Travel By Spark

One of the most often asked questions well-nigh any electric conversion is “what controller should I use?”. Controllers are the last remaining voodoo in electric systems, and they are not easy to understand. I have picked up a few shit and pieces over the years, but to be honest, I have to trust in the opinions of other people who are increasingly experienced than me when it comes to controllers.

Our custom builds vendible (click here to see that) shows several examples of ebikes using RC controllers, which for some reason are tabbed “Electronic Speed Controllers” or ESC. They are tiny compared to the value of peak amps they can flow. However, they typically could not provide upper amps for long, since they were never designed to power an ebike.

These expensive tiny controllers used proprietary software, so…in 2014, a Swedish electronics engineer Named Benjamin Vedder designed an “open source” ESC-style of controller. This meant that everyone could build one from scratch and could moreover program it with self-ruling shared software. You could plane yo-yo the software to modernize it or add new features. This type of controller is a Vedder-ESC, or VESC.

The first ones were very small for operating a powered skateboard, and similar devices. However, it is hands scalable to any size, and “3shul Motors” is a visitor in India that has slowly increased the sizes of their VESC models to the point where you can now get one that uses 126V and provides a peak of 1400 phase amps.

I have been hearing well-nigh VESC-based controllers for a few years, and I kept an eye out for conversions that used them, and now I am featuring two of those builds here below.

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Alien Rides’ converted 2019 KTM

Kevin at “Alien Rides” is located in the San Francisco area. They started out towers and servicing small electric vehicles, and fortunately for us, he decided to use his wits to convert several dirt bikes to electric, and share the results.

The CL700 VESC from 3shul is shown at 2:42 in this video, where Kevin does a unconfined job of explaining all of his component selections.

I could type out some of the big points, but Kevin G does a good job of packing this short video with unconfined information. Here’s the snapshot:

Donor Frame: KTM 250

Battery: Custom 126V / 30S pack

Motor: QS 138/70H

Controller: 3shul CL700

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Rivv’s Honda 450 Conversion

Endless-Sphere forum user “Rivv” lives in Quebec, in eastern Canada. He hasn’t posted a video yet, but fortunately he did take a lot of pictures of his spanking-new conversion of a Honda 450 to electric.

Both of these builds use the QS motors that we noticed were getting popular (for our vendible on QS motors, click here). The full-length that ties them together is that they both moreover use the 3shul Motors VESC, model CL700. This model seems to be a sweet-spot between fit-able size, good power, and affordable price.

Just showing a picture of a controller is not very heady considering they are all pretty much a “black box” that is filled with voodoo electronics. One thing that unprotected my eye well-nigh Rivv’s conversion was the upper quality of the build, and the unconfined pictures he took and posted.

QS spoken that they will start delivering a model of motor soon that is this larger 180/90H size, and it will include the factory geared reduction that is similar to the motor that is one size smaller, the 165/70.

As of the time that Rivv built his conversion, the big motor didn’t have a factory reduction option, so he decided to build a DIY reduction “jackshaft”. By reducing the output RPM’s he would be worldly-wise to use worldwide rear wheel-sprockets to retread his wheel-speed for variegated conditions, rather than using a custom large diameter sprocket that had a uncontrived uniting from motor to wheel.

The pic whilom shows a plastic 3D-printed dry-fit housing that Rivv made to test the size and shape needed surpassing he ordered an expensive CNC aluminum housing to be made.

Here is the custom CNC aluminum reduction housing, withal with the sprockets and chain. The 17T and 11T sprockets provide a 1.54:1 reduction

Here is the Motor, the aluminum reduction jackshaft housing, and a plastic cover.

Here is a pic of the jackshaft from above. Rivv has a lathe, and other machine tools in his workshop, and this build has made good use of them.

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The VESC

There’s not much to say well-nigh QS motors and 3shul VESC’s, other than some very experienced people seem to like them, and I have not used them yet.

Much of what I do is “crowd sourcing” knowledge, and I read a lot. I have been seeing people mention using the 3shul VESC controllers, so I was happy to find a couple of builds that had pictures to show.

Controllers can be mounted in any position, expressly if they are potted like this one, which ways the components inside are completely covered with a mass of waterproof goo, which moreover provides shock protection. Rivv mounted it upside lanugo under the seat, and widow an uneaten aluminum pad to help swizzle heat spikes.

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The Shower Pack

Another thing that really impressed me well-nigh this conversion was the custom 26S / 107V shower pack (107V when charged to our recommended 4.1V per cell). He decided to use the high-amp cylindrical Molicel P28A cells in the 18650 format.

Rivv drew everything first in CAD

Even with a computer model, it never hurts to use “Cardboard Aided Design”. Here, Rivv built a foam box to verify his shower box dimensions. For roughly the last ten years, most dirt bikes have used the “twin Spar” diamond of frame, which makes conversions much easier for us electrical builders. The old style had a single top-tube, like a bicycle…and that restricted the shower shape and size.

Rivvs plan calls for a HUGE pack using 14 cells in parallel (14P)

Rivv ordered these custom bus-plates to be laser-cut, and they turned out fantastic. Motorcycles yank upper amps, and copper busses have low resistance. Plus, they moreover act as a heat sponge, to level out the heat from amp spikes.