Everything seemed to assemble fairly easily. I spend about a half-hour the night I got it checking out the parts and assembling the rear rack and putting that on the bike. The next day, I spent about 45 minutes mounting everything else on the bike.
I got to ride it around the block a few times and it was GLORIOUS. Later, when I was showing it to the neighbors though, the front wheel jumped off of the forks. Luckily, no one was hurt.
It turns out that the motor puts out way too much torque for this old huffy with its stamped fork ends. I'm guessing it's a combination of the torque and the weight of the motor all right there on the fork end.
So now, I'm without a bike, I don't have the cash right now to get another bike and I have all this expensive equipment sitting around laughing at me.
Anyway, I'm still hopeful. Most people agree that I should not replace the forks on the bike with forged ones and then use the bike for this. They all think it's too dangerous. So, eventually, I've got to save more money and buy another bike.
In the meantime, I did have some trouble with the battery. Here are some pictures:
See the little connectors sticking out one end for the red and black wires? These are NOT permanently connected to the battery. They are only held on by TAPE! This is not the intention of the seller. He has asked me to send it back to him so he can repair it.
The other problem is how the red and black wires attach to these connectors. The connectors just have these little tubes on the wiring end that I guess you stick the wire in and clamp the tube down on the wire. What I found when testing it all out was that the wires came loose very easily at this connection and each time I hit a bump, I lost power for a second.
Sigh--I hope to reduce my carbon footprint by a full commute before winter. We'll see.
2 comments:
The ultimate carbon footprint reduction would be a bike sans any motor other than the one you were born with. Are you riding this to work?
@greg,
Yeah, ideally, I would commute to work using nothing more than a good breakfast and my will to survive. Unfortunately, I don't have the time OR the shower at work to make this a feasible option. I figured that, with the motor on the bike, I would still be able to cut down on my daily emissions significantly.
Also, I figured that I'd be able to have a higher average speed to and from work if I'm motorized. I can't leave a second before 8:30 in the morning and I can't get home a second later than 6:30 in the evening. Here's a frustrating fact: My commute to work is about 7 miles. On average, that takes me 35 minutes by car!
C'mon Greg, cut me some slack!!
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