Daily driver with custom welded batteries, Canadian Tire steel frame, dual heavy duty CNC cut steel torque arms
The frame of my bike is a Schwinn Biggity DLX Men's Hardtail 26x4.0 Mountain Bike from Canadian Tire. I bought this frame entirely with Canadian Tire money points :) This was a really great steel construction. The stock dropouts handed my 2kW motor for 6months before opening. Which is impressive that it lasted that long. Good thing about steel is its ductility so I was able to hammer the rear dropouts back into shape.
Due to the large rotational forces on the dropouts from the hub motor axle, the dropouts can open and release the rear wheel from the bike. This happened to me at 2am in a sketchy area of downtown and I had to walk my bike home for hours :( I have designed two heavy duty torque arms. One for the braking side, and one for the nonbraking side, to ensure that this never happens again. These are 3D models along with engineering drawings that can be given to any CNC service to cheaply construct the part. I used PCBWay to CNC cut my torque arms. These torque arm designs are custom made for the Schwinn Biggity DLX mentioned above. This may work on other bikes, this may not. Please 3D print a model first and check fitment before ordering a steel CNC cut version.
All of these took an extreme amount of trial and error
I think I forgot to take a picture of this torque arm when it came in. I just installed it and rode, but it looks like the 3d print above and has the screw to tighten onto the axle like the next torque arm.
found pic
I am using the controller that came with my motor kit. I have a Kunteng 18 mosfet 45A controller. I have gone through about 4 of these bad boys while experimenting with them. I hope no one ever has to light their money on fire like I did. So please learn from my mistakes.
I have applied Sprayon EL609 Green Insulating Varnish on my ebike controller and 48V-12V DC-DC converter. The controller doesnt fit in my bike, so I have to take the circuit board out of the metal case. This varnish helps ease my mind that there wont' be any water damage. I've never encountered water damage in my boards. They usually die from me mis-wiring some new feature. The built in LED light signal in the controller only delivers 5v 0.1a or something. So if you actually connect a light you will burn it out like I did multiple times. I am in the process of coming up with a circuit to use that signal to drive a 12v power mosfet. I want to be able to power my RGB LEDS using the controller button. I will likely make a prototype first, and then a proper PCB design. Not sure on ETA as it is a minor detail.
https://www.sprayon.com/product/el609-green-insulating-varnish/
I have 3 battery packs that I've welded up for this bike. I use the K-Weld spot welder powered by some super high power lipo batteries. I think they are graphene lipo batteries but I'd have to pull them out to be sure.
