Hybrid Bicycle Experiment

We recently became a one-car household so I've been doing some experimenting with alternate forms of transportation. The bicycle was working fine, especially when combined with public transportation, but it was nowhere nearly as fast or convenient as a car. However, driving the one and only car we own to work just so it can sit in the parking structure all day and leaving my wife stranded at home without wheels--well, that wasn't an option.

Riding the bike was fun for the most part but mashing my way over the Cahuenga pass, in traffic, in the rain, late at night, not so much. What I needed was a little push to make it a little easier and the answer seemed to be to augment the energy from my legs with an electric motor.

I already had a couple of bicycles so I had a backup in case the experiment went awry. Good thing too.


The motor I settled on was a Bafang geared front hub. The reason I went with a front hub was because it seemed simpler to mount. A geared motor should have more torque than a direct drive which should make climbing the hill pretty much effortless. Another advantage of a geared motor is that it freewheels. Some may say freewheeling is a disadvantage because it cannot regenerate electricity and recharge the battery like a hybrid car--but this requires a special controller and I didn't want to over complicate things since this was my first e-bike build.

I got the motor as a kit that included building the hub into a 700c wheel along with an ecrazyman controller, twist throttle and brake levers with cutoff switches so you can't apply power and brakes at the same time.

What the kit didn't include was a battery and that's where I went all out and got the latest craze in e-bikes, a lithium iron phosphate, LiFePO4, 48 volt 20 amp hour Ping battery pack.

Granted, it doesn't look like much more than a bunch of metal strips wrapped up in black duct tape, but it should deliver quite a jolt of power for many years, more than enough to get me to and from work. Notice that it has three wires, a positive, a charging negative and a discharging negative. Also notice that it doesn't have a connector and the end of the wires. The charger came with a connector but the controller had a completely different connector. Neither of these connectors were standard of the shelf items so I soldered common XLR audio connectors that are available in any neighborhood Radio Shack store--though you might have to do some searching because the sales people probably won't know they have XLR connectors.

I was able to find a Topeak trunk bag that fit the battery perfectly. The bag, paired with a Topeak rack made it very easy to remove the pack from the bike and take it inside for charging. However, in order to make this practical the controller and all the other wires and connectors had to live somewhere other than the trunk bag so I got a frame bag which worked great for this purpose.

Except for the connector for the battery everything seemed pretty much straight forward even though absolutely no instructions were included with any of the items that I ordered. Some wire colors didn't match up but the connectors did, like this one for the brakes:


While on the brakes, the controller had only one brake connector but of course there's a front and rear brake. I ended up splicing the brake wires in parallel so that applying either brake would cut off power to the motor.

So, all the connectors fit and the wires matched up by color and it was time to go for a test ride.




It worked! It ran little rougher than I expected and there wasn't much pull, but it pulled--for about two blocks then it cut out. That wasn't very impressive, but whoa did the motor get hot! It turned out that I succeeded in burning out the motor on the very first test run.

With the help of John Robert Homes from Holmes Hobbies we were able to determine that the problem was that the proper way of hooking things up is connecting the green wire to the yellow and the yellow to green. What? That's right, the motor manufacturer and the controller maker obviously weren't talking to each other when they made their products. In any case, JRH replaced my burned out motor stator assembly at no charge and once I got the wires switched over it finally delivered as promised.


This time I made it a few blocks before encountering yet another problem. The hub motor attaches to the front fork with a sort of "key" in the axle:


The fit was nice and tight but after just a few accelerations--wow that was cool, it has so much torque that the front wheel spins when I take off. Oops:


The fork dropouts deformed and the axle spun around a few turns and nearly broke off the cable! It turns out that what I needed was a set of torque arms, another hard learned lesson. Gee, this would be so much easier if it came with instructions!


I didn't have the facility to fabricate anything beefy enough so I ended up Googling around and found some made specifically for e-bikes made by AmpedBikes. Just to be safe I bought a pair and put one on each side.


Finished, finally--or so I thought.


The spinning front wheel was annoying so I put on my extra large Wald front basket. I was planning on using the removable battery feature for bus rides but technically, you're not supposed to mount a bicycle with an "over sized" basket on a bus bike rack. However, as it turned out I got to work much faster without having to use the bus so it didn't make a difference. Besides, I now had a cargo bike capable of carrying three bags of groceries--and then some with the panniers on the trunk bag deployed.

I did take the bike on the metro rail system regularly for the ride home--no need to remove the battery for that.

The cruising speed on the flats was a rather quick 22 miles per hour. Yeah, I know, that doesn't sound like much but believe me, on a bicycle without any suspension it is plenty fast. Even the hill that had me huffing and puffing before the conversion was an easy 18 MPH on the uphill side and coasting downhill, geared motor so no drag, was the same scary 35 MPH. I burned out a few brake pads on that route!

One thing that was a problem was plugging in the battery, the connector would always arc. If the pins were not lined up properly it could make a rather loud pop. Of course this wasn't very good on the connector so I tried this trick:

I used XLR instead of Deans connectors and it seemed like it would work.


But it didn't stop the arcing so I removed it. I think a better solution would be to put a heavy duty switch on the power line but I got used to the spark when connecting the battery, though it did blacken the pins on the XLR connector it didn't seem to affect performance.

I rode the bike daily for a little over a month through wind, cold and even rain over the brutal Los Angeles winter--OK, it wasn't all that brutal but I rode the bike when my bike riding co-workers wimped out.

There were a few problems, like the time I got off work late and I was in a hurry to get home so I decided to ride over the hill instead of take the train. There's several miles of rough road without street lights and I hit a huge pot hole at full speed. I usually don't get flats but with the extra weight of the battery my rear tire didn't stand a chance. My wife came to the rescue so I wouldn't have to do a repair job on a dark road in the rain--glad we kept one car, and the bicycle carrier!

The only other problem that I had was when the brake levers got wet they would short out. It wasn't all that bad, just a quick brake and release would shake them dry enough to continue. That problem went away after one day without rain.

All stories have an ending and this one ended one morning going into work. After crossing the Cahuenga Pass the motor lost most of it's power and it was feeling very rough. Did I wear out the gears? Did the motor burn out? I'm not really sure. It might be repairable but the quick fix would be to replace the motor--or get a Vespa. Since it was my dream all along to get a Vespa and the e-bike was just an experiment I decided to end the experiment and put the bike up for sale.

The motor might be shot, the bike abused but the battery is in even better shape than when I bought it. Turns out that LiFePO4 batteries need a break in period of about a month before they can stand a deep discharge without damaging the cells. How far will the bike go on a charge? Only the next owner will be able to answer that question.

Almost Fell off the Bus

In my quest to become a "green" commuter while staying out of the bicycle unfriendly roads in Los Angeles, I tried riding the bus with my bike today. It seemed like a good idea, ride the bike on the wide flat roads and get on the bus to go over the hill with the narrow roads. The buses here have racks that can carry a couple of bicycles. Well, I never used one of those things but how hard can it be?

I timed my commute, just to see how it compared with mashing my way over the hill. First of all it took me a while to find the bus stop. I found one at the Warner Brother's Studio main gate, turned out that there was another bus stop closer to my usual route but I guess that I never noticed it even though I go past it every day. First leg, DreamWorks Animation in Glendale to Warner Brothers in Burbank, about 20 minutes. Next came the wait at the bus stop, there were a couple of kids there asking me when the bus is coming, (I didn't know but I figured that one should come by every 20 minutes or so) how much does it cost to ride, (didn't know that either, I got a bus pass from work) and how much for a taxi (no help there either)--they got tired of waiting and went off looking for another way to get to their destination. I guess I must have just missed a bus because I had to wait about 30 minutes until the 222 showed up. Getting the bike on the rack was no big deal, I just followed the instructions from the Bike Guide I got from the Metro website. I flashed the pass at the driver and took a seat where I had a clear view out the front windshield so I could keep an eye on my bike. It started out fine but it seemed to sway back and forth a bit more and more each time the bus would brake and accelerate. About halfway into the ride the driver stopped the bus. He was quite visibly angry as he honked his horn and said, "Sir, you bike is about to fall off." I jumped out and sure enough the retaining bar that is supposed to secure the bike in place slipped off the back wheel and it was a miracle that my bike, didn't turn into road kill. I flipped it around and tried the bar on the front wheel and it looked like it would hold a bit better. So much for using the bus to keep from building up a sweat--I worked up more of a sweat than riding over the hill! Total time for the bus ride, 9 minutes. I got off on Cahuenga and Franklin and rode down Cahuenga to Melrose, which was a much better route than Highland with it's narrow traffic lanes and traffic that obeys no speed limits. Last leg, about 28 minutes.

Total commuting time: 1 hour 27 minutes.

That's about 20 minutes longer than biking over the hill and fighting L.A. traffic. Not great, but it's an option when I get off work after dark and want to improve my chances of living through the commute.

All I've got to do to make this work is to figure out how to use those bus bike racks. I think the main problem was the big, heavy, steel, front basket on my bicycle. In fact the Rider's Guide states that:

Tandem bikes or bikes with motors, solid
wheels, large racks, child seats or other
attachments are not allowed.

Oops. I guess I should either remove the basket or get another bicycle just for bus commuting. Hum, that bike my brother gave me could make a cool fixed gear conversion.

Sign of the Times?

I'm interested in all things somewhat off the mainstream, recumbent bicycles for instance. One of the best recumbent bike blogs, therecumbentblog, recently closed down and the author went with a more "mainstream" bike blog, ecovelo. Furthermore, long time make of long wheelbase recumbents, easyracers, has started distributing folding electric bicyles that they have built or designed.

Of course it does make sense. I'm planning on combining the bus with the bicycle for my daily commute but there is only enough room for two bicycles on the bus bike rack. A folding bike would take care of the rack problem and the electric motor will be a blessing should I miss the bus and have to ride the bike all the way.

Besides, the Ecobike Vatavio is cool!

Why did the Snake Cross the Bike Path?

When commuting by bicycle you get to see all sorts of weird stuff laying on the side of the road. I had to stop and take a photo of this rattlesnake that almost made it accross the bike path.

Picking up my Car with my Bicycle

I've been trying to ride my bike to work as much as possible. Sometimes I've got to use the car--like when I took the car into the shop for service. However, I decided to pick up my car with my bike but how to bring the bike back? Here's my solution, just strap the bike car rack on the bike!

I discovered a glitch with my setup. Notice that the basket doesn't attach to the front hub. That's because the bike is a bit large and has a quick release hub. I thought I had it figured out with the metal and rubber straps I found in a hardware store but as I was getting close to my destination the weight of the bike rack caused the straps to slip down the fork. I've got to figure out a better way to attach that huge basket.

In any case, I did manage to ride my bike twice all the way to work and back and once to the car dealership--which was realtively close compared to my regular commute. I'm not really keeping track of distance, heart rate, etc. like when I was racewalking and running, but even with this low mileage week I rode at least 54 miles. That's about 5 hours on the saddle without doing a weekend ride. When I was racewalking/running in the mornings I'd be lucky to get that much exercise in a week including the weekend.

Hum, getting this much exercise and saving on gas. It all seems great so far, as long as I keep a good safety record.

Basket Case

So I'm working at DreamWorks Animation again and I decided that there wasn't much point to getting up early to run then drive to work so I'm combining exercise and commuting by biking to work. Last time I did it the backpack was rather uncomfortable and I wanted to figure out how to get that weight off my back. Out of all of the racks, panniers, saddle bags, etc. I decided to get a big front basket. Big enough to give rides to my dog--though I didn't take my dog to work! Oh, and I normally ride with a helmet so the photo isn't exactly what I look like riding my bike.

I'm starting out by riding just a few days per week, though I didn't get as tired as I thought I would. It only takes about 1 hour 8 minutes to make the trip. That's not bad considering that driving to work takes 45 minutes and if I add the morning run it's about 1 1/2 hours. The ride home takes the same amount of time on the bike but I've got to deal with the traffic driving home so it often takes me over an hour to get home by car. I have to admit it was fun zipping by the traffic jamed up at the Hollywood Bowl.

I've been debating wearing my Polar heart rate monitor and even getting a GPS unit so I could track my workouts better, but that might turn a pleasureable bike ride into an exhausting workout. I also thought about getting an electric assist for the hills, but that would mean that I'd be exercising less. I even thought about getting another bicycle, either a recumbent or a light weight triathalon model but I'm doing fine with what I've got for now.

Integrating exercise with commuting seems like a good idea. I'm not sure if I'll get involved with the racewalking or running groups on the weekend because at least for now I'm getting plenty of exercise just commuting to work and around town.

Let's see what exercise and a good diet does for my cholesterol. I was able to get it down quite a bit just by being a bit more careful in what I eat, doing some moderate exercise and reducing whatever stress I could out my life.

                             January    June

Total Cholesterol             289        215
LDL Cholesterol               214        121
HDL Cholesterol                48         56

Bike to Work and Back

Well, since this is bike to work week and I'm working--I did it! I took the long way around the hill through Silverlake to get from my home in West Hollywood to DreamWorks Animation. It went quiet smoothly, though I got a little lost around Los Feliz going to work and it seemed like every light turned red on me when I came back via Melrose. The best part is that I did it on my 10+ year old cheapie bicycle. It was in pretty good shape because it sat in the garage all these years. All I did was clean it up a bit before the ride.

I'm only working Monday for this week. Would I have tried biking to work the whole week? How about biking to work every day? That's something I'm going to have to consider once I get back to work! One thing that I'm thinking about is adding an electric assist to make going over that hill a little easier and not having to arrive at work all sweaty.



The ride to work took me 1 1/2 hours. That's a little longer than I anticipated but considering that I got lost and hit some unexpected hills it wasn't too bad. I don't have a way to measure speed or distance on the bike but according to the mapped route it should have been 14 miles.

On the return trip I decided to come back the same route that I usually drive. Over the weekend I bought a head and tail light for the ride home and I confess that the ride home had me a bit worried. I thought I would have to walk over the Cahuenga pass and when I got there I saw a couple of other cyclists walking their bikes but I dropped it down to the lowest gear and climbed the hill just fine. Coming down the other side was exhilarating to say the least. The trip took just over an hour--about the same as it usually takes to drive home!

One thing that I wasn't expecting was that it felt very cold riding the bicycle. I'm used to getting warmed up when running but I never got warmed up on the bike. Part of the reason was that it was an unseasonably cold day, I was taking it easy for the most part and the speed I was riding generated quite a bit of wind chill.

I wore the Polar running watch and although I didn't have the GPS to measure distance on the bike, once I entered the total distance on the ProTrainer 5 software, it gave me information about pace. The hill looks much more challenging on the graph--since it is measuring time and not distance, the trip home compressed the downhill to make it look like I was going down a ski jump!



In keeping with my exercise log-blog, here are the statistics:

                        HR               Pace              Distance

Home to DreamWorks   -   134    3:58 min/km  6:23 min/mi    22.5 km

DreamWorks to Home   -   120    3:24 min/km  5:28 min/mi    19.3 km

I guess that in bicycling you don't really measure pace in minutes per kilometer or mile but in kilometers or miles per hour. My average was about 10 miles per hour or 16 kilometers per hour.

Changes...whoa whoa whoa

A lot has happened since my last post. First of all, I'm home! Through a series of events that happened at my job in Jerusalem I had an opportunity to move my departure date up by a month so I took it. That last week of April was crazy for me, trying to pack up and scheduling working at my old job at DreamWorks Animation the following week. Needless to say, once again work got in the way of my workouts, though my sore left ankle would have put me down for the week anyway.

I immediately started working out at my old familiar course in West Hollywood. Monday Rosie and I took the dog out for a stroll but I strapped on the heart rate monitor and made it count--the pace was very slow because of all the pee breaks the dog took. Tuesday was one lap around the block to test my ankle. Wednesday Rosie was getting ready to leave for a month long job in Hawaii so I skipped the run--wouldn't you know it, as soon as I get home she leaves, but the good news is that I'll be following her to Hawaii soon. Thursday I started extending the distance and Friday I finally got around to doing a 5 kilometer daily run. My course at home is much flatter than the hilly Jerusalem course so it wasn't that hard to get to 5K.

However, my ankle is still a bit sore so I'm going to give it a couple of days rest and skip the long run.

               HR           Pace                Cadence     Distance

Monday    -    95   12:30 min/km  20:07 min/mi    54         1.7 km

Tuesday   -   164    6:27 min/km  10:22 min/mi    87         1.9 km

Wednesday -   off

Thursday  -   164    6:40 min/km  10:43 min/mi    86         3.7 km

Friday    -   164    6:49 min/km  10:58 min/mi    87         5.0 km

I am just filling in for someone at DreamWorks. It was only supposed to be for a week but he isn't returning until Tuesday so I'm also going to work on Monday. Since May 12-16 is "Ride your Bike to Work Week" I dusted off the old bicycle and am planning on riding to work and back on Monday. At 12 to 14 miles one-way, depending on which route I take.

Human Electric Hybrid

The most practical alternate form of transportation that will get me to and from work seems to be an electric assisted bicycle. Nothing fancy or very progressive--I've already got a bicycle that can be easily modified. There's lots of information and videos about electric hybrid bicycles, this news report pretty much covers the basics.

Pondering Bicycle Choices

Before I came to Israel to work, I was about to buy a tandem recumbent bicycle so that my wife and I could exercise together. My first choice was this Easy Racer tandem.



The problem with this was how to transport it. We weren't ready to sell the car and use this as our main source of transportation so we wanted something we could haul to the beach on a standard bicycle rack with a minimum of hassle.

Then I found this Columbia Tandem from Barcroft.



And it fits on a rack without folding or disassembly.



I was all set to order one of these tandems when I got called away to work in a far away land. So, now that I'll be returning home should I pick up where I left off?

Since I've been gone the price of gasoline has skyrocketed so bicycle commuting to work is an option that I've got to consider. No need to car pool with a bicycle so the tandem will have to wait for now.

So, what are my commuting options? I've got a cheap hybrid bicycle that I was thinking about adding an electrical assist in order to get over the hill between my house and where I work. However, there is this site called veloroutes.org and I was able to map a route that avoided the hill and the heaviest traffic. Here's a route that looks promising.



This got me thinking, could I combine my exercise and commute? When I'm at home I have to get up and hour early to exercise then drive about 45 minutes to work. I should be able to do this 14 mile commute via bicycle in about an hour. Returning from work by car usually takes about an hour because of traffic, sometimes more, much more. However with a bicycle it should take an hour or maybe less because it is mostly downhill and I won't be concerned about building up a sweat and having to stew in my juices the whole work day. The downside is that it is usually dark when I get off work and of course there is the possibility of rain. No big deal, I've exercised in the rain and in the dark, I can deal with it.

So how about a little fun and instead of spending on an electric assist I get a new bicycle? I'm fond of recumbents so a nice fast one would make the commute more enjoyable, like this sleek Bacchetta.



I've been very interested in the front wheel drive Cruzbike and adding an electric assist on this bike is an intriguing option.



Of course if I'm really serious about exercise fixed gear is the way to go. Sure it may be the latest fad, but it is also great exercise (no coasting)--and I don't have to pay gym membership to enroll in a spinning class. I'd probably be a bit of a prude to add a front break, but better safe than road kill. The coolest thing about this choice is that I could get an old frame, convert it to fixed gear myself and have a very hip rig without spending a fortune.



Of course if money is no object, there are lots of carbon fiber tri, trials, road, track, beauties like this Superbike from Bike Technologies Australia.

Transportation of the Future?

I've been thinking that a perfect combination for commuting in these days of high gas prices would be a recumbent bicycle with an electric assist. Poking around the Internet I found this electrified Cruzbike posted on Flickr.com by a fellow going by the screen name of echo_anomie. Nicely done!

Anyway, just dreaming right now but if I do get into this I might take it a step at a time. Like maybe converting my old 26 inch street bicycle using a kit from We R Electrified.

Go Team Sixkiller!

One of my work buddies from the Northern California campus of DreamWorks Animation, PDI--Pacific Data Images, is training to do a charity bicycle ride around Lake Tahoe. Here's the link to donate to the cause:

http://www.active.com/donate/tntgsf/6killer



Welcome to our Team In Training home page.

We are training to participate in an endurance event as members of The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's Team In Training. We'll be riding 100 miles around Lake Tahoe in June to raise money for this amazing organization. We are all raising funds to help stop leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin lymphoma and myeloma from taking more lives. We are completing this event in honor of dear friend of ours, Diane LaCroix, whom recently passed away from cancer in January, 2007, and in honor of Marty's grandfather, Hunter Glass, who also passed away from cancer in 1991. We need your support to cross the ultimate finish line - a cure!

A Little of This, A Little of That

Today I was sort of a Triathalon day. Sort of because instead of running I racewalked, instead of riding a racing bicycle I tried out a recumbent and instead of an open water swim I soaked in a jacuzzi.

I am very courious about recumbent bicycles, probably because they aren't mainstream, and today I finally got to experience riding one. The bike, a custom made Haluzak, belongs to a friend. We rode it on the beach bike path between Marina Del Rey and the Manhattan Beach pier. It was a blast and quite different from my old Trek diamond frame "city" bicycle. No danger jumping in and ordering one of these--the news on the recumbent bicycle blogs is that the maker closed shop and the plug was pulled from company website.

It started like most Saturdays, speed work with the Southern Cal Walkers. Today we did an easy lap, the next lap at a good 75-80% effort and a lap at race pace. We got videotaped so we'll be able to check out our form when we find the time to gather in someone's home. I left the watch on auto lap and "free" run. Instead of trying to break down today's workout I'll just post the graphic from the Polar software--now that I've finally got everything working.

Cruzbike

One of these days I'm going to get myself a recumbent bicycle. Why? Because it is sort of geeky and uncool? Perhaps, or maybe it is because it is actually an improvement over a conventional bicycle.

Here is an interesting one--front wheel drive no less:

Cruzbike