Part#6 was crazy busy with
machining blanks into foam and casting them off in an Alum Alloy... This episode
takes a slower pace and cleans up several loose ends that were unresolved or
required immediate attention.
To begin with, there are no
images or video to cover 2 days of building-up the motor shaft, weld, grind,
measure, weld, grind, measure... boring boring stuff. But well worth the effort
as the MY1020 output shaft is uniformly 1/2" in diameter and fits the 2
1/2" drive pulley perfectly.
Similarly the Dual Blower
assembly was removed as it is near useless.
The bike was slated to be
torn-down and painted.
But in the course of dis-assembly
I found that the front casing had broken where the long bolts that hold the
motor together threads into.
Initially I was concerned that
this might be a catastrophic failure, but quickly turned the circumstance to my
advantage.
The original bolts were replaced
with longer, thinner bolts that could extend out the front and be fastened with
nuts.
While the rear casing was
drilled out to 3/8th" diameter holes for the bolts, which allowed slightly
more rotation of the brush-plate to re-time the motor.
Finally I resolved the poor
performance of the belt tensioner by adding a much heavier loop spring shown to
the right.
This was recovered from a foot
brake assembly off another rolling chassis.
In this config the bike was out
for a punishing 30 minute run that verified that the drive train is much
improved.
In 1st & 2nd gear there is
no slippage of the belt unless the rear brake is applied hard (locking the rear
wheel).
While in 5th or 6th gear the
belt does start to slip if the throttle is cracked open at a standing start.
The rest of the tear-down and
painting went quite smoothly... Along side of the painting, all bearings were
cleaned and lubed prior to re-assembly.
Since the drive train was apart
I thought it may as well be painted.
I could have covered the rear of
the motor casing but I doubt any significant amount of paint dust could have
gotten in, and it has run fine for close to an hour un loaded.
The lettering on the gear-box
pulley is very legible and is another trick that can be pulled out of the bag on
future projects.
I'm hoping that this is the last
time that I re-assemble the bike as it's getting more complicated as features
are added.
A day or two passed as I sat by
the window waiting for my NEW Odyssey PC625 cells...
The Extreme Battery!!!
Extreme Indeed, I agonized over
investing more capital into this bike, but given the specs on what these cells
can deliver, I had no doubts about investing in quality.
My rational is that the Existing
17Ahr Portalac's were never designed to deliver bursts of 75 to 100 Amps for
upwards of 5 secs at a time, whiles these bad-boys can source over 250Amps for
close to 30 secs with no ill-effects.
(That's 7,500Amp/Seconds!!!)
Not to mention that these cells
can sustain deeper discharges, charge faster (provided you have a charger that
can deliver more juice) and operate at colder temperatures.
There are only 2 Brand-New cells
which are added to existing PC625's purchased new in 2007.
Agreed, this is a sub-optimal
solution, but given the light usage that the original pair has seen, and the
fact that they have been stored indoors during the winter and charged regularly
they should be fine.
The charging system is still the
Yi-Yun 2.5 Amp 48V semi-intelligent charger, though I intend to balance or
equalize the individual batteries with a true AGM smart charger every 4th or 5th
charge cycle to track how much disparity there is between the new and old cells.
The above cells were sourced
from totalbattery.com a Canadian vendor that is an authorized Odyssey dealer.
Luckily for me there is a branch in the next town up from ours and was able to receive
the cells in 2 days with free delivery (a significant cost when I was checking
prices south of the border in the USA).
I thought that I was going to
pop an an aneurysm when I found that the new batteries weren't going to fit in
the existing Bat-Frame...
And there was no one to blame as
I knew I was supposed to measure and mod the bat-frame before painting, but
somehow just forgot...
It took a day to get over my own
frustration with myself, and another to resolve the issue.
The retro-fit looks less obvious
after the batteries are mounted.
With the drive train, batteries
and general re-assembly settled, the next job is to step-up the cooling of the
motor.
Over the course of several road
and trail runs the motor temps were topping 100F as measured in the center of
the outer steel magnet casing.
If this were July, I'd be quite
pleased, but this is Feb/March and the temps never were above freezing, one day
was minus 10C.
To the right is a 120Vac Blower
recovered from an old Photo-copier (Gray sheet steel construction).
To the left of it is a cheap 75W
AC inverter that will provide 120Vac off the auxiliary 12V battery, the inverter
also has a USB charging port of MP3 type devices.
After some bench testing to be
sure that the blower is 100% it was married to the remains of the original
blower manifold that mates to the motor.
Same old fiberglass and
1/8" plywood fixtures as before.
With the inlet port covered with
a simple grate of sorts I hope that this will be all that's required to flow
cool air through the motor.
The seams between the physical
blower and the manifold are sealed with a measure of hot-glue and duct-tape.
The completed unit is very
sturdy...
Given the presence of 120Vac the
bike is relegated to only fair weather riding and trail riding up running river-beds
is out.
There is no amount of
description that I could write that would convey the trial and error of numerous
mounting schemes required to get the air-stream out of the blower aligned to the
air-inlet port on the physical motor.
If the motor peaks out at 120 to
130F on a hot summer's day I think that the internal components should be able
to stand that range with a constant flow of cool air.
The revised drive train has
close to 1 hour of road and trail testing with much improved results, and about
45 minutes of continuous No-Load testing in the shop.
The last posting on this project
will cover a custom 555 timer-based PWM circuit to drive the LED Head-light
directly off 12V, the final wiring of the AC Inverter/Blower combo and the
Analog Meter config for both Volts and Amps.
Again my thanks to the numerous
folks that have taken an international interest in this project!
...and about 9 days stuffed into
6 mins and 19 sec...
