end of my relationship with a machine

Not much to look at, but parked out on the street there - almost completely hidden behind the lamp post and my coworker's big Harley - is my wee Honda CBR125R, who I call "Arthur".

I bought him third hand, about two and a half years ago, and since then he's been my work-horse of a bike.  Getting me to-and-fro on my daily commute, weather permitting.  Much like this photo he's done the work in an unobtrusive manner, no drama, no show boating, just head down and getting it done to the best of his abilities.  Which were uncomfortably pushed to their limits once I began riding on the highway rather than sticking to side streets.  His tiny 125cc four stroke can just barely keep up with traffic if I thrash it for every cubic millimeter of power that it can produce.

So it's time for Arthur to be replaced.

Yesterday I took this photo of him from the lunchroom window of the office I work at, to remember the last day I rode him.  I had to drive in my smart car today as the motorcycle insurance swaps over to the new bike, which I'll be picking that up this evening; a shiny new Suzuki V-Strom DL650A ABS.

Arthur will soon be sold to his fourth owner.  Thank you, faithful steed. :)

t.e.r.a. 1st anniversary meet

I attended the first anniversary meet of the Toronto Electric Riders Assoc., at Cafe Uno in the Distillery District.  This morning I decided, 'Heck with it.. my e-bike is more-or-less ride-able - I'll take that.'  I've already worked out a route to take if/when I ride my e-bike to work, and the Distillery District is right on the route, so it seemed like a great test to see if it - and I - could handle the route.

After topping up the batteries and inflating the tires, I was off.  I used My Tracks on my Android to keep a GPS track of my route, there and back again.

With every bump and rock on the trail I was impressed once again with just how HEAVY my bike is.. or may be it's just the shocks that are way too stiff.  "KaTHUNK kaTHUNK kaTHUNK", along the sidewalk gets old real fast. >.<

On the whole it performed quite well:

Trip Down
24.64 km in 1:18
18.87 km/h avg.
37.80 km/h peak

Trip Back
24.10 km in 1:12
19.91 km/h avg.
35.15 km/h peak

For the last kilometre or so on the ride back I was having to pedal assist as the batteries were on their last dregs.  Which is GREAT as now I have a good idea of the bike's range:  48 km apx.  I'm charging the batteries now and timing how long it takes.. see if that'll let me calculate roughly what their Amp Hours are.  It's supposed to be 15 AH, but certainly worth checking.

I now know that if I want to ride my e-bike to work it'll take roughly 1.5 hours, each way.  Which is far slower than riding my motorcycle down in the morning, but about the same as the ride back after work.  And that I'll have to take the charger along to top up the battery pack at the office.

The meet itself was ok.  Chatted with some guys about this-n-that, wandered around the Distillery looking at insanely priced clothing that I'm sure I've seen for sale at Value Village and drank an also very over priced - but GOOD - iced cap.

Here's my horrible abortion of an e-bike, off to one side of the collection of bikes that showed up for the meet.

I saw only one other bike there that actually seemed like a bicycle that was power assisted, rather than an electric scooter with pedals added as an after thought.  Mind you, the pedals on my bike are pretty useless once it gets over 10 km/h.  And the left one fell off on the way home.. some fool forgot to tighten the nuts on the crank arms. -.-

I plan to change that.  I want gears on my bike.. and a bell.. a proper bicycle bell not the "weeenk  weenk" electric horn sound that it currently makes.  Would fit in better on the bike paths that way.

Anyhoo.  A good day to be an e-bike rider! ^_^

Edit:  Oh!  The battery has finished charging.. 2:49.  Nice.  Shouldn't be a problem at all to top up at the office.

e-bike: waiting...

Currently my e-bike project is on "pause" while I wait for packages to arrive and figure out how I'm going to reduce the frame weight.

Package #1 is coming from Taiwan, and is four "LM2596HV DC-DC 4.5-55V Adjustable Power Supply Converter Step-down Modules" from ProDCtoDC.com  I plan to use these, perhaps in conjunction with other electronic components, to convert my battery pack's mighty DC voltage to something that won't fry the other components I want to use in my build.

Package #2 is coming from the US and is a bunch of electronics from SparkFun, including an IOIO board which I plan to use to connect via Bluetooth with an Android phone, to provide a new dashboard for the bike.  I'm going to experiment with various sensors on the board & phone.  I'm also planning to use the IOIO board to help with things like driving the turn signals.. I'll be replacing the stock bulbs with LEDs.

Frame-wise I'm leaning towards getting a small, portable oxy acetylene torch kit and learning to braze bike bits together.  The idea being to scavenge some old, worn out (and cheap!) bike frames for useful and lighter components and assemble a new frame, something like the old one but lighter.

There's a bunch of other things I'd like to try as well:  Rewinding the wheel motor to try and improve it's efficiency, rebuilding the battery pack so it's more aesthetically pleasing, vacuum mould my own plastic body panels, etc., etc.

Hopefully it will keep me amused for a while. :)