Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays folks!  This has been a fun year for me, and i’m sure 2011 will be even better.

Have a great one folks!

I’m torn…

and not in the sense of i’m torn between going with Lithium or Lead batteries.  I was playing volleyball last night, and tore my calf muscle (yeah…owie).  So, i’m going in for an MRI in 3 days, and then find out how bad it is.  This is a pic of where the tear is (well, underneath that X in the pic)…

Electronics Mounting Shelf

So, this week’s obsession has been figuring out the shelf that will hold the electronics.  The shelf will sit under the gas tank shell above the “C” and “D” battery packs.

The shelf will be attached directly to the motorcycle frame, and originally, i was hoping to not have to weld anything to the frame to make this happen.  As it turns out, there were a few options, but none were very good.  As such, I took another trip to the TechShop to do some welding.  I welded four tabs on the frame with 1/4″ holes in them to mount the shelf. Here’s a somewhat blurry iphone pic showing the tabs:

Tabs on moto frame

One of the issues with the shelf was fitting it under the gas tank shell.  You can kind of see from this picture that the back of the tank shell sticks out towards the front of the bike:

Another shot of the cut up tank.

Luckily, the shelf is higher than the lip of the tank shell, so it actually sticks back to the back of the tank.

Here’s a series of pics trying to figure out what the size and shape of the shelf would look like.  First was some cardboard…

Insomnia sucks

So it’s 3:52 AM and I woke up about an hour ago.

Insomnia blows chunks specially when you’re completely OCD about a project and options for the “next step” are swimming around your head making it impossible to go back to sleep.

Maybe I’ll head into the garage for a bit…

Could the welding finally be done?

So, today i went a-welding again. Maybe for the last time on the project! I welded tabs onto the frame to mount the sheet of aluminum that holds the electronics, as well as made one major modification of the battery frame because there was one section that was too short.

The only pic i have so far is this one that I was using to show the “thinking stool” over at elmoto.net (http://www.elmoto.net/showthread.php?678-show-us-your-THINKIN-stools!-(again…))…

Werkstatt Photos

So, I never got around to putting up the photos from the TTXGP race day.  In any case, Jen Bromme from Werkstatt just popped up over at elmoto.net, so i figured i’d put up the photos of her and her team from the race.

The finish line photo was used by mavizen on the front page of their website for a while.

Electronics Mounting

Well, every day brings a little more progress, which is good.  The current issue is how to mount the electronics to the motorcycle frame.

I have a sheet of 1/8″ aluminum that i’ve cut to the right size, but still the issue is how to make sure i can create and mount stands on the moto frame (or battery frame) that will be secure and strong.

I do have one idea that involves welding tabs onto the moto frame that and then bolting some stands on to the tabs.  If i can, i’ll draw it up.

That’s it for now.

New tires!

So, the bummer about getting a 25 year old vehicle as a donor, is that there’s a lot of stuff you end up replacing.  In this case, i had to get new tires since the old ones were, well….

Bench Testing the Motor

i’ve been trying to bench test the motor to ensure that:

• Everything works
• I know how to wire things without something going “boom”.

Upon the first try, it failed.  I had most everything setup properly,…

An aside…my Nissan LEAF

Or…future Nissan Leaf that is.

I’ve got a LEAF on order.  Hopefully, i’ll get a delivery date in the January 2011 timeframe, but it may be later.

In any case, I had my EVSE installed today,…