stuff on the floor; Hachi was assimilating a bunch of junk mail just before I got home and I'd not had time to clean up the little tiny bits leftover. :-)

The first is a Huffy "Nevada". It's about the same as all the other Huffys I've had or seen, though at least this one has *indexed* lever shifters. Since they are for 3-ring and 6-ring, which I currently have on CrazyBike2, I'll probably move the shifters to CB2 in place of the ones I have (of which the rear one is an 8-speed so doesn't line up with the 6-ring cassette I have now).

It's a 26" wheel bike, with typical steel hubs but aluminum rims. Don't know what spoke type. Brakes are a center pull type I haven't seen before, but appear to work the same as some of the better OTS units I've got. Tires are knobby but not greatly so, and made more in a rounded fashion, so they ride a little better than most of the knobbys I have.

Cargo rack is cheap steel, and would not actually hold much in the way of cargo without wobbling or bending. Well, *relatively* much, given that I expect to be able to haul at least 40 pounds on any bike I ride, preferably up to 100 pounds.

One-piece cranks aren't useful, as I have lots of those. Overall this bike might just stay like it is as an emergency bike, for when experiments in progress on others aren't working or not completed enough to ride.

The other is more useful for parts, and is a Magna "Great Divide".

Like the Huffy it's a department-store 26" hardtail. But unlike the Huffy it has a front suspension fork. It also has square-taper cranks/BB, which is the type I need for jackshafts, and for the easily-changeable chainring sets I'd like to use.

It has grip-shifters, which I like on MTB style bars, but which don't work well for the downturned bars used on CB2, nor are they the safest thing to use with any ebike that has a twistgrip throttle (which I don't use now partly for that reason).

It also uses center-pull brakes, but a different style that is one I have seen, using the same mounting studs that linear side-pull brakes do. These are useful on any bike that has these studs, which many modern bikes, both cheap and high-end, do.

Has the same basic steel hubs and aluminum rims the Huffy does; tires are not as good though.


I have some ideas forming about using the above frame as part of a new version of CrazyBike2, but as a trike. One version of the idea is a tadpole, the other a delta. Since this is a 26" frame, I'm thinking of using a 26" rear wheel, and two 26" wheelchair wheels I currently have on that flatbed trailer right now. They have tubeless foam tires right now, but I'd change those to regular bike tires. Optionally, I could use a pair of 20" wheels meant for single-ended axle mounting. Either way, I'd make this into a full-suspension trike, if it's the tadpole version.

If I do it as a delta, I'd probably only have front suspension, unless I can figure out a way to make the rear wheels independently suspended. And independently driven, rather than a single axle.

It's much easier to build and drive the tadpole, especially as a full suspension. I just have to find all the right parts.

Dualie Wheels, Mk II

I've discussed dualie wheels for the rear before, so that I can have more support back there, and less worry about a blown tire or tube, broken spokes, rims, etc. It's less of a worry once I have rear suspension, but the concern for a blown tire still exists, since as heavy as the bike is it is difficult to fix on the road. Less so if I use the suspension system I'm doing now, where the dropouts are fully behind the cargo pods, so I can at least get to them easily, but still not easy to do.

So I'm considering building a whole wheel from scratch, using the bearings and tube from this:
http://electricle.blogspot.com/2009/06/forks-sporks-springs-dorks.html
to make the axle, and welding up a hub, spokes, etc from there.

It's just small enough diameter that I can still fit the threaded part off of a regular hub (minus the bearing cups) over it with clearance, if that part is a bolt-on cover over the bearings.

Then I'd weld up a tube to fit between the bearings, weld on some flanges I can drill out for spokes and for bolting on the freewheel threading off a hub on the right side, and directly bolt on a sprocket on the left side (for motor use).

The flanges would be probably around 6" in diameter, so that I have plenty of clearance for spokes to be replaced without taking the wheel apart (unlike most bike hubs, where you have to take the freewheel or cassette off of it first, since it always seems to be drive-side spokes that break).

That also allows for many more spokes than usual, so I could use 72 spokes, 36 per rim, and have them fully supported. I might choose to not even weld them together, so that they are "independently suspended" as it were, with the spokes.

The rim would otherwise be the dual-rim welded with spacers as suggested by Scrapyard Don above.

It's difficult to imagine from what I am saying, I'm sure, but I have a fairly clear idea of how I'd do it, if I can find all the right parts in my junk pile. I'll try to come up with some sketches at some point.

Look Ma, No Pedals!

While discussing the pedal chain problem with someone else, it suddenly occured to me that it could actually be the frame twisting, which was not really possible before due to the multiple triangles of the center frame, which no longer exist. A tensioner should still fix that, but there can't be *much* twisting happening, as I can't feel or see it, so that tells me the chain is on the edge of coming off all the time even *without* this problem. :-(


Speaking of chains, I just tied the chain up out of the way for all of my riding to and from work today, and it worked ok. However, I don't get nearly the speeds I think I should be getting; I think the 12A shunt analog ammeter might be restricting the current flow, or I might have a poor connection somewhere (probably with the wires from the battery pack to the meter, quite possibly in the crimp connections to the spades for plugging into the back of the meter).

That's easy to check, by bypassing the meter at the pack, just bolting the two wires back together again.


Now, I know it'll be slower with the 24" vs 26" for the same gear, but this is more drastic than that. Maybe 3-4MPH less than before. According to this calculator:
http://www.sheldonbrown.com/gears/
it shouldn't be more than at most 1.5MPH difference, not even that, for top speed in highest gears.

Also, I think the rear brakes might be flopping back and forth touching the wheel, slowing it down in bursts, because when cruising I can watch the ammeter fluctuate by a couple of amps or more, with a period of less than a second, which I think is about what a wheel rev ought to be, especially since as I slow down I can watch the oscillation slow as well. It doesn't always happen, but there's enough noise on the road including the motor noise that I can't really hear sounds well enough from the back of the bike to hear if something is rubbing.

So between those possible problems, both of which are still awaiting confirmation, I guess it could be robbing me of enough power to cause this.


A completely random thought regarding the name and looks of the bike:
I am seriously considering a mutation of the CrazyBike into the Junkyard Wolf, with "fairing" that would look like a wolf leaping/running, with it's legs over the front wheel in a kind of pounce position, rear legs astride the rear wheel as if having just leapt into the air. Head would be right where the lighting is now. Then my seat would end up just over the curved back.

I think a prototype version of this look is in order first, and then when I rebuild the bike "from scratch" to improve all the many things that need it from this prototype, I can make a better more permanent version of the "wolf fairing".

Wheelchair Trike Layout Ideas

After some pondering, I've decided to build the front frame "from scratch", rather than modifying a complete existing bike frame. It should be lighter this way, and being purpose-built it will allow me to have all the bits I need in all the right places without quite so much hacking and working around, and probably end up being completed faster as a result.

It should also be shorter by perhaps a foot, since not so much clearance between the front wheel and the pedals is actually needed as is provided by the frame itself, with the pedalling position I am in recumbent-style.

One possible layout for it, with the cargopod atop the frame:

It's all just laid out on the ground flat, on it's side, to get an idea of possible placements of things.

The frame would not be quite as simple as it looks here, as it would have a triangular cross-section from the front as well. The downtube will split Y-style somewhere around the front edge of the seat, so that it can be then bent upwards and be bolted inside of the chair frame tubing where it used to go to footrests. It won't actually go as far back as it looks in the pic.

The top tube will end just at the center of the crosstube at the top of the chair frame, and be bolted/clamped to it.

Those three connections should be enough to make a stable and sturdy frame out of the chair and tubing. If they're not, well, I'll find out soon enough after it's built. :-)

The actual length is not yet determined, I have to measure out where the seat will go, then the angles I'll be sitting at, how long a leg-extension I'll need and thus where the pedals will go, and how much clearance I need from pedals to tire and thus where the headtube will go. I'm guessing it'll be just under 8 feet long, about like the CrazyBike2. Even though it's front tire is smaller and the cranks are closer to the tire, all that extra space goes behind the seat so I can have more cargo in *front* of the wheel's axle than I can with the CrazyBike2. I might make it 9 feet long *just* to get more cargo space in front of the wheels but still behind the seat.

There are several elements not shown at all, such as the steering tie-rod from the front steering tube back to the handlebars, which are also not shown. I will probably use underseat steering, because I should have clearance to make it work on this bike, as long as I give up the idea of under-seat cargo pods.


Currently it has no planned suspension, but it is possible I will at least make a front suspension fork similar to a number of freakbikes I've seen on the FBN forum, etc. I have a number of partial concepts for a rear suspension, but all of them require modifying the chair frame in significant ways, so until I can implement one without doing that, they'll just remain concepts.

The "simplest" would be to bolt the wheel support plate not to the frame itself, but to a pair of tubes clamped around the vertical frame risers. Springs would be installed just above those tubes, mounted around the frame risers, so the tubes holding the wheel would press against the springs and give some amount of vertical damping (probably not much, with such short springs, given that I have no springs I could use there yet, either).

The next best would be to bolt the wheel support plate to a car leaf spring's center, then support that leaf spring at both ends from the frame. This would not be very easy to do and still provide enough space for cargo *in front* of the wheel, as it would move the wheel forward by almost half the frame's length.

Another variation on that would put the wheel support plate at the far end of the leaf spring, with the spring's middle and center mounted to the frame itself. This would actually allow the wheel to be extended out behind the frame, assuming the leaf spring can bear the bike's weight (estimated at 100-120 pounds due to the 3rd battery and complex drivetrain) when suspended at it's end that way, which is an unknown to me.

Any shock system I come up with for the rear needs to be independent for each wheel, partly so that I can turn easier using the tilt of the trike to turn with, just as with a bike.

I have another idea for a linkage from the steering that during a turn would proportionately force the appropriate rear wheel upward along it's suspension, tilting the trike toward that direction (the direction being steered toward). It may be completely impractical, and might not even be possible for me to make using parts I have available, but I may try it.



The major thing I needed to establish was how the drivetrain might work. Assuming I will also motor-assist this one, then the drivetrain will be a little complex, marginally more so than it currently is on the Crazybike2.

The primary reason for that is there is no provision on the wheelchair hub for power input from anything other than hands on the tires or handrail. The probable complexity of a rugged solution including a freewheel and cassette necessitates a separate stage in the drivetrain for that part, and simply bolting a chainring (the orange one) to the hub, or more likely to the spokes themselves, the way it was done on Eric Peltzer's ebike.

Working forward from the wheel, the chain will go to a hub (represented here by the small white chainring/hub part just forward of the wheel, below the chair frame). That hub will be mounted on a dropout (including derailer hanger) that will hang from the chair frame, bolted/clamped into place. The left side of that hub will have a chainring the same size as the one on the wheel itself bolted to it. The right side of the hub will remain a normal freewheel/cassette unit, which will have it's own chain going up to the next part of the drivetrain. There will be a derailer on this cassette to shift gears just as if it were still on a rear wheel in a normal bike drivetrain.

This next part will be the most complex piece, as it will take the power from both pedals and motor and transfer it to the wheel's drivetrain. On it's right side, as normal, will be a triple chainring with a derailer, so that it can be shifted as normal. On the left side will be a device I've wished for previously, but will redescribe in detail below. Basically all it does is allow two independent freewheels to be installed, without fear of them unthreading themselves from the crankshaft, on the left side of a square-taper shaft.

It's a 3" long cylinder the same diameter as the threaded portion of a rear hub, and threaded like that, so freewheels can be screwed onto it. There is a thick lip left unmachined on the outer left edge, so that anything threaded onto it (from the right side, before attaching it to the crankshaft) can't unscrew itself.

To set it up, just thread the freewheels on, put the device on the crankshaft, line up your chains by threading the freewheels back and forth until at the desired point, then measure their positions, take it and them off, and insert spacer rings of the desired thickness of whatever material is available (large steel washers would be good, but old rear cassette spacer rings should work, too), then thread the freewheels back on, and reinstall the device on the crankshaft.

Hook the chains back up, and voila! there is now a freewheel for keeping both of the power sources isolated from each other, and still able to input power into the rear drivetrain (which now does not need it's own freewheel, either).

Now we come to the power input to the drivetrain. On one of the freewheels of the device above, a chain goes up to the pedals, which have their chainring on the left side rather than the right, for this reason. The pedals would only need one chainring, but if great hill-climbing ability turns out to be needed, two or more could be used, with the derailer as they would normally have, or stopping and manually moving the chain from one to another can be done. A chain tensioner plus throttle will be installed on the top of the chainline as described a couple of posts back.


The other freewheel of the above device would have it's chain running back to the motor's output chainring. The motor is represented by the rusty-chrome sprocket within the chair frame, and is currently planned to be the treadmill motor, which has not yet been used on a bike yet (discounting stand-tests on the previous one). It's chainring would be small on the motor, and as large as possible on the freewheel. With the 36V setup this bike will have, most likely a double-reduction would be required, and so the device I made for that using the belt from the motor with 3:1 reduction, then small chain with about 10:1 reduction would take care of that.

The motor chain tension will be adjusted by sliding the motor (and it's intermediate reducer, if needed) back and forth in slots within it's mounting plate, which will be bolted to the chair frame.

The motor will be just in front of the batteries, which will be in a box directly between the wheels along the line of their axles. The box should be able to contain the controller, charger, and batteries. Since it will be aluminum, I can simply bolt the controller and charger to it's walls, and the box itself should help dissipate the heat. The controller's MOSFETs will if possible be mounted so they are on the inside of the box at a point where a heatsink can be bolted to the outside surface exposed to maximum airflow, but at as little risk of impact or tampering as possible.

The battery box won't be accessible without unbolting the cargo pod from the chair frame, partly for security of the contents.

In the space leftover around the motor and it's drivetrain components, I'll have a toolbox bolted in place with whatever I might need to fix the bike on the road at least enough to get me home. Again, it wont' be accessible without removing the cargo pod, but hopefully I won't need it very often. Because of this, the tools to unbolt the pod itself need to be something small I can carry with me, so I'll probably use allen-head bolts.


The front fork I've decided on for now is the one that came with the Magna frame that's now on the CrazyBike2. I chose it primarily because it's lighter than any of the others I have in that size, yet still strong and apparently well-made. It also has brake-pivot studs already on it, so I can use that type of brake instead of caliper brakes in front if I choose (and if I have enough working parts to do it with).

The seat is just the plywood version of my other seat, and will not be used on this bike--I'll probably build a v2.0 of the tubing/mesh seat I now use on the CrazyBike2, just for this bike.

That's the basic overview of how this one is currently being planned.


This is just a pic without the cargo pod, but otherwise the same.

Wheelchair-Based Trike

A donation intended to provide essential parts for my flatbed trailer inspired a trike almost as soon as I started working with it. It's aluminum, so I can't weld it, but I can bolt things to it, and it's capable of supporting at least 250 pounds on it's two tiny front wheels plus it's rear spoked wheels.

Since I'll be removing the tiny front wheels regardless of what I do with it, and almost certainly re-lacing the hubs onto bike wheel rims, most likely using this whole cage as the rear of a trike, it might be able to support even more weight (but I won't push it unless I have to).

I don't have any really lightweight small frames to use for the front end except for the Magna that's already part of Crazybike2, but I do have a nice-looking copper-colored Mongoose frame that will probably fit the project well enough for at least the first try.

A quick first idea, just setting the parts together in a first-guess position:

The bike frame has a 20" front wheel, with the 24" tire-size wheelchair wheels on the back. Unfortunately they're not the same as 24" bike wheels, as the tires are much smaller thickness, and so the rims are larger diameter than 24" bike wheels. Currently they have the urethane foam flat-proof "tubes" in them, and very very badly worn tires (past the tread, into the fabric).

A few problems arise, of course. First, since there's no place to put a normal bike chainring set on the wheels, I have to come up with an alternate way to get the power to the wheels. Front wheel drive is out, as I don't want to deal with those kinds of complications. I could move the handrails to the inside of the wheels, and either cut gear notches in them or replace them with smaller bike rims (or wheelchair rims if I can find any) and use those as pulleys.

In the pics, I've already moved the left handrail to the inside of the wheel just to see if there was clearance, which there is plenty of. I need to take at least one of the tires off the rim anyway, as there is one broken spoke tensioner head (the tensioner is still on the bent-up spoke, but is missing it's head; I assume that's still in the wheel). Once I do that, I have the option of unlacing the wheelchair rim and lacing on a bike rim instead. Then I need to decide if I want 24" or 26" tires, since I have more 26" tires with road-style vs MTB-style tread, and I'm more likely to run across 26" slick tires than I am 24", anyway.

If rim-as-pulley is used to replace the handrails, a belt would then drive the wheels, and be attached to a device at the other end that takes the bike chain drive from the front pedals/etc and converts it to the pulley drive, along with a freewheel and shiftable chainrings (pretty much like the device I made for the treadmill motor setup, but with the pulley on the left side and the chainrings on the freewheel as normal).

Alternately, I can clamp a chainring to the spokes on the wheel(s), driving it from a chain fed from that device, in place of the belt/pulley. (this would be better for traction and torque, and is like the way Eric Peltzer did his bike at http://peltzer.net/ebike ).


Since the wheels are on separate axles already, they'll freely turn separately when I steer, unless I use a drive system that drives *both* rear wheels (which would be better to do, but more complicated).

I'll probably need to alter the small bike frame so that it's rear triangle is replaced with a triangle of small tubing spread far apart at the rear, so it can be inserted into the former foot-rest tubing post holes (where the black posts go in from the bottom front of the chair right now), and secured in place there with the bolt pins. Probably it will also need an upper set of tubing to connect from the seattube area to the top of the wheelchair frame, to stiffen it against folding up with weight in the middle (me).

The second set of pics below show the bike frame upside down, with the pedals up higher. I'm not sure it'd work as well as the other way, but I'd have more ground clearance, and a teensy bit more fork rake.

The seat would be similar to the one on my current bike, and placed in front of where the wheelchair frame's seat would have been, with the base of the seat about the same height the pedals are at in the pic above, or a tad lower.

I should be able to do the same remote-steering and forward-located pedals I have now, although since I have no other square-taper threaded-in bottom brackets I'll be using the old one-piece cranks that came on the frame I'm considering using. Remote steering because I don't like tiller-style steering, and I'd rather have the bars right back where I'm actually sitting. More convienent for mounting things on with switches and stuff, too.

The three U1 batteries will fit very well along with their charger and the motor controller in back of the chair, between the axle points, on the double-barred part of the frame (in a box made for the purpose, probably from aluminum).



The motor(s) would be wherever they need to go to fit into the drivetrain before the shifting part of it, just as now on the current bike. I might be able to use the treadmill motor easily on this one (with a double-reduction setup), as I could enclose it in a fan-cooled/filtered-air box to keep road dirt out of it, as there's plenty of space inside the wheelchair frame. If you can think of a
better motor to use, I'll try anything out.

I *will* need to get or make a longer cable for my bike lock for it, since the wheels can be taken off so easily--I can imagine someone stealing *those* off the bike (or trailer) just for wheelchair use. :-(


As I don't have a front shock fork for it, I will probably make one like those seen on several of the freakbikes, where it has a lower fork that supports the wheels for turning, and an upper fork that
contains the springs or whatever, which should allow me much more freedom in the steering design. (I can't believe I never imagined any kind of shock fork in front other than the kind that comes on MTBs and common road bikes, until I saw the freakbike forum pics--I apparently never noticed or never saw anything like them in my google searches of bike designs previously!).

All in all, this looks like a workable idea, mostly dependent on making a way to easily and reliably transfer power to the rear wheel(s). I've already come up with several possibilities in the few hours I've been thinking about it, so it should be possible to do this with stuff I already have laying around.

With the big heavy U1 batteries, the trike would be MUCH better as a ride than the bike is. Then I can maybe find some small batteries to assist the Crazybike2 for short jaunts, and use the trike for longer trips, since I can easily put the third U1 on there for either spare power or for more overall power the entire trip (a more likely-to-be-used solution).

Phirst Phriday Phoenix Phreaks Ride

After fixing the motor, I had one other problem to fix--the rear tire was sunrotted (remember, this is all salvaged junk!) and the cracks bulged enough under the load of the bike, batteries, and me to make me worry I'd get a sidewall blowout of the tire itself, which would then let the tube shred itself against the frame, most likely.

I *had* pics of all this stuff, but something happened to the camera card on insertion into the computer to read it, and I ended up having to format it to use it at all. :-( So I took some pics of the things I could, to at least give an idea of what I'm talking about.

The tire itself was easy to replace, as I have a number of 24" tires. None are road tires like I'd prefer, but some are in better shape than the ones that came off the Roadmaster bike, and one is less knobby, and not quite as wide, with a completely solid center 1/8" or so for a bit less rolling resistance.

These are a couple of the ones I have, all are fairly similar, except others have even less continuity between center treads. One looks more like a waterfall scoop than a wheel. :-(

The one on the left is the actual rear tire I was using.

This is the tread on the one I now have installed.

As you can see, it's more continuous in the center, which hopefully reduces rolling resistance a bit. I couldn't really tell a difference, at the same 50PSI I keep them at, but the bike is really heavy with the batteries and motor, so it's possible there is a difference I could feel if I had just the bike and no motor/batteries/pods on there.

Changing the tire should have been quick and easy, but as things tend to be on this project, it turned into a sub-project all it's own. After successfully putting the new tire on, keeping the same perfectly-good innertube, and adding the Slime protective strip between the tube and the new tire's tread, I installed it on the bike and left it on the test stand.

The test stand is just a pair of Mac Plus cases (without any computer/etc in them) I put under the cargo pods to hold the bike completely off the ground, kickstand and all, to make it easier to work on the back end and to run motor and drivetrain tests, which I can't readily do with the kickstand down (it interferes with the chainline when down, but not when stowed). So there was no pressure on the tire other than the 50PSI I keep them aired up at.

Not long after I put it up there, I heard a hiss, then a quick rush of air. Upon taking the wheel and tire back off, I found a very large split (about 3/16" long) in the *inner* side of the tube, nowhere near a seam or anything else. I VERY carefully inspected the whole tire, rim, etc., just to be sure I had not missed a sharp edge or thorn on my first pre-install inspection. Nothing there, visible or tactile. The 3/4" wide spoke-cover strip was installed correctly, covering the spoke tensioners, no issues I could find. I even rechecked my tire-installing tools, which are heavy-duty plastic with very smooth ends, and found no damage or anything else to explain it.

Must be rotting rubber (remember, the tires were sunrotted), I guess. Digging around I found two other 24" tubes I could use, a couple of 20" that wouldn't by any stretch of themselves or the imagination fit on the 24" rim, and a small pile of assorted 26" tubes, including a new-in-box Slime Thorn Resistant tube I used to carry on the upright bike as a spare, until I'd gone a whole *year* without a flat.


These are the three 24" tubes I was working with.

The yellow patches were added by me, as were a few black ones you can't readily see (some made from other unrepairable totally-blown-out tubes, such as the batch of them I had more than a year ago that had valve stem failures). One patch on the right outer part of the rightmost tube, with a reddish outline, was already on that tube when I got it.

What was most frustrating about this is that the original tube had not had any problems before this, and that since the hole was on the *inner* edge, the slime could not seal the hole! I patched it but reinflating it found yet another hole, and holding a finger on that, another, and another, most of these on the sidewall or inner edge, really making me question if the tire tool was doing this (since the new tire seems to have a much tighter bead than the previous one, and is much harder to get on and off the rim).

However, the same was true of the other tubes, which I tested before even attempting install; I inflated the first and heard it hissing right away, without even 30PSI in there. The leak was on the inner edge. I patched it and tried again, only to find another and so on and so on. No inner-edge leak on the last one, so I tried it out, and only had to patch one other place on it besides the existing patch. Now I theoretically had a tube to try out.

Installed, tested, ok. Put on the bike, ok. Bike off-stand, resting on tire, ok. Rode around the block a few times, ok. I had the batteries and motor off the bike for the motor repair at the time, so it was lighter than usual by a lot. At this point, I was getting tired and frustrated, and hot at maybe 2pm or so, so I went to the store for some fake Dr. Pepper; in this case Safeway's brand of Dr. Skipper, as it was closer than any other store and they had a sale I could almost afford a 2-liter of, for 89 cents I think.

Almost halfway there, about 1/4 mile, and PSSSSSSHHHHhhhhh the tube pops. Ugh. I decided to walk it home and fix the tube first, so I wouldn't trash the tire I just put on there.

Another hole, about halfway around the outside part between the old patch and the new one. I gave up on it and started thinking about the 26" tubes.

Finally I decided that I could fold up the extra bit of tube in two places at opposite sides of the wheel, 90° either side of the stem and reflector.

That's not the tube itself, as its' in the tire and I don't want to unravel the other NIB one I used for the pic above, either. (they never go back in the box, do they?)

But basically like that, stuffed into the 24" tire, with the Slime protector strip around it. I inflated it a little bit, then bounced it till it stopped creaking and shifting inside, then fully inflated it, installed the wheel, and test rode around the block a while.

When I felt safe enough, I went after that soda with no problems.

Now, one thing I do figure is that the slime inside the tube wouldn't be able to circulate freely, due to the folds, so I used an extra dose of slime in it before folding it:

This is the chunky slime, meant for tubeless tires, and it will seal a much larger hole than the regular stuff, in theory. Works so far in my other tires on other bikes, and for a couple hundred miles on this one (until this tube problem).

I just had to squeeze it around in the tube till about half of it felt like it was in each half of the tube, fold and install.


I did a few other things before heading out to the Phirst Phriday ride downtown (about 10 miles away from my house), which included changing the chainring on the motor from a 24-tooth to a 21-tooth, while leaving the crankshaft end of that chain at 24-tooth.

This means that now the 120RPM of the motor at full speed, which currently turns the crankshaft at 120RPM as well, and thus is about 1/3 higher speed than what I would pedal at normally (90RPM), would be roughly 105RPM now. Pedalling along with the motor's full speed would now be much easier, without feet being knocked off of the pedals by any sudden burst of speed (caused by a slight downhill grade, for instance, like going out of a driveway, etc.). Also gives more torque to the motor for startup from a stop.

This chainring is of course smaller diameter, which means it will not be able to bolt directly to the face of the hub on the motor, or else the chain won't engage the teeth. I used a stack of washers on each of 4 bolts to keep it just far enough away from the hub to let the chain fully ride on the ring and not touch the hub. The hub itself had to be flipped over and then spaced a little away from the motor, so it would still line up with the chainring on the drivetrain crankshaft, and not rub on the next chainring there.

None of that would be much of an issue, except that since it *is* a smaller diameter, it also can't use bolts the size of the ones holding the other chainring on, and actually must be pretty small due to the tiny 3/16" overlap of the holes in the chainring vs the holes in the hub. I knew that this arrangement couldn't sustain resistance against the torque needed to drive the bike from the motor, even with my pedalling, but I didnt' really have any idea how long it would last.

I set it up, tightened the chain tension, and tested it just on the stand. No problems free-running. I setup a friction grip (leather welding glove) for the rear wheel, and put as much strain in jerky and smooth ways as I could on it, and still it held fine. Rode it around the block a few times, and still fine. Guess it was better than I thought, as I didnt' see any wear on the bolts yet.

Well, it did last a while--almost 5 miles. Then as I was riding south in the bike lane on 15th Avenue, I heard what sounded like a bucket of coins on the road, and suddenly had no motor assist, so I stopped. The sound was the washers spilling off the bolts, which had finally been cut thru by the hub vs chainring torque. Since I was expecting failure, I'd brought the tools and old chainring and bolts with me, and changed them out, setting off again after about 20 minutes or so.

My next failure on the way there was completely unexpected. The bottom wheel on the rear derailer just fell off.

The roller pin it's bolted in with had somehow unscrewed itself (I still can't figure out how), and the roller wheel was just yanked right out with the pull of the chain vs the springs in the derailer tensioner. I was still pedalling at that point, trying to figure out what the noise had been, but couldn't stop due to traffic, as I was coming up on a green traffic light and the bike lane had ended for the right-turners to get to the edge of the road, so I kept going thru the intersection and then found I couldn't shift up or down.

I braked to a stop and got off, looking at things, thinking a cable might've broken (but it didn't feel like that, it felt jammed), then I saw the derailer's empty bottom spot, and my jaw dropped.

I left the bike on the sidewalk with it's lights on, key pulled from the motor switch, on it's kickstand (no one is running off with *this* bike that fast without motor assist!), bike lock around the wheels and frame, and walked back along the path to see if I could find the roller. I did, but not the center-spacer or one of the two side washers.

Great. Halfway from nowhere to home, and I've got a two-speed bike. :(

But wait--I have a SPARE DERAILER!

Well, sort off. It's a Suntour, not a Shimano, so of course the parts don't match well enough to just put the unused bottom roller wheel's washer and center spacer on the Shimano, but the whole wheel, washers, and spacer did fit, being a tad larger in center-hole size than the Shimano.

Wow. I'm really glad I didn't actually take the derailer off of that chainline now, and instead just left it as the tensioner, even though it isn't the best way to do that. :-)

It'll hopefully never happen again, so now I should be safe to replace the derailer-tensioner with a purpose-built one with my throttle in it. :)

After seeing a few of the bikes on the FreakBike Nation forums, I think I might scrap my idea of a box with all the throttle stuff in it, and instead just use a brake-arm with the roller mounted on the end where the bolt would have been to hold the cable tight, and the pivot point one of the brake-studs welded onto the frame along the chainline somewhere. It's simpler, and the parts are already pre-made for torque in those directions.


The Phirst Phriday ride itself was interesting, though I found the bar-hopping part of it at the bars themselves not fun, as I'm not really a bar-type person. I did like the gallery we stopped at, and I really liked the riding around in a group, and talking with the few members I managed to for any length of time. Wished I'd been able to talk with more people, but I'm still new to them, and they already have friends and people they know in the group, so it'll take a while before I can really become part of their conversations. I'm also not a very good in-person person; I do much better via text formats, like blogs, forums, and emails. Gives me more time to think about what is being said, and what I'm going to say, so I don't sound quite so much like an idiot. :-)

The Crazybike2 was a pretty big hit, apparently--it's not quite like any of the other freakbikes there. Lots of people interested in it, at least in passing. The lighting was an oft-touched on topic, as was the reuse and repurposing of so many odd components.

A pic by Stephon from the forum, from outside the first bar:



I liked quite a few of the other bikes I saw there, and some of them gave me specific ideas I will have to use myself eventually. One in particular that I liked was the black delta trike by "lostideas" with the airtank seat and airshocks on the front fork, which can even be bounced up in the air. Even has a rack for a big jambox on the back. It's too small a trike for my own purposes (hauling cargo, etc.), but it's definitely interesting, and I will likely research more on it's design when making my own.

The chopper-style ones had interesting points, but I really wouldn't want to ride one. :) Looked cool, but not my style.

One thing that I have seen on several bikes there and on the forums is a front shock arrangement that does not use the "shock absorber tube" style of fork that is common to all the MTB designs I've seen, and the roadbike I have now (and the fork I am using on the Crazybike). Instead they use a double fork--the bottom fork appears to be the load-bearing/steering fork, while the upper fork ties a pivot point on the dropouts to a shock-mounting plate near the headstock, with various kinds of shocks between that plate and the headstock swivel hardware. I never even imagined such an arrangement before, even though the idea itself appears quite simple, and I can't see why I didn't think of that. It's like not being able to figure out how to open a pop-top soda can, or something! :-(

Now I know how I will revise the look of my curvy version of the Crazybike2 frame, the one a couple dozen posts or so back, with the leaf-spring rear shock. Maybe I'll do a leaf spring shock front *and* rear. :-)

The ride home around midnight was nice, and very uneventful. The batteries lasted the whole way home, though they were pretty well dead by the time I got to my house. Since I hadn't charged them at all at or during the event, after having ridden the 10 miles or so to get there, plus at least a couple of miles or so during the event, I'd say that's a pretty good range, of about 22 miles. I'm sure if they were new batteries, and I had the bugs worked out of the drivetrain and throttle control, making it more efficient, I'd get a lot more than that.

Now I've got about a hundred miles on the motor/battery setup since first install, well over two hundred miles on the bike as a whole. Still working very well considering it's literally a ridable pile of junk. :-)

I rode up Central Ave, right thru downtown Phoenix, with barely a motor vehicle in sight, and more than a few other cyclists, in groups and alone, usually on sidewalks rather than the road, mostly without any helmets, lights, or other gear, dinging their bells when they saw me riding by. I didn't have a bell to ding back, just my car horn, which didnt' seem appropriate to use in response.

I think I will have to finish that teletype-bell idea I was working on a couple of months ago but gave up on after realizing no car would pay attention to it, if they could even hear it. Since I ride only on the road, and bells are more commonly used to warn pedestrians or other cyclists of a cyclists approach, I didnt' see the need for one until now. It would be useful for responding to other bells in a friendly fashion, though.

If there are future gatherings, I'll go if I am not working, and they're close enough to bike to.