You would figure that I would learn my lesson about posting new topics, but brain damage got me again. My apologies.

The Robot Cantina Channel has a bunch of projects that could be adapted to all sort of projects for vehicles and small scale farm equipment. In their recent videos, they did some tests with an engine running an alternator, which then powered an electric golf cart. They posted an update indicating they made a mistake with the figures and actually got much better fuel mileage than they originally posted. This short video tells the story:



You can go back and see the build videos as well as previous experiments that led this far. It is pretty impressive that it isn't quite as inefficient as one might think to convert to electricity and back. I particularly like that by only tethering the engine by wires instead of a drivetrain, you can put the engine wherever it makes sense for stability and different configurations you don't normally see.

For instance, I'm thinking of a 6x6. Something that can reach those otherwise inaccessible areas or pull a structure on skids. You can tuck a larger engine down low in the center and run 3 larger alternators, with each set up as a separate system for each axle. If uptime is critical then you mostly need to stock a handful of items that could be swapped out in the field.

Or something more lightweight like a reverse trike. There are lots of designs less common in the US that are already well suited to carrying cargo, and there is potential to carry more with a trailer. Adding a standard ebike kit would allow for quieter usage without the engine running. It should be possible to get a trimmer motor, and a small alternator and power an ebike motor, perhaps even be able to use one motor and switch between power sources.

Or maybe you need something more along the lines of an oversized powered wheel barrow, or something that can tow equipment around. I really like the DIY aspect of people grabbing what they already have and seeing what they can make work. It could be used with a biodiesel engine or even powered with wood gas. You could modify the vehicle design so the gasifier isn't fighting for space since the engine can be mounted almost anywhere. The sky is the limit, and I'm sure we will see more updates with the project they currently have going.

It appears that there are 2 valve covers side by side on an inline 6 cylinder engine. The exhaust cam cover would be the one on the passenger side. The intake cover probably needs the gasket replaced as well. Fortunately it seems to be aluminum, so it shouldn't have any issues with warping like plastic parts of similar vintage. A head gasket replacement would involve the timing belt, deck and cylinder head flatness, and a whole bunch of other issues you probably wouldn't or couldn't address with the engine in the car. You should be good without going that far.

I'm a bit late to the party, but I found out that many O'Reilly's parts store have a brake lathe. It's almost always cheaper and no waiting days on shipping. It's so rare for people to shave them down anymore that most of the time you will have plenty of thickness left to shave them smooth. I've brought more than a dozen pairs of rotors there over the past couple of years.

The stuff in the other post and what I linked is not a paver, it's similar in price to the fabric. I don't think the fabric alone is going to stop gravel from migrating sideways. Especially in places where the ground below is already reasonably hard, you may not need the fabric, just the cells to hold the gravel in place. It seems to me like the same money but more effective. I haven't actually used this first hand, but I've seen it used a number of times and appears to work better than a lot of other options. Hopefully someone in the other thread gets back with more info.

There is stuff called Geo Cell that is made specifically to reinforce ground so that when the large weight of a vehicle rolls over it, the material can't squish out sideways. It can be found on Amazon and similar places. Given that the tires of heavier vehicles usually aren't rolling over every square inch, you don't absolutely need to do the entire width of the road, only a bit wider of an area than where the tires make contact and cause potholes. I've also seen people do DIY versions of this with various pipes, cans, or whatever else they had on hand. It would be nice if there was something made from a plant based plastic or something, but I didn't find anything like that.

You can also find or make it in various thicknesses. Given the issues with bedrock being close to the surface, it might be beneficial to go a bit thicker and add more gravel so there is sufficient room for water to go through and not create puddles. It can have issues when installed on slopes, but if your main problem is in the flat areas then this might be the way to go.

EDIT - I guess the other thread that you dug up has more information on this.

I haven't used Windows regularly in 10 years, so I'm not completely up to date with some things, like changes to the names of things and specific directions of how to navigate, so I'm relying on the internet for information.

For the desktop application, the first thing would be to check out the Start Menu > Control Panel > Programs and Features to see if it is showing up as still installed. Not showing up there doesn't mean there aren't files left behind from the original install that could complicate things when trying to install a new version, but if it does show up you could try to uninstall from there. When 'Programs and Features' isn't showing it as installed, try installing the new version. If anything happens that you didn't expect, or things you expect don't happen, or get any errors, you can post them back here for more specific help.

One wrinkle I found to this was a Reddit post saying the program was running in the background but they couldn't find it. I'm guessing here that it is possible for it to run at startup but have the icons/buttons go missing. So it would appear like it had been removed when it is actually running in the background, yet you wouldn't be able to access it or reinstall. You could try doing what they did ("use search spotlight to get to activity monitor, then force quit from there, then you can uninstall"), and hopefully this will allow you to install once the program stops. Here is the link:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Grammarly/comments/q76a8i/help_uninstalling_current_version_of_grammarly/

Can you give more info on the system, specifically the OS and browser? I haven't used it but I know my mother uses it in Firefox on Linux Mint. I'd imagine it can work similarly on Windows. I have no idea about mobile.

I have vines growing up the side of my house and they grow decent tubers at the base. In other areas where they grow along the ground, each node where a leaf comes off the vine is capable of sending roots down. I'd imagine if you let it go wild with putting down roots everywhere you would end up with lots of smaller sweet potatoes.

I have grown most of mine in large makeshift containers that get a lot of shade in the summer and the vines grow out in to the sun. I will often pick them up and move them to the side to cut down the grass and weeds underneath so they don't get as much of a chance to put roots down as the vines spread out. I've gotten some large sweet potatoes this way, but I haven't actually measured the yield to see which way gives more overall weight.

I'm also no expert and only grow for personal use. They grow really easy in my location where I don't have to do much to take care of them.

After watching the latest sixtyfiveford video I figured I would give an update here. Apparently he got a pre-release model of a battery adapter system for power tools. The batteries use high quality Molicel cells, and the adapters are much smaller than others, only requiring about an extra ~1/4" or 6-7mm. He does a full review and it looks really good. The most important part to me is what he says at the end. He says products like these force the tool manufacturers to just make better tools, instead of locking you in to 'their' batteries, charging a premium.

It makes sense to me. People generally don't buy cars or electronics from the makers of batteries. Let the car, electronics, and tool companies make their stuff and let the battery people do their thing. Especially since most things are already standardized, and many factories are coming online to pump out cells whether anyone likes it or not, I like the idea of battery experts doing their thing and reducing waste, eliminating vendor lock-in, and forcing the tool companies to make good tools. Not just 1 or 2 flagship products and then a bunch of poorly made stuff to fill gaps because people are stuck on a proprietary connector.

The product hasn't come out, so I can't personally say if it is good or not, but it seems really decent and I love the idea. Maybe one day we will just have one connector for each voltage, and perhaps keying so low amperage batteries won't slide in to high current tools. Anyway, here is the video:

For a long time I had been wanting to try my hand at making my own Hiroshima-style Okonomiyaki and I finally tried it out a few weeks ago. The best part is that you can tweak things how you like or to use what you have on hand and it is pretty versatile. Making it for breakfast means you can add it in to your more of your meals and have an option to use cabbage in a different way. I also made it up in a huge batch and froze several meals worth that could be defrosted and reheated in a pan. I haven't yet tried to make the sauce, but I was really happy how it turned out without it.

Edit - I was thinking where I first heard about Okonomiyaki and it turns out the same YouTube channel just dropped a video on Hiroshima. He tries his hand at making his own starting around the 7 minute mark:

Thank you! I know there are some quirks and a few things about the manual that don't seem to line up, but it's been working well for me. My posts tend to get very long-winded, and I do that in hopes that people who come across them through searches can have as many details as I can give. I'm going to gather more notes about the setup and organize them into slightly more digestible chunks.

Sadly with all of the different connectors and proprietary setups, it likely won't be 'plug and play' to connect this to just any ebike. It can be made to work in a lot of cases if you are determined enough. I currently have XT-60 connectors on all of my 36V batteries, and will likely move up to XT-90 connectors for higher voltage packs to avoid any mistakes, as well as making use of the higher current handling capacity.

I'm hoping to eventually get to a point where I have a 48V electric trike that doubles as a power source using an inverter. As an individual who has spent a lot of time minimizing my personal power consumption, it's usually the occasional task requiring a bunch of power tool usage that eats up more energy than almost anything else in my life. For me it makes a lot of sense to have a cargo trike with an oversized battery that can occasionally haul stuff, go on a longer trek, or act as a power source that I can roll wherever I need it. With it being a secondary form of transportation, it can sit around for a few days and charge up slowly. As I keep moving forward I will update things and make more threads to show what I have going on. There are lots of ways of going about using ebikes and solar power. My successes can probably help other people with their goals, and maybe it can spark a few ideas that can be shared back to the community.

There is an interesting boost converter style of solar charge controller that I have seen a number of people use and I had been wanting to test this out for a while. The brand is Elejoy (although I see some for sale with the brand name removed) model number: EL-MU400SP. The 400 meaning 400 (ish) watts of power with 200W and 300W versions also available. Since the price tends to fluctuate wildly at times and the higher power model is often not significantly more expensive, I went for the high power handling model.

To give a good idea of what I have, here is a page from the Grin Technologies Ebike website:

https://ebikes.ca/shop/electric-bicycle-parts/solar/adjustable-400w-boost-mppt.html

I need to point out first that this is a boost converter, meaning it takes a certain voltage input and bumps up the output voltage. Because of the way this operates, you need to have at least a couple of volts difference between the input and output. If the voltage of the solar panel is 23V, then the output would need to be set at ~25V or above. I believe it has protection to stop it from attempting to charge when the voltages get too close, but I haven't exercised that part of the device yet. In the future I will go over the manual and some of the finer details of how this thing operates.

I picked up a pair of 100 watt panels for under $120 and can use them in parallel with my 36V nominal battery (42V fully charged, or commonly referred to as 40V for tool batteries). If I move up to a 48V or 52V system, I could put the panels in series. This would allow for lower current at the same given power, which means less voltage drop between the panel and the charge controller. Given that it boosts the voltage, if you need to have a longer run of wire for whatever reason it might be better to lengthen the output side of things. That being said, you also want to protect this from rain or being overheated by the sun, so having the option to use a higher input voltage can certainly be useful.

There is another important point I want to bring up about boost converters. The way they operate is to charge an inductor and then shut off the charge. This causes the inductor to deplete itself as fast as it can, causing a reverse voltage spike. The circuit controls how fast it can charge and deplete. Since it is made for solar panels with blocking diodes, this works fine. I saw some online threads and YouTube comments of people attaching their boost convert to a bench power supply and destroying the power supply, or to a battery for the input and having issues. Myself and a number of other people have had no issues using a solar panel for input as intended, so I would strongly recommend using it with solar only. I'm putting this here both to save anyone down the road some grief, as well as to address anyone who does a search and sees someone claiming to have X years experience and are upset they let the magic smoke out of an expensive power supply.

One last important quirk to mention is that this (and likely other) boost converter style charge controllers are powered by the solar panel. If solar isn't connected, or doesn't have sufficient power to operate the controller then it will shut off. It isn't powered by the battery, so it isn't broken if it fails to light up when a battery is connected to the output. It holds the settings so when solar power resumes it can pick up where it left off.

I will have to come back to this another time and go over more details, but my favorite feature is being able to dial in the voltage. I have always been a fan of not pushing my cells to the extremes of 100% or under 20% charge when I can. I have to charge all the way to top balance the cells occasionally, but not every single time. This has been a huge problem with my wall chargers, as they have no built in way to stop charging where I want them. I have also had issues with them cutting out before the BMS could balance the cells and the first pack I built had one cell drift a fair bit away from the rest. This is a huge topic that I will have to dive in to another time, but I can choose to stop it around 80% or I can measure the voltage at the cell and perhaps dial in 42.2V or 42.3V to make up for the voltage drop and get a full balance charge. Even if the cells reach 4.23 volts a couple times a year, it wouldn't be overcharged to the point of being dangerous, and the lower charge between balancing will greatly extend the battery life. I have had great luck with used cells in the packs I built and little loss of capacity after years and a few thousand miles on them. This charge controller can help me step up my charging game and further extend the life of my batteries while using the sun for power.

The knock-off Wago connector on the one side immediately broke, which worked out fine since I wanted to add a fuse and XT-60 connector. On the input I have a wire with MC-4 connectors to attach to the solar panels. On the output side I made a crude connection, but it works. The blue tape has electrical tape and soldered wires underneath. Heat makes the electrical tape adhesive ooze out and come unraveled, and I find the blue tape holds up much better when I need a quick semi-permanent fix.

Things have progressed a lot with the trike this past week. There was a fair bit of struggle trying to build things from scratch, and as mentioned before I had to limit the scope of certain changes. Part of it was to limit how much time is sunk in to this one project, and some of it was simply my lack of welding skills. I've gotten a bit better but still have a ton to learn. My main issue which seems to be common is fixturing. I used whatever C-clamps and magnets I could find at the moment and dove in. Having more clamps, magnets, right angle jigs, and a proper table to work on would have helped tremendously, as well as better stock. None of that was in the cards, so I just did what I could.

I'm mostly happy with the outcome. The brake setup worked out way better than I thought it would. It didn't take much time to get it work. I was fortunate that the one part of the bracket was close enough that I simply needed to make a caliper bracket out of a flat piece of steel, and the built in adjustments were enough to get it lined up tight. I got the motor in really close to the axle which I'm guessing will help avoid chain issues, and not protruding too far back. I made a chain tensioner to help keep the motor from torquing the bracket out of square, however I haven't given it a full test yet. It may need a bit more reinforcement, but I'm hoping not to need to redo the entire bracket.

My first test across the yard without a tensioner showed that it does work, and it does absolutely need the tensioner. I saw in advance that the chain might slap the frame to the axle and put something on to protect it. The chain got loose but never came off, so hopefully the tensioner is enough. I took it all apart to make the tensioner which I finished yesterday, and next I need to get it painted. It's my least favorite part of any project, but I don't have any other viable options at this time. I also need to paint the basket and eventually the battery box when I get that finished. I'm doing everything I can to avoid painting any more parts. Once I get things closer to completion I will take more pics to show exactly how it works.

I spent entirely too much time trying to remove rust from the basket, wheels, and various parts. On the one hand I really wish I never got involved in burning so much time on it, and on the other hand I'm glad I am able to get this project nearing completion instead of scrapping everything. Maybe I should have tried something like vinegar, molasses, or Evapo-Rust, but it's too late now. The battery box and painting will eat up a few days time that I'll never get back, but I'm this far in and the test ride yesterday definitely helps me see that the end is in sight.

As long as the structure you are building off of is solid then it should be fine. Here in the Southeastern US there are plenty of houses with porches built that way. Because of hurricanes we use strapping to tie everything together. I've built plenty of them. We would put a ledger board on the existing structure to set our rafters on. The outer corners are 4x4's and a header on top, with more supporting 4x4's in between for longer spans.

Given that the structure is solid with no racking, and the roof is properly nailed off to avoid racking, you shouldn't need much or any diagonal bracing. The only caveat being if there is no foundation under the 4x4 posts. Even if you don't want to dig and set piers, it might be a good idea to dig a bit at the surface to remove any organic matter in the soil (if needed) so it doesn't sag over time. Fill, tamp down, and level off as needed. I wouldn't try this in any place prone to strong winds, but otherwise it should work. If you are also using 2x6's as sort of 'ladder rungs' for storing lumber, then that mitigates the bottom of the posts shifting towards or away from the building. Perhaps find something to keep the bottom of the post from shifting side to side such as driving a piece of rebar in to the ground. As long as they are kept from going side to side then there isn't anywhere for it to go but up. Once loaded down with wood it would take tremendously strong wind to pull it up. It will be a fair bit of work, but when you need storage, nothing else can replace it. Good luck!

As an update to the previous video I posted, there was some testing of the tarps as well as a cheaper and less toxic method of waterproofing. It's always nice to see update videos like this.

To add on to what has already been said, there are now not only much cheaper solar panels, but you can find bifacial solar panels for not much more money. These panels are designed to produce some amount of energy from light hitting the back side of the panel. This makes them useful for projects where they aren't flat close to a surface like a roof. It's particularly beneficial for any situation where you have a few feet or more behind the panels. It also can make more power for installations facing more towards the east or west.

While my current PV solar plans can't make good use of the bifacial panels, I can certainly see one good use in my situation. Here it is incredibly hot, and very humid largely due to the extreme amount of evaporation that occurs. I've noticed a large difference in vegetation when it has a good amount of shade through part of the day. You can often find a lot more growth along walls and fences than out in the open with no shade. Planting my sweet potato plants so the root zone stays in the shade as the sun gets higher in the sky and letting the roots grow out to the sunny areas seems to keep them very happy.

I could potentially do some sort of agrivoltaic system with either panels facing east and/or west and providing a bit of shade to the ground while making power, or put them higher up off the ground to cast a shadow behind them and plant vine plants like watermelon or sweet potato so the root zone is shaded during the worst part of the day, all while making more power than I would with standard panels. This is particular to my area, but any situation that has you using panels with space behind them to capture either direct or reflected light can increase the total power output using bifacial panels.

I've had some thoughts about hugels lately where it seems like there is a minimum critical mass. Below a certain threshold, the effort invested might never be regained. For instance, there is a ratio of diameter to volume that changes massively as diameter increases. With logs acting as a sponge, having logs be both large and numerous will vastly increase the ability of a hugel to absorb and then release water. The same number and length of 4" logs won't be half the volume of 8" logs, but rather only one quarter. If a place is particularly dry then below a certain amount of sponge action it won't be enough to keep up. If it is compounded by getting a lot of rain at once then the sponge may not be able to absorb enough to make it until then next rain.

Another thing is erosion. The surface area to volume problem also applies, even if it is a bit more difficult to calculate the volume of a rough hugel shaped mound compared to a log. Below a certain size, the yearly erosion may be significant enough to render it ineffective in a short time, whereas a hugel over your head is likely to still be a substantial earthwork for years to come even without maintenance. The effort of building and maintaining one that isn't able to retain enough water may be more effort than it is worth, and that gets compounded if the location is such that there is no room for it to erode down and spread out a bit without being obligated to address the issue. Obligation is poison and future person may resent past person for giving them that burden.

Obviously there are tons of factors to consider. In my area of sand, lots of rain, and no freeze cycle, things in the ground quickly get broken down by fungi, carried off by bugs, or washed deep below the top soil. Massive hugels can still work, but even they aren't going to be as long lived around here. Perhaps properties with much more clay and protection from erosion can make good long term use of them. Rain isn't an issue, but the rain we get is created by evaporation. Mitigating evaporation and erosion would be more important than the sponge factor for me because it rains so frequently. Of course in the long term the sponge factor would likely break down very quickly, so oversizing for that would be important if I don't want to have to rebuild it in a few years. The only redeeming factor for me is that sand is very easy to dig.

One other thing I think about regularly is in one of the early podcasts where Paul talked about mulching, and how if you can only afford so much mulch, then it is better to have deep mulch over a smaller area than too thin mulch over a larger area. Having a few very happy plants is likely to be an easier time than a bunch of sad plants. There's a certain critical mass there too. It might be different depending on the region and the plants involved. Sad plants will always struggle, content plants will be ok in fair weather and sad in poor weather, and really happy plants will be bountiful through good times and bad.

To come at this from another angle to give some other context that might resonate with some is a thing I have heard on Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcast. There are the select few times in history where a smaller group manages to defend against or fight off a vastly larger opponent. Those stories get told and retold in books and movies thousands of years later, but those are very much the exception and not the rule. By most historical accounts, the larger army almost always wins. Sometimes there is an obsession with quality and picking through the finer details of things, and it can certainly be for good reason, but as Dan Carlin says, "Quantity has a quality all its own."

The next few parts to the trike build are rather time consuming. I need to clean up all of the wheels. Since I'm not mounting the battery under the rear basket, I can focus on just making a bracket for the motor, brake caliper, and build in a trailer hitch. Building the battery is a tedious task. I've had a bunch of other tasks that I needed to complete in order to be able to do some of these parts of the project.

Having to reinvent the wheel several times over is much more time consuming than rebuilding an entire car. With a car, if you have the skills and the tools, you generally don't have to worry too much about the fitment of pieces, or if one change is going to cause a chain reaction of throwing everything out of position. You simply get the parts, install according to the manual, and that's it. This is where a lot of people customizing cars can get in trouble, where trying to get the 'best' components for several parts ends up making the car louder, or narrower power band, or the suspension too hard or unwieldy, and can end up with a worse car and an empty wallet.

That's part of the reason why I'm not going all in with every change I can think of on one build. It's easy to add weeks worth of work figuring things out, undoing work you did previously because of changes to plans, and it can get expensive fast. As the old saying goes, discretion is the better part of valor.

A big time sink has been getting all of my tools together and in shape to do what I need. I'm going to need to weld to make parts for the motor bracket and battery box. I probably haven't used my welder in over a decade. I got a new spool of better quality wire than whatever I got from Harbor Freight. I opened it up and got all of the dust out and the power cable that I had upgraded wasn't seated in the bushing properly, so I got that fixed.

The batteries in the welding helmet went bad and I happened to have a pair of new batteries to replace the old ones. You can solder them in place, but since I had the spot welder, I decided to try that out on a real project for the first time and it works really well. You have to clean all of the surfaces, otherwise oils from your fingers or from manufacturing will cause issues, but I was prepared for that. I might need more rubbing alcohol by the time I'm done cleaning all of my cells.

And boy do I have a lot of cells! I am going to go ahead and get my spare fat bike battery put together, the battery for this trike build, and the battery for the next trike build. Fortunately I had gotten all of the cells pretty close to where they needed to be voltage wise a few months back, and they all held their charge well. But I still had to triple check everything. Plus with the better multimeter, I can get the charge much more accurate. The first battery has 60 cells, the second 80 cells, and the third one has 112 cells, so that was a ton of babysitting and making certain that everything was ready to go. The used packs had some plastic housing pieces that needed to be trimmed, along with bits of metal strip that connected them to the old BMS's that had to be removed, so that too ate up several hours.

Assembling the packs with the new spot welder should go a lot faster than previous builds. I still haven't tried out the nickle strip with cell level fusing. It should work well, but it needs to be cleaned off without wrecking the little pads, as they get caught on things easily and bend out of place. I might build a small tool battery to test it out and get the spot welding power setting dialed in. All of the welding, spot welding, painting, and more is going to take at least another week.

The elementary school I went to was a fairly new building at the time, and while I didn't fully comprehend it back then it was a pretty amazingly advanced place. The windows had tint that was extremely dark to look in but not nearly as dark looking out. Above those windows was a series of smaller windows without tint. There may have been special coatings like you find today to allow visible light through while blocking damaging UV and heating infrared.

The really cool part relevant to this thread was the light shelves. It acts as a shade to the lower window and reflects light through the upper window, bouncing it upward towards the ceiling to add light fairly deep into a room. I can remember many times when the teacher would shut off the lights and do various things to get everyone to calm down a bit after running around outside, and the room felt more than 3/4 as well lit just from the sun.

I believe the light shelves were aluminum, which is highly reflective and probably had a coating to reduce oxidation, and the ceilings were high and particularly white to scatter the light once inside. There was a Mythbusters episode about Indiana Jones myths where they tried getting sunlight deep inside their set where the mirrors worked to get the light in, but it wasn't until Jaime stepped in front of that light beam with his bright white shirt that it scattered the light for better illuminating the space.

I always thought it was an interesting way to do solar lighting inside a house. In a lot of cases, you could probably upgrade a house without having to modify the structural members of the framing. If someone was already looking to upgrade their windows to something more insulating, better UV protection, and a higher impact rating like modern windows have, then it wouldn't be that much more work to plan for a light shelf. If the header is at the top of the wall, you could make the opening larger both up and down without needing a framer, engineer, and more permits and inspections. Or you could do like the school did and add a small window above a regular window. With the right combination of shade, light, and efficient design, you could potentially save a fair bit of energy on lighting and cooling.

With light shelves there are more benefits for warmer climates. Interior rooms without a direct line of sight wouldn't get any light, where the light tube idea would work really well. I guess like most things it depends on a lot of factors like house orientation, roof size, and other factors of the design and location of the house. I could potentially see some sort of manifold that instead of optimizing for the flow of fluid, you optimize for light. Perhaps it is much larger at one end, with a bit sticking down to direct a portion of the light downwards, and then a smaller section to the next angled reflector for the next room and so on. You could even do two coming from opposite ends of a house for morning and evening light.

I couldn't find any pictures that really expressed my understanding of light shelves, but I found a short video that shows the basics of how they work. They seem to make it out like the shade part can't also be reflective, but The Wikipedia Page on Light Shelves says exterior ones are more effective.

I have been doing a bit more digging around to figure out exactly how I want to move forward with solar and charging various size battery packs. I keep finding various tidbits of information that are changing my mind on how I can go about my solar aspirations.

I dug through my YouTube subscriptions and found an old video using a Turnigy charger that is almost exactly the same as my current chargers. The layout, screen, and beeping sounds are identical. I will have to fuss around a bit more with the ones I have, as I remember having an issue where the discharge option for a single cell wasn't working. I also see this Turnigy model has a tiny fan built in that kicks on while discharging, so it may be that my cheaper model doesn't have the parts for this option installed. In any event, the video goes over much more than I could reasonably write in one post, so here it is:

There was a great video posted this weekend of a lumber mill and he mentioned that there is a USDA guide for building and running wood kilns. I searched around a bit over the weekend and saw that as well as a few other PDF's released by different universities that also goes in to details of various types of kilns, including ones that are solar or powered by scraps from the lumber mill.  

There were a few noteworthy things for those who don't want to watch the whole video. They let the wood air dry for months first to let some of the moisture out before kiln drying to avoid case hardening. Once kiln dried, the cells of the wood on the outside collapse and will slow down moisture both from leaving or entering the wood. That means once properly dried it won't be as affected by seasonal change as air dried wood.

The solar kilns have an added benefit that because they don't run constantly, the down time between heating allows the moisture from deeper in the wood to equalize and reduces grain stress and less cracking or warping. I'd imagine the same would be true of the manually operated wood fired kilns. Depending on your goals, it might not be as desirable to have a large mass heated and keeping the temperature constant. I guess it depends on whether you want to dry wood more quickly to move it through and be able to load the kiln up again, or if you prefer the slower method which yields more consistent results. I haven't read through all of the materials available yet, but this video should help point you in the right direction:

I think the best part about a high lift jack is that it is lightweight and portable. If you have off road vehicles or farm equipment, you can keep it on hand and not have to run back and forth to find something more substantial to get unstuck. That portability also helps with fencing, pulling bushes, and other stuff you would be doing out in a field. It can also be used on buildings, but I have a preferred method I use with lumber as it can be made a bit more safe. Sadly every video I have seen on YouTube about this seems to do things in a way I would consider less safe and/or more difficult. I've been seeing it a lot lately, so I might have to make one and take pictures.

In any event, the high lift is a really useful tool, but gets more dangerous the higher you go. If you can build up from stable ground with something substantial enough to support the weight then you can minimize the height you have to lift to and increase safety. It's also nice to have large strong blocks to toss under things as you lift them, so if they do fall they don't have far to go which can help save you and whatever you are working on. I've even scraped the ground for gravel to pile up under wheels or tossed spare tires under vehicles as a way to minimize danger. I saved a bunch of LVL (Laminated Veneer Lumber) cut-offs from when I framed houses and they stay flat and are much stronger than a similar sized hunk of 2" x 12". I have made jack and jackstand bases with them, so you could also make one for a high lift jack if you need something to spread the load on soft ground. LVL is pound-for-pound stronger than steel and the cut-offs usually get thrown away, so you can generally get them from construction sites for free if you ask.

Back in the late 1990's to early 2000's there was an ad from Toyota, often on the back of some of the off road magazines that read, "Scars are tattoos with better stories." No tattoos, but plenty of scars. I have matching scars on the ends of my eyebrows. One from going down with heat stroke, the other from falling and breaking my face, rib, and leg. Apparently my friend found me on the ground and got me up, and I was walking around. I have no memory of anything from 5 hours before to 3 hours after hitting my head. The scars are from pushing the hinge of my glasses into my eyebrow on either side. My best stories aren't related to my scars.

It didn't do it when I purposely tried giving two apples earlier today (in the name of science!), so I was thinking maybe it had something to do with a combination of the saved login, plus the computer being up for several hours and over a dozen tabs going. I believe I can only give out one a day? I'm not completely certain. I just remember hitting it once and it not seeming to register, which had happened with the like button in the past on rare occasion, but I had never seen it jump from none to two like that before. I really don't know much of anything about the web/programming side of things. Plus I've heard of lots of YouTubers recently having login tokens hacked and people fighting against that, so I wasn't sure if recent changes under the hood in Firefox or on websites might be related to the recent slowdowns.

I use Firefox on Linux and have it set to save my tabs, so if I start to notice slowdowns I will finish what I'm doing and shut down Firefox, and if it looks like I still have high RAM usage I will reboot my computer. I've been noticing more slowdowns from the internet in general, so I've been rebooting more frequently to avoid problems.

I'm digging back through stuff and it says I gave out 2 apples on March 7th on this thread:

DIY Steel melting foundry

I have a bit of brain damage, so I was confused when it happened, more confused when I saw this thread, and infinitely confused now! If I'm only supposed to be able to give one apple a day then that thread might be something to look in to.

I managed to get the trike assembled enough to pedal down the driveway, and I forgot how outrageously unwieldy these things are. I haven't forgotten that they are dangerous, but it's been so long since I rode one that I didn't have a firm memory of precisely how much it wants to go belly up. To be fair, I did manage to stuff in a new seat post with a built in suspension which adds to the height. So it was probably set a bit on the high side for my height. Every millimeter you raise the center of gravity feels like it amplifies the danger level by an order of magnitude.

Everything else seemed pretty good. All of the bearings have been cleaned up or replaced. I didn't have the shifter installed which left it in low gear. That plus the much smaller axle gave a lot of mechanical advantage, sacrificing speed substantially. With what I am aiming for, this should work out well. I still have the old sprockets from both trikes which are different sizes and much larger. I'll probably clean the rust off and keep them with the trike in case there is any desire in the future to adjust the gearing.

Beyond lowering the rider height, there is only so much I can do to fix the unstable steering issue. The rake of the front fork is like a bike, but this really doesn't work for a trike. After you turn a certain amount, the weight of the trike and everything on it tries to turn the wheel to a full 90*. If you measure the height at the front trike with the wheel straight, it is taller and goes down as you turn the handlebar. On a bike, you lean in to a turn so you never have to turn the handlebar by a significant amount while going down the road at speed. Since you can't lean in to a turn on a trike, it forces you to turn tighter, which makes the wheel want to go to full 90* and leaves you fighting it. Even if you try to turn it more aggressively and overpower the forces against you, at a certain point the wheel stops rolling and you effectively stop turning as the wheel skids across the surface. This understeer is very much dependent on the speed you are going, and why I chose to lower the gearing of both the pedals and the motor by such a significant amount compared to my bikes.

At least I knew in advance that I was going to have to deal with this, but that test ride has kind of thrown a small wrench in the works. I originally wanted to swap out the front fork for one that is 20" instead of the oddball 24" it came with. This would have lowered the front end slightly, and mitigated part of the steering issue by reducing the angle of the front fork. I could have also gone with a suspension fork and disc brake up front which would have both been huge improvements. Unfortunately I couldn't find any front wheels to fit my needs that were affordable. Most 20" stuff is either for kids bikes, or BMX where they often don't use front brakes. Buying all of the parts to assemble my own wheel with a heavy duty rim and disc brakes plus a fork with a caliper mount was a bridge too far for the budget of this build.

Thankfully I came up with the plan to use the rear coaster brake plus the disc brake on the hub motor, and can still use the original style brake up front. The lower speed may help with the high speed steering issue, but that still leaves the center of gravity issue. I had planned on putting the battery directly on the mounts for the rear basket right above the rear axle. I could have even tried to slide the battery as close to the seat as possible, but that still puts the battery a few inches above the axle center line, and I feel that simply isn't low enough. At best it won't make the handling much worse than it is, but that isn't good enough for me.

That means I will have to go back to the drawing board and come up with something better. A front battery box is way too high, so that's not an option. If the battery were smaller like a typical 10AH - 15AH frame mount battery then it could be mounted to the step-through frame as low as possible. I'm making a larger battery for a number of reasons, including range, voltage drop, and the fact I am using used cells. Doubling the capacity ends up more than doubling the range because of a number of factors like heat and voltage drop. Or maybe I should say after using the larger battery, that trying a battery half the size cut down my range by more than half. So I'm sticking with my 10S8P battery pack size that has worked exceptionally well for me in the past.

That leaves only one option left for placement - below the axle and under the frame of the bike. Given that I can only go so far forward before getting to close to the pedals, and the seat is so far back as to be close to the rear tires, it shouldn't have any issues with bottoming out. The pedals and rear tire will hit most things before hitting the battery box. I'm still going to make it robust enough to protect the battery, and might come up with some sort of suspension. This will both protect the battery from jolts while riding, and also allow the battery a bit of room to move upward if someone were to try the implausible and ram it in to something while risking their legs and the rear tires in the process.

I wish there were easier ways to quantify how unstable 'delta' style trikes are and how various changes affect the stability. I'm always coming across people saying they wish they had one because they think they are more stable. If a kid can ride a trike then it 'should' be easier for an adult, right? If only it were that simple. I've seen a number of other ways to mitigate steering and stability issues, and I hope to explore them further even if I can't justify it for this build. Hopefully some of this information can help others looking at this style of trike. If someone is looking to buy one I recommend finding one you can sit on and ride, even if only for a short distance so you have an idea of what you are getting in to.

I think this might have happened to me the other day. I assumed that I had been on the page long enough that it was just behind and lagged when I first clicked it, and then updated afterwards. The first click did nothing. I waited at least several seconds, clicked again, waited a few more seconds, and then two popped up. Since I had the page open for a bit I wasn't really certain what had happened. I just tried again and didn't see any issue, but I just rebooted my computer and don't have many tabs open at the moment.

I've have also had a lag issue a number of times where the thumbs up wouldn't appear to go through, but I don't recall ever seeing it go up by more than one once it went through. Again, I merely thought it was something on my end not updating quickly.

To continue with the trike build I will go over more of the stuff I have gotten accomplished. One of the big goals from this push is to get me to take more pictures since I am terrible about it. I've been fixing things for decades, and aside from a couple of times I took a picture of a wiring harness to help me remember things or help someone online, I never take pictures. I wish I had taken a picture of the hub motor opened up, but I think the other motor has a loose magnet, and yet another motor had a seal leak with a bit of water getting inside, so I will have more opportunities in the future.

I really dislike how much of a pain paint can be, and one small mistake is enough where it sticks out like a sore thumb and people will look at it as if you might as well have not bothered. And considering how many hours of sanding and prep work and working with toxic garbage it takes, then to have one small mistake negate all of that just plain sucks. This is why I never bother with any of this for personal items, as I don't care. Perhaps in the future I can look into using some sort of dye with flax seed oil as a finish, but those experiments will have to wait for a future project.

In any event, the wheels were in particularly bad shape, so I broke down and got them cleaned up and painted. It was quite the pain to do with the wheel assembled, but would have been even more of a pain to take them apart, and I doubt it would have come out significantly better. I did the rear wheels a while back, and didn't realize I was going to be stuck using the old front wheel until more recently. I wish there was any better option that wasn't going to cost over $100, but it looks like I'm stuck using the front rim brake. There's no point in painting the brake surface, so I'm going to clean it up as best I can and paint the rest. The fork and frame aren't too ugly, so I'm going to leave them as-is.

To limit the scope of this project, I'm also going to leave out the 4S Li-Ion ~12v battery setup and all the lights and accessories that go with it. I'd rather use one of my own bikes as the first test subject. I plan to do that in the coming weeks, but I need to get this project completed before I worry about increasing complexity.

One other wrinkle in this is I would like to set up the axle from the other trike as a little trailer. It's not so much that I want some amazing trailer, as much as I don't want to use that axle for anything else, so I might as well keep it with this trike. If anything goes wrong with any of the wheels or axle on the trike, the trailer can be used for parts to get things back in action for little or no cost. Plus, with the lower gearing and light duty axle, having a trailer to split up a load would be much safer than overloading the trike and bending the axle.

That's about it. I need to put together another battery pack. I opened up my other pack using the same type of cells and was shocked just how little drift there was between cells. I think it was around 8 hundredths of a volt between the highest and lowest cells which is amazing for cells that were used to begin with. Once I get the battery and motor mounting situation complete, it will just be a matter of getting the wires and brakes in place and adjusting everything before setting off on the first test run.

I have a couple of cheap chargers that I have been using that can charge a bunch of different battery types. I have so far only used it to charge 12V lead acid and single ~3.7V Li-Ion cells, but it is capable of charging larger packs up to 6S. The charger is a cheap knock-off. The original model is the SkyRC iMax B6, and there are cheap versions on Amazon. I had bought one a few years ago and it worked out well for my use case. The battery discharge load tester didn't appear to apply any load, and there is a slight difference (a few hundredths of a volt) between the voltage it reads and the voltage at the battery, but it works well enough for my needs. I'd imagine the SkyRC brand of charger might be a bit more reliable. If someone has a particular tool brand that makes a dedicated car charger, that would be a more reliable way to charge from 12V solar as well.

It has a wide input voltage of 11-18V. I have used old 12V wall wart adapters, a car battery, an old wheelchair battery connected to PV solar, and a 4S Li-Ion battery to charge other batteries with no issues. It also says it charges NiCad and NiMH cells up to 15S, but I'm not quite sure how that part works. It doesn't seem to have a setting for choosing how many cells are in series like you can for Li-ion/LiPo.

The main purpose is for RC LiPo batteries that are made to be high power and low weight, so they don't come with a balancing circuit and rely on the charger. More than a few reviews claim that this charger caused damage. I don't know if this would matter for tool batteries with their own BMS, as that should have all the protections in place and take care of things like balancing and over voltage. I know the charger has functioning reverse polarity protection. If the right type of battery isn't recognized due to it being too low in voltage or a disconnected wire, it won't attempt to charge. It also sets off a loud alarm if the battery disconnects or finishes charging.

I will have to look in to trying to charge tool batteries with it and see how it goes. One issue with telling other people to replicate what I am doing is all of the flat out lying with tools, specifically when it comes to power. Generally when I see 5S Li-Ion power tools they are advertised as 20V. But looking at various tools you can find multiple voltages listed when they all are using the same cell technology and number of cells in series. Compound this with older tools using different chemistries, and who knows what might become popular in the future, and it's a giant mess. I was under the impression that most 18V rated tools used NiCad/NiMH, but apparently not all. I can't give a blanket statement of 'this should work' when I don't know what someone else is working with and the advertising is purposely confusing.

I'm currently busy using my chargers to build much larger ebike battery packs, but hopefully next week I can try it out on other tool battery packs and report back on how well it goes.

I just peeked inside my DeWalt 20V battery charger and looked up the specs for one of the electrolytic capacitors. It says the operating temp goes down to -40*C. I figured that might be the part most likely to have a problem with low temperatures, but apparently it can run much lower than the safe charging temperature of 5*C on the low end.

I wrote a much, much longer post about Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, untold billions of dollars of cells that will be produced soon, and the impending doom of that situation if we don't do something to Reduce and Reuse before the Recycle part implodes. But I think that might be better for a different thread at a later time. Suffice to say that I hope more people step up to reuse the massive flood of cells on their way instead of just being angry at bad guys.

I use Linux and just write in whatever basic text editor is installed, in my case FeatherPad. I know there are all sorts of various note taking programs and languages and stuff geared towards typing, but I hen peck. I never got in to typing properly when I was younger and now that I have had multiple injuries to both wrists I find trying to do things the supposed "right way" is uncomfortable. I'm not a keyboard oriented person, and many things in the Linux world are geared towards keyboard-only usage and minimizing time spent using a mouse to increase productivity. It makes sense that a lot of free software is made by people who use computers a lot, so they tend to make tools that benefit how they operate.

I have a rather strong dislike of smart phones so I try to avoid using it for much of anything when I can. I do know some people will email or even text message themselves which can work well for quick reminders. I wouldn't want to have to tap out anything lengthy that way.

As far as backing up information, I really need a better way than manually going to each computer, sorting things out on an external drive, then copying that to other drives incrementally the way I have been. It's much too time consuming. I could send things back and forth across the local network, but that doesn't fix the other issues. It's been years since I looked into special software for that purpose, so hopefully things have gotten better since then.

I'm in the same boat where I have lost stuff in the distant past enough times that I don't rely on any browsers to retain information while typing. I have a habit of writing large tomes of info, and then proofreading can sometimes lead to edits that make the layout seem nonsensical, so I end up reorganizing the whole thing. That's an awfully large amount of time and effort involved just to have it thrown away by a simple error on my part or something on my end having an issue. More important things I will save long term. I guess I've been doing it this way so long that I can't remember the last time I had a problem.

I do remember having a mouse with extra buttons which defaulted to back page which was extremely frustrating. I ended up having to set something up to disable the extra buttons.

I saw this video a while back that seemed pretty amazing (the channel does a lot of amazing stuff so it isn't unbelievable to me) that involves using a method for making your own tarps that are much better than typical plastic tarps. I realize working with this type of stuff isn't high on too many peoples Eco Scale, but I have seen many people leave tarps outside to degrade into billions of micro plastic particles in relatively short time frames which I can't see being any better.



You could use anything from old sheets to a heavy canvas tarp and make it both waterproof and much more long lasting. I realize this doesn't help to fix existing tarps, but it might be an option moving forward to avoid having to fix tarps as much in the future.  I haven't actually tested this one out for myself, but would love to hear feedback from other people if they try it.

I've though about doing this with key limes. I have one I grew from seed outside that got around 3 feet tall before getting citrus greening disease. The thing with key limes and certain other varieties less common in the west is that the leaves also taste like lime. It could be kept small in a greenhouse or possibly even grown as a micro green. The new leaves are delicate and are like natures breath strips. They could also be grown for fruit and appear to have a much shorter time from flowering to fruit ripening. I'd imagine that is mostly due to the very small fruit size.

The only time I got proper fruit set before the tree got diseased it was hardly 2 feet tall, so as long as it gets enough sun it can work. I had repotted it in early spring and it immediately put on flowers and grew fruit. Once they start growing they seem relatively tough. As soon as I realized my trees got disease from other trees around me, I started paying attention and saw that all the citrus anywhere even remotely close to me are diseased. It's been a number of years now and unless someone intervenes and removes the tree, they will hang on for many years and refuse to completely die on their own. This includes wild citrus trees with no one maintaining them. Getting established and having enough sunlight seems to be the only requirements for them to struggle along and survive. That and avoiding a hard freeze, but we didn't even get a frost this winter, so things are blooming out of control right now which is always an enjoyable sight.

Now that I've gotten things caught up, I'm going to focus on the trike build. Since I've already gotten most things related to the motor squared away, I'll explain that process first. The small black beach cruiser up above with the battery box mounted to the front had a problem. I heard from a very reliable source that torque arms aren't needed with lower power motors and I would be 'fine' if you just tighten them down sufficiently. I have more experience than most people with wrenching things, and the motor was even lower power (~350W), so I did as I was told and moved on.

Well that didn't work out so well. The motor spun the axle and messed up the wires. Fortunately I had bought two of the front hub motors for cheap and just swapped it out, but that left me with a motor that needed to be repaired. Despite what various videos online suggested, I wasn't sure how easy it would be to fix, specifically getting the wires out and new ones in without bunching them up, so I left that job until a few weeks ago. I picked up an extension cable of the 9 pin waterproof variety like the motor came with and used one end as a replacement. It went surprisingly problem free for my first attempt. The new cable was slightly thinner, which might be a problem if you were overvolting, but in my case I am undervolting a 48V motor down to 36V nominal. It's extremely tight inside so you have to be clean with your work, but I had no issues unsheathing a bit of excess wire and cutting them back one at a time and soldering in place. Mine has labeling for each wire, but it might be wise to take a picture or make a diagram before removing the old wires.

The circuit board also has hall-effect sensors which was a slight problem. It wouldn't have been a big deal because the motor controller will work sensorless, but it has a split second of squirreliness when you hit the throttle without the sensors and I wanted to avoid that. It's easy to bend the leads on the sensors in the process of removing and reinstalling, but it's just as easy to straighten them out. The circuit board only had a couple screws on the inboard side and the sensors were fighting pressure from the coil wires below. I ended up having to resort to using super glue on the sensors and clamping the circuit board down. Once that set up properly, I closed it up, put it in a vise, and connected it to my fat bike to test if it worked. Full power, no weird noises, job done!

With the motor extracted from it's original wheel and now all fixed up, it was time to figure out how I was going to set things up with the rear axle. For starters the axle has a number of issues. If you have a solid axle with the rear wheels locked together it causes issues while turning, as the wheel on the outside will need to make more rotations than the inside wheel. This is something to keep an eye on in a future build, but in this case the trikes I have drive one wheel while the other spins freely on a bearing. I do like that both wheels are made the same so you can swap them back and forth. I'd imagine if someone is heavy on the throttle it will wear down faster, so you can rotate to get the most out of your tires without having to take the tires off the rims. I do have ideas for making a magnetic limited slip, but I don't have funding to dive in to that project right now and is outside the scope of this project, even if it would be really cool and helpful in the sand here at the beach.

Other issues included the bearings, which I cleaned out as best I could and reassembled with fresh lubricant. The axle itself is only 15mm with a keyway on either end on opposite sides, overlapping in the middle. These things can't tolerate extreme abuse, so the load of the rider, cargo, speed, and abuse from hitting things too hard will all add up to whether this this will continue to stay straight. Gear reduction should help with limiting the speed, and the rest is up to the rider to keep in mind. I'm not particularly abusive to machines since I'm the one that will have to fix it, but for others it is an important point to be aware of with many of the common adult trikes.

Next up is drive and brakes. I'm putting these together because of how things are set up. With the two trikes I had, there was one with a coaster brake and one with no rear brake. I like the setup with the coaster brake, because they basically just took the hub from another bike with 3 speed internal gearing and coaster brake and use it as a jackshaft between the pedals and the axle. I believe it is 1:1 in 2nd with a 33% reduction for 1st and 33% overdrive for 3rd gear. Of course if it throws either chain you have no rear brakes, and I wouldn't want to rely on that alone, even with a max speed of ~12MPH.

Unfortunately the cost and setup of a brake directly on the axle or wheels was going to be too much of a hassle, so I came up with a different plan. I haven't mounted it yet, but everything looks like it will line up well with a second sprocket going to the motor. I found that they sell sprockets that mount to the common bike disc brake 6 bolt mounts so people can drive a hub with a motor. In my case I have a hub that is a motor. They also sell disc brake adapters for other purposes that I decided to use as a spacer. I will be putting the sprocket on the outside with the spacer (to make room for the chain) with longer bolts, and a disc brake up against the hub like it would normally have when used as a front wheel. This means the second brake is also running through a chain, but between the two options there should be something that works even in an emergency. Of course by virtue of having one drive wheel, it means that wheel has to do it all. All power from the motor and pedaling goes to that wheel, and all rear braking comes from that wheel.

I got a new 24 tooth axle sprocket which matches the original. I have them side by side so the old one can line up with the hub/jackshaft/gearbox I took off the other trike and the new sprocket can go to the hub motor which has a 16 tooth sprocket. They had a few options for the crank sprocket and I opted for the smallest one which was of the 28 tooth variety. I figure this is more of a slow beach machine and if anyone did decide to ride over a bridge, they would greatly appreciate having the lower gearing. Even on my best day I probably would have ended up trying to push the thing uphill instead of trying to fight bad gearing. Not that I'm so much worried about the motor failing as much as throwing the chain. I haven't had much of an issue with this in the past, so hopefully it stays that way.

I've upgraded some of my tools for making battery packs, so I figured I would do a quick rundown of some of the stuff I have going on. I had issues this summer where my cheap multimeters were reading impossibly high voltages. In the case of the one that is of the type Harbor Freight regularly gives away for free, it needed a battery. I also had a larger one that had a flaky power button and it never worked right from the beginning. A lot of fussing with it briefly got it working well until it just died completely. There are lots of YouTubers that recommend some other off-brand meters that probably work great and even might come off the same factory lines as some of the other name brands, but I decided against this. Because of what I do with cells, I wanted something that works reliably to show me what a cell voltage is down to the thousandths of a volt. I didn't want to break the bank on something with more functions than I need, so I went with the cheapest Fluke model available. For this job it's one of the best options available.

I also invested in a spot welder. The cheap ones are a bit too cheap and seem to require modification to keep them from destroying themselves. Apparently the circuit that controls the string of MOSFETs (solid state electronic switches) can drop too low and cause the circuit to fail at the worst time possible, which usually leads to the MOSFETs blowing out in spectacular fashion. Supplying a separate voltage source and/or increasing the size of the capacitor is certainly a viable option. The other thing I saw was that some came with decent spot welding leads for more money, or terrible leads that wouldn't be good for the amount of use I expect to get out of this tool.

You can often find the same tool with several different names and different packages of extras and various spot welding leads, so after holding out a while I came across the one I wanted. I'm very happy with it. It does everything I expect and the leads are nice with replaceable tips. It also acts as a USB boost pack. I can charge it up with any USB source and it makes good spot welds. Not that I really ever see me needing to do so, but I could charge it up with the 4S battery packs I have and a USB car adapter, and build more packs with the cells I have in the event of a catastrophe. I already tested this out and it worked as expected.

I also grabbed some nickle strips for assembling packs and bought several feet of 4S wide nickle strip with cell level fusing. Basically it has a long thin section that curls around and acts as a fuse, so if one cell were to short out it won't continuously draw current until if melts down. This should eliminate many scenarios where battery packs could cause a fire. Most cheap batteries skip this because of cost, but it isn't all that expensive. Several dollars a pack for that extra level of protection is completely worth it to me.

On that note, I had another revelation with regards to affordable battery pack safety. I had initially planned to make an outdoor kitchen with a rocket oven before my leg bone decided to pop apart the second time (I'm starting to lose count) and got some ceramic fiber blanket. It wasn't terribly expensive, it isn't overly heavy, and it can withstand temperatures in excess of 2400*F. I figure it would cost me about $7 a battery to wrap the business ends of the cells, and even less if I started building more packs and bought a larger roll. I haven't actually seen anyone else do this (although one person hinted to a cheap safety upgrade in the future which might be the same idea). Much like the cell level fusing, I doubt you will find many cheaper batteries ever doing this, but these two ideas combined seem like a great and affordable way to minimize any chance of a fire. I'd imagine it would fare a bit worse than the salvaged battery a handful of posts back if it got dumped in the Atlantic Ocean, but some people need to learn lessons the hard way.

I've also acquired various bike tools, and want to expand my cell salvaging capabilities so it doesn't take me so much time babysitting cells for the purposes of determining their capacity and balancing them in preparation for assembly in to new packs. I like the idea of expanding things as much as I can on the DC power side of things so I can get everything capable of running off of solar, or running off of battery packs that I can load up and take with me to do remote repairs. Some of this is going to get outside the realm of ebikes, but for now I still have plenty more to share on building batteries, creating battery systems for lights and accessories, and I currently have one trike torn down and almost ready for reassembly complete with rear wheel drive.

I kind of need this overview to get myself on top of all the various odds and ends I've accomplished. I have a bit of brain damage from injuries nearly 3 years ago and new memories tend to fade pretty quickly where I won't remember how long ago something happened or more mundane things kind of blend together where I won't always remember offhand which repair I did to which thing and so on. I'm going to start with the simplification of the fat bike.

The original throttle was messed up and didn't last terribly long due to salt water which had damaged the battery and motor controller before I bought it. The controller I used was too big to fit the compartment and I wasn't using most of the connectors it came with. I had bought 2 more motors that needed controllers, so I took this opportunity to pull apart the fat bike and rewire everything. I saved the controller and the throttle it came with for another project and got a new controller with a smaller case. I had used an adapter cable to connect the old controller to the 9 pin connector on the Bafang rear hub motor and that thing worked great. I reused that and kept those connectors on the controller. I also kept the motor cutoff connectors so when I hit the brakes it stops the motor, as well as the throttle, power switch, and battery connector. I had no use for the other connectors, so I cut them off to save space and make it easy to get the controller in and out of the compartment.

With that job accomplished, I tied a string to the throttle cable before fishing it out of the frame. It went through a hole in the frame to keep things tidy, and I plan to upgrade my battery system in the future, so I got the wire and connectors ready and pulled them back through along with the new throttle cable. It was a bit tight but worked out well. No more dealing with the battery cable going down the outside. I have since removed the front basket connected to the fork and temporarily put the battery in the back rack, but the wiring is still there for future upgrades. I still have a hole in the motor controller compartment, but no longer have a mass of connectors sticking out and for the moment have it taped up to keep dirt and water out.

I still need to do something with the power switch. Initially I had it set up so you had to hotwire it, and have since added a power switch to the wire, but it is far from complete. I really just wanted to break things down to their most basic, and haven't had a single problem with it. As long as it has sufficient charge it just goes. I see people with 10x the amount of money invested in bikes that fail in a year or two because things are too complex and/or proprietary. I want the basic function to be rock solid. I have had regular bike issues that set me back a few days waiting on parts, such as a bent derailleur or disc brake issues, but the electric part has been very reliable.

I do plan on adding not only a second battery for more range, but also a ~12V system with a 4S Li-Ion battery. I've done some tests with various car chargers (laptop/USB) and lights and they all work well with the new battery setup. I would exercise caution going this route, as the 16.8V of the fully charged battery may be a bit too much for some 12V automotive electrical accessories, especially aftermarket components. So far I haven't had anything die on me, and the utility of having a fully functioning lighting system, as wel as USB ports for charging things is going to make the fat bike that much more of a pleasure to use.

Along those lines, I also got a new front tire. The back tire was getting worn down and the front was slowly losing air, plus I have another fat bike wheel I wanted to use for another project that needed a tire, so I switched things around. I put the new wheel and tube on the front, swapped the old front wheel to the rear, and moved the worn tire and slowly leaking tube to the spare wheel. I'm very happy with the result. Even though the maximum pressure is only 20 PSI vs 30PSI of the other tires, it doesn't feel too soft. The rubber is more grippy and has less rolling resistance than the knobby tires. I'd say from the seat it sounds about 75% quieter at full speed with just the front tire replaced. I went on a nice long ride half way across the county to a friends house where everyone was surprised I made such a journey, and made it back with no issues.

The last modification I will go into here is the trailer adapter. I needed to help someone with a serious car issue that ended up having me put a good 200+ miles on the fat bike and pulling all of my tools, jack, jackstands, and more. The trailer is one of the common ones you see for children with a canopy. My friend had given it to me with the canopy worn out, and I hadn't used it much before this. With the larger size of the fat bike wheels, it doesn't work without modification because the wheel will make contact with the trailer when trying to turn to the right. I found a scrap piece of aluminum track from an old sliding glass door and set about modifying it to permanently mount to my bike as an extension. I ended up using longer kickstand mounting bolts to hold it in place, and then made a slot to use a screw type hose clamp on the rear. I'm not much of a fan of those types of clamps, but it works well enough in this instance, and I'd imagine it would make quite a racket if it started to come loose, so I would know if it was coming apart while in use. I also need to dig up a pin for quicker attachment, as the nut and bolt I'm using requires a bit of fussing with two wrenches. I covered the top of the trailer frame in some leftover garden fencing from years past and it worked well enough. Overall I'm pretty happy with it but I do intend on going much bigger with trailers in the future. It will be a while before I get to that project but it's the one I'm most excited about.

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:12VDC computer fans

PC fans are made for this. If you use straight DC voltage (as opposed to Pulse Width Modulation, or PWM) there will be a certain minimum voltage to get them to start up. Once started, they will maintain motion, albeit at a lower speed, even below the startup voltage threshold. PWM takes advantage of this by pulsing full voltage many times a second. If the 12V pulses add up to being on 50% of the time and off 50% of the time, it is effectively like running it at 6V. Many modern power supplies, such as those used in computers, are switch mode power supplies (SMPS) that use PWM to provide the various voltages a computer needs.

The PC fans are brushless DC (BLDC) motors. Brushed motors are the ones that will cook the windings under load. BLDC motors are effectively 3 phase motors, and there is a circuit board hidden inside PC fans near the hub to provide modified (as opposed to sine wave) 3 phase power to the fan. They just stop working once the voltage gets too low. I haven't actually hooked up a meter to see if there is any current draw at very low voltages after a fan stops spinning, but in the case of direct PV solar with no battery to be damaged this isn't an issue. I have been using computer fans on lithium ion cells as a way to bleed off some power to get all of my cells to the same voltage for assembling packs. They don't move nearly as much air at ~4V, but I had them on hand and they have been very useful.

I do know they don't like high voltage. I ran a few at 15V many years back and they started to fail rather quickly. A so-called 12V panel can put out in excess of 20V. It's actually much harder to run things at a perfect 12V off of 12V nominal batteries and chargers than it is to step the voltage up or down to a steady voltage. You would need something to mitigate this, such as wiring fans in series, shading a 12V nominal panel, or creating your own custom panel out of cells.

I'm back with a lot more to share in the electric bike space after falling off the face of the earth for quite some time. My leg issues are worse than they were which has severely limited my ability to get things done, or afford things to move projects forward. Fortunately I am temporarily among the walking again, and got one of those cool knee scooters this past weekend to help take the load off my lower leg when working around the house. Absolute game changer vs using crutches. I might need to do a separate thread for that.

I've moved a number of projects forward, and while I haven't fully completed any of them, some of it is worth sharing and I'm pretty close to getting my first electric trike assembled. I originally got 2 trikes from someone cleaning out their garage and they are a double-edged sword. They aren't nearly as stable as many people think from their appearance, and have some serious issues while turning. I plan on doing things to mitigate those problems somewhat, as well as gearing down the motor for a top speed of around 12MPH instead of the ~20MPH the motor was doing in its original configuration. I figure that helps both with not going too fast in to turns, as well as gives mechanical advantage should someone want to ride over a bridge with a decent amount of cargo.

Beyond this, I also have plans for two more trikes. The sibling of the trike above will be getting a heavier duty axle and a larger motor, also geared down a bit for carrying much heavier loads. The stock 15mm axles just aren't terribly robust, so the new 1" (25.6mm) axle is immensely stronger as well as having many other benefits. My main goal with this build is to make something I can use at my property to move things up and down the hill in a mostly sandy offroad environment. I'm not certain if I am going to work on this project next, but I'll give each build a good amount of attention to details and pics when I get that far.

The third trike idea is going to be of the two front wheel/one rear wheel variety.I've done a lot of research on this and I feel like for a low speed cargo trike that spending a bunch of time, money, and effort trying to get perfect Ackermann steering isn't worthwhile. I've seen a couple of other designs and I would like to combine a few ideas in to one vehicle. My plan is to make a prototype with a lot of adjustment options to figure out which geometry choices give me the handling and feel I am looking for without making it too much of a monstrosity. All of these projects are going to need a lot of pics and explanation that I will be working on in the coming weeks.

I also have a few other plans for upgrading some of my existing bikes, a large cargo bike, moving up to 48V systems that can double as power for other tasks, getting more solar involved, and possibly an offroad version of my knee scooter with a small motor so I can minimize the amount of stress I put on my bad leg. Not to mention all the stuff I've been working on with regards to trailers. In the next post I will give an update on some changes I made to my fat bike, and from there share my progress on the first electric trike build.

Winter is the only full season around here with tolerable outdoor temperatures. I used to be able to tolerate summer better, but after having heat stroke several years back I can't push myself in the heat like I used to. Things grow reasonably well considering the shorter daylight hours, and frosts are infrequent enough to not be a huge problem. I don't even have to look it up to see if we have had a proper frost yet because all of my sweet potato vines are still alive. They used to die back hard if it barely touched 38F but now they seem to barely survive 34F. Plus all of the trees start growing back before the start of spring, so I can already see vibrant colors like red maple leaves starting to grow. When winter ends, it's a long hot humid time until the weather gets reasonable again.