I am having a great passion towards making electric scooters or motorcycles. I designed my first electric scooter over 5 years ago from a kick stand scooter, it became a basic stand up electric scooter with a 24 volt 500 Watt motor with lead acid batteries. At the beginning it was a nice toy that I only drove couple of times around my house, then I parked for years, the story begins 4 years afterwards when I had to sell my car for several years, and all I had was a lovely bicycle that got me around the neighborhood all soaked in sweat. Living the frustration between not having a car, and hiring cabs to get around for longer distances, it came to my mind "Why wouldn't I develop my stand up scooter to be a reliable transportation vehicle?" and I started sketching some drawings to upgrade my baby into a convenient thing.
The sketches soon turned into reality, I welded a bicycle seat onto my scooter, I bought new tires (as the old ones were very old. I bought two 18 Ampere hour lead acid really heavy batteries! and gave a nice ride around the block for testing.
Streets in Cairo and in Egypt in general are very bumpy, uneven and you can step into any hole easily. The wheels of the scooter were too small (around 12 inches), and I punctured my tires several times hitting holes, bumps, and nails. I forgot to mention that I did not have any suspension, and the Scooter weighed 25 Kilos and I weighed 92 Kilos ending up with a 117 Kg electric scooter, yes I was happy with the speed that hit around 35 Kilometers per hour, but It was not as reliable as I thought. I missed outings, meetings and other things because I punctured my tires.
I got really frustrated and on my one last ride on this design I cracked my front forks, and definitely this was it. the finale, I needed the change, I need the improvement, I needed the reliability.
I was also happy with the range as it was around 20 Kilometers, but I also always wanted to achieve longer ranges. So basically it was time to re-engineer and upgrade some things. I also forgot to mention that I used rear wheel U bicycle brakes that were almost ineffective and dangerous as they hardly stopped the scooter.
I replaced my front custom made forks with a 24" wheel bicycle front forks, and I welded a box section pipe between the seat pipe and the front end, I also welded a support for a bicycle disc brake caliper, and added a disc brake on the rear wheel. I also replaced my two 12 Volt 18 Amp batteries with 4 12 Volt 12 Amp hour that extended my range a little up to 27 Kilometers. I made my mods in a workshop that I own (curently out of business) near the place where I work today, it was quite challenging to go and spend some time in the workshop as it is far from home and I use a car pooling service that is provided by my recruiter, so I had to pay a cab all the way back home, and I had to go there after working hours, so the target basically was to apply the mods in the least time possible and number of visits as it was costly to spend a week or two doing this. So this was basically the reason for not really doing everything I wanted to do with the scooter, so I didn't ad rear suspension and I assumed that the front suspension would improve things and it did, but still a rear one would definitely would be the ultimate solution for me.
I added a small dashboard with a key to switch my scooter on and off , and a digital meter showing the voltage of the batteries, and would give me a rough indication about my range.
To be continued:
Old scooter pictures
New scooter design sketches
A hand thoughtful of accessories.
New power and range
A better charging unit..
The sketches soon turned into reality, I welded a bicycle seat onto my scooter, I bought new tires (as the old ones were very old. I bought two 18 Ampere hour lead acid really heavy batteries! and gave a nice ride around the block for testing.
Streets in Cairo and in Egypt in general are very bumpy, uneven and you can step into any hole easily. The wheels of the scooter were too small (around 12 inches), and I punctured my tires several times hitting holes, bumps, and nails. I forgot to mention that I did not have any suspension, and the Scooter weighed 25 Kilos and I weighed 92 Kilos ending up with a 117 Kg electric scooter, yes I was happy with the speed that hit around 35 Kilometers per hour, but It was not as reliable as I thought. I missed outings, meetings and other things because I punctured my tires.
I got really frustrated and on my one last ride on this design I cracked my front forks, and definitely this was it. the finale, I needed the change, I need the improvement, I needed the reliability.
I was also happy with the range as it was around 20 Kilometers, but I also always wanted to achieve longer ranges. So basically it was time to re-engineer and upgrade some things. I also forgot to mention that I used rear wheel U bicycle brakes that were almost ineffective and dangerous as they hardly stopped the scooter.
I replaced my front custom made forks with a 24" wheel bicycle front forks, and I welded a box section pipe between the seat pipe and the front end, I also welded a support for a bicycle disc brake caliper, and added a disc brake on the rear wheel. I also replaced my two 12 Volt 18 Amp batteries with 4 12 Volt 12 Amp hour that extended my range a little up to 27 Kilometers. I made my mods in a workshop that I own (curently out of business) near the place where I work today, it was quite challenging to go and spend some time in the workshop as it is far from home and I use a car pooling service that is provided by my recruiter, so I had to pay a cab all the way back home, and I had to go there after working hours, so the target basically was to apply the mods in the least time possible and number of visits as it was costly to spend a week or two doing this. So this was basically the reason for not really doing everything I wanted to do with the scooter, so I didn't ad rear suspension and I assumed that the front suspension would improve things and it did, but still a rear one would definitely would be the ultimate solution for me.
I added a small dashboard with a key to switch my scooter on and off , and a digital meter showing the voltage of the batteries, and would give me a rough indication about my range.
To be continued:
Old scooter pictures
New scooter design sketches
A hand thoughtful of accessories.
New power and range
A better charging unit..
No comments:
Post a Comment