steve mareno

Thank you turbo for a very detailed look at this. Great read. Upon thinking things through, I think I see the issue, and it's almost exactly as you decribed. If I were to wire the bike (using a brushed motor) directly from the battery to the "throttle" (a 3 or 4 position switch), then from there to the motor, I'd have to use heavy gauge wire capable of carrying the entire battery output. The throttle switch would also have to be rated for that sort of juice, and the wires from the throttle to the battery would need the same big wire. It might be a little cumbersome, but I could do it.

I'm sure there would be a current loss due to the wires, and another loss because it's a brushed motor. That's a fair tradeoff for what I'm after: a low cost, extremely simple electric bike that can be easily built and maintained by someone w/ even the most minimal electrical knowledge.

There's still a lot of brushed motors out there. Maybe it's old stock, but I see that the E-Zip Trailz bikes sold online from Walmart have those. If I was smart I would just get one of those for $435, put another SLA battery on it, and for around $600 have a bike w/ a realistic a 20-25 mile range. Heavy, but cheap and reliable. But then I'd still have what I consider to be an overly complicated and failure prone bike due to the sealed and unrepairable electronics. I already did that. It worked well, but when that controller burnt up it made me realize that something like that could happen anywhere, at anytime. No like!

One of the reasons I ride a bike is because it's wonderfully simple (and fun, of course). I can repair nearly everything on it. Putting something as simple as a little electric motor on it shouldn't require strong electrical knowledge, and shouldn't require calling tech support in some far off place just to trouble shoot an unrepairable component. That defeats the whole purpose of what's supposed to be a simple machine that's user serviceable.