Shelina Moreda Pics

So, during the TTXGP/e-Power race at Laguna Seca in 2011, I took a bunch of photos of the various teams and riders.  I’m going to put some of them up here.  First up is Shelina Moreda from the eCRP team.  She is a local (from northern california) racer who performed well, and is just as hot as her bike.

Speed Test!

Hey folks, i did a max speed test on the bike about a month ago.  Here’s a pic from it:

Speed Test!

And also a video:

72 mph on the GPS! 75 on the spedometer!

Talk to EAASV

At last month’s Electric Automobile Association of Silicon Valley (http://www.eaasv.org) meeting, I offered to give a talk about my build at some point.  They asked me to give a talk at this month’s meeting which was this past weekend.  I wasn’t sure how long it’d go, and was somewhat scared that i’d get up there and have nothing to talk about.  Well, i was a little bit wrong as the talk went almost 55 minutes.  The group is great since they’re obviously of like minds, and some are very technical so there were lots of good questions.

Also in attendance was Mr. Lightning Motorcycles: Richard Hatfield, just 3 days off of his team’s record breaking land speed record for an elmoto at 218 mph! (Video here of a run that’s only 216 mph).

I recorded the talk and put it up on youtube:

TTXGP Laguna Seca Race Day!

Here’s the next set of photos from TTXGP Laguna Seca: Race Day!

I’ll post more about the experience and the race later, but here’s the pics first!

TTXGP Laguna Seca Practice Rounds (Saturday)

I volunteered to shoot photos again for Azhar and Rupal from the TTXGP at the Laguna Seca race.  Rupal was able to get me media credentials, so I spent saturday at the track mainly hiking all over the place trying to find good places to shoot from.  Mainly i practiced with the gassers, but got some good shots during the TTXGP/FIM round as well.  Here they are.

The Mission bike is FAST.  Best lap of 1:31, which is faster than some of the 600 bikes, and less than 10 seconds behind the fastest 600 lap.

So here are some pics.

TTXGP 2011: Infineon Raceway Photos

Hey folks, so lots has happened since i blogged last.  For one, i had my elmoto painted and have been working furiously to get it done in time to show for this past weekend’s TTXGP race.  I wasn’t racing of course, but wanted to bring it to the race to show to the other elmoto.net folks.  I’ll post more soon about the troubles i’ve been having, but i wanted to get a post up with some of the pics that I was able to get during the day.

Thanks to Azhar, Rupal, and the TTXGP, i was able to get a photographer’s pass to the race.  This let me get trackside access to take photoss.  I agreed to let them have the photos i took in exchange.  This was an awesome deal as it was a total blast to get so close and take photos.

So without further ado…

OMG…First (Franken)ride!

Hell yeah!

I got the bike back from GPSports on friday.  Actually, it was ready earlier than that, but i wasn’t able to get back to the shop to pick it up until friday.

Batteries and frame (and working brakes!) after coming home from the shop.

Bike with the new LEAF in the background! All Electric baby!

After getting it home, i decided to get a test (aka frankenride…

Bah…brakes

So, last week, i was able to put new brake rotors and pads on all three of the brakes (the bike has 2 front discs and 1 rear) bled the systems, and thought i had everything up to snuff.

New Front discs and pads

Unfortunately, after i got everything done, they didn’t work properly.  They were sticking closed…

More Wiring Diagrams

Well, there’s been more wiring diagram stuff going on since last night.  Turns out that I do have an ElCon charger (well…sort of.  Elcon chargers are a rebranded version of a charger that’s made by some unknown corporation.  Although mine doesn’t say elcon, that’s what it is).

In any case, the elcon chargers have a bms control cable, so there’s no reason to use the external AC high current relay to shut the charger off.

I checked it out and shorting the two “pigtail” wires (i have the two wire pigtail bms control wire version), allows the charger to work.

So this became v1.15:

v1.15

Then, i decided to change the diagram for the controller J1 and J2 wires to reflect a bit more how it’s actually laid out instead of listing each wire in order.

v1.16

So that’s where we are now.  Everything seems to be working!  Woohoo!

Wiring Diagrams

I’ve spent a lot of time pondering the wiring of the bike.  Originally, i was thinking about how the main traction pack wiring was going to work (how each of the sets of cells would hook up to each other), and came up with this:

First wiring diagram

However, once i started down this path, i started trying to figure out where more and more of the parts would go.  Mainly, i wanted to do this because although I’ve tinkered with some electrical appliances and whatnot, i’ve never worked with this much electricity in terms of voltage nor amperage.  So, i’ve got a healthy amount of fear (hopefully enough) about working with this stuff.  As i keep telling myself as i’m working around the batteries “this crap can kill you…so be careful”.

Seriously.

In any case, I drew some diagrams on paper, but it wasn’t working out very well.  So, around september, i started laying out all of the pieces of the project as best as i could in a drawing program.  The first “real” diagram is shown here:

v1.1: The first version of the "real" wiring diagram.

Every time i figured out a bit more, i’d update the diagram…