Fully electric powered monster chopper bike with whopping four-foot forks. An integrated hub-motor and battery packs concealed within the fork make this a snazzy, stealthy cruiser that doesn't run on dead iraqis and keeps the canadian hot-tub market healthy!

The main features of this bike are that we used an electric hub-integrated motor, and we used the front fork as the battery compartment.

credits

metalwork and assembly: saul
battery mounts: dan

Step 1: Parts!

The key ingredient: The Zappy integrated hub-motor. this is the gizmo that inspired and made this project possible! it's an entire 250W electric motor built into the hub of a bike wheel! That makes it super-easy to build any electric vehicle you want, just attach the hub-motor wheel, battery and controller and you're done - no drive train at all.

These hub-motors are standard equipment on the Zappy3 Electric Scooter (http://www.zapworld.com/products/zappyIII_scooter.asp). the entire zappy scooter is about $500, you can scavange everything you need from one of them, or you can order just the hub-motor and electronic controller from Zappy as spare parts, which will run you around $250 i think. The zappy scooter works great, but 3 wheels is SOOOO lame.

The zappy motor is 36V, 250W, and their controller has a key-switch and variable-speed thumb-trigger. By their specs, you'll get about 12 miles on a charge, at a speed of about 12 mph - although there are plenty of options for increasing those numbers.

Step 2: More Parts!

We'll also need a donor bike, if you'll ever want to pedal it use a mountain bike with low gears because this thing is heavy when we're done.

Batteries! the Zappy3 scooter uses a heavy, ugly and pollutin' lead-acid battery: 36V, 10.5Ah capacity. We switched to rechargeable NiMH batteries which are lighter, environmentally much better, and because they let us do our second stealthy move: hide the batteries inside the fork! NiMH D-cells have right around 10Ah capacity, so we used 30 D-cells to get 36V. we got our 10Ah D-cells from www.all-battery.com for about $6 per cell. make sure you check the capacity of the cells, as there are some super-cheap D-cells out there with much lower capacity (they just stick a AA inside a D-cell body!).

- 4130 steel tubes for the fork: 1.50" OD, 1.37" ID, 50" length. Mcmaster-Carr part 89955K67. The tube ID is the constraint here, anything between 1.35" and 1.40" is ok. the ID needs to be sized so that D-cells with an extra wrap of tape around them will slide in easily but not be loose.

- monster sissy-bar handlebars. i don't know where we picked these up, but there are places on the web selling them, and also banana-seats if you want one of those.

- 16ga steel plate, 12" square is enough

- Plastic tubing: 3 feet length of rigid plastic tube with 1" ID and an OD of 1.3 to 1.35 inch (we used 1" PVC schedule-40 water pipe from Home Depot). also, 3 feet of rigid plastic tube with 1" OD and 0.75" ID (we used nylon tube, mcmaster-carr part 8628K66)

- springs: 4 stiff metal compression springs with OD 1", length 3.5". mcmaster part 9657K142.

- axle dropouts: we used 2 big square nuts, the nuts are 2.4 inch or so on a side and about 3/16" thick.

- 4 plastic soda bottle screw-caps (1" ID), 4 brass #10 bolts 1" long with nuts, 2 steel #10 bolts, 2" long with nuts, 3 steel 4" compression-tube clamps. 4 pennies, wire nuts, cable ties, wire, crimp connectors

Step 3: Tools!

You'll need:

MIG welder, hacksaw, angle grinder, drill.

Step 4: Wheel Dropouts

the dropout is what holds the axle of the wheel. since this is a powered wheel, the axle of the wheel has flats that must tightly fit the dropout to ensure good torque transfer.

Step 5: Weld Together the Forks

in order to get the forks well aligned, make a jig to hold everything straight and square while you weld. the dropouts in particular must be welded at the exact width of the hub-motor's axle (6.125" apart on ours) - put an 8" long threaded rod into the notches in the dropouts, and 4 nuts to hold the dropouts in position.

Step 6: Head Clamp

big choppers put a lot of strain on the headset, you need to make a big clamp to keep everything together. the clamp will slide on over the forks and the donor-bike head-tube, and then clamp down using steel pipe-clamps.

the head clamp has two short sections of split steel tube. these have an ID sized to just slide over the main fork tubes, and then a pipe clamp squeezes them together to lock down the position.

Step 7: Test Mount the Forks on the Bike

should be able to use the original headset from the bike, put it all between the two steel plates, check that everything seems to work mechanically. you can mount the wheel and handlebar on also to check everything. then take the handlebar off again while we work on the battery mounts.

Step 8: Battery Mounts

the batteries go inside the fork tubes! 15 D-cells in each tube.

- wrap each D-cell with electrical tape or shrink-wrap, they will be jiggling around inside the metal fork when you ride, and you want an extra thick insulator between the cell and the tube. if that insulation wears through, you'll short-out the pack and explode it.

- to make a good electrical connection on bumpy roads and to reduce damage to the batteries, the mounts are spring-loaded on both ends.

- the plastic tube-within-tube-with-bottle-cap setup is to hold the springs and contacts in position and prevent the springs or contacts from touching the fork tube and causing a short-out.

- the shorter mount is at the bottom of the fork (wheel end)

- the lengths are sized so there is about 1" of pre-compression (combined) on the springs when everything is put together.

Step 9: Mount Batteries in the Fork

slide everything in, keeping track of which is the (+) and (-) end of each tube!

after everything is in, you can mount the headset back together.

Step 10: Attach the Electronics

we've kind of made a mess of our Zappy electronic speed control, yours will look a lot nicer than this. we just stuck it on the fork with a big mess of cable ties.

we've got an 18V pack in each of the tubes, connect in series to make 36V. make sure you have a fuse in there!

charging: we lost the Zappy charger so i'm not sure if it will work on the NiMH setup. probably it will do a slow trickle-charge, which is the safest thing anyway. you could build or buy a fast-charger but it will probably be a lot of work or pricey. i ended up making my own simple trickle charger that does 1/2 amp, so it takes a day to charge but it is safe and easy, no danger of overheating.

Step 11: Mount Wheel

almost done! mount the hub-motor-wheel to the fork.

Step 12: Go Cruisin!

oh yeah!

now just apply flaming paint job! that will stop the rusting.

mods: add a couple more D-cells to 'overclock' the motor, and a banana seat and rear-wheel pegs for passengers.