Wipeout

Well I had my first significant accident today with the e-bike. On my way to school I picked up a thorn that caused my front tire to slowly lose pressure. I didn't notice it and everything seemed fine until I got to the last turn at school. I took it a little fast and didn't have enough pressure to maintain traction. Basically my bike flew out from under me and I went down... hard. The impact was enough to cause deep bruising in my shoulder and I broke my helmet. I was dazed.

Even more amazing is that the 3 or 4 people that were in the immediate area didn't even come over to ask if I was OK. Here I was, lying in the road after a major accident, and no one bothered with me. It was like I was invisible. I could have had a concussion or broken neck but that obviously isn't more important than waiting for your bus. People these days have no decency it seems.

So I got up, brushed myself off and got out of the street. After leaning my bike against a pole I took an inventory of my bodily state and was relieved to find no broken bones. I took of my helmet and thats when everything started going white. I knew that there was the possibility that I either had a minor concussion or was going into shock so I laid down and put my feet up on my backpack. After about a minute or so my vision returned to normal and the roaring in my ears went away. At that point I was able to get up and assess the damage to the bike.

The motor was fine, thankfully, and my handlebars were tweaked. But, probably the worst damage was to the seat. It was bent at an angle on one side so unless I can somehow bend it back I'll have to buy a new one. Still, worst case being out $20 for the seat and $4 for the new tube isn't half bad for that level of accident. I had already purchased an extra helmet when I couldn't find my original one(that I found a day later) so I have a spare and don't factor that into my damages. Another thing that broke was the wooden enclosure I made for my battery. It shattered into four different pieced but did it's job. My battery was unharmed and fully functional.

Here are some pics of the damage:

New Power Connectors

So I originally had Molex connectors on my bike and they worked reasonably well until one of them basically fell apart on me. That was when I decided that I was going to bite the bullet and get some decent power connectors. Here's what I ended up with Anderson Power Poles(I'm not endorsing this site, I got mine at a local hobby shop)

I've used them in the past, the problem is they are so darn expensive I hate going out to buy a new batch when I run out. At about a $1 a pop they get pricey quick. For example I needed 6 total for me to connect my bike together with my new Turnigy Watt meter plus the extension cable I decided to make. Luckily these things are real durable and I don't expect to have to replace them all that often. I got everything together, problem was I took a shortcut with the soldering and I have a loose connection in the watt meter that causes the bike to work "sometimes". The advantage of the Power Poles is they are completely modular. I had to hook them up in a specific configuration to make the watt meter go in the middle. When I discovered the loose solder joint all I had to do what take the watt meter out, pop the connecter back into it's individual pieces and swap them to hook right into the battery.

Because of that shortcut with the soldering(which involve me not cutting off the pre-soldered wires of the watt meter) I have to redo it all over again but this time I'll do it right. At least I was able to hook it all together and discover a not so nice thing about the meter. It doesn't maintain any info other than the current voltage of the battery and I had planned to just have it in my bag while riding and check the levels every so often. All other readings are real time only. This means I have to reroute all the cables of the bike up to the dash where I will mount it with velcro, a bit of a pain but I spent good money on this thing and I WILL MAKE IT WORK!

Since I have to go through all this extra work I'm sorry to report that the completed pictorial guide to hookup will have to wait until this weekend at the earliest. But, in responce to the comment I can say this much. When hooking up the Turnigy you plug the side that says "Source" into the battery and the side that says "Load" into the motor. Red matched to Red and Black matched to Black. If that doesn't answer your question you'll have to wait for the pics.