Dana contemplates the frame of
the Electric bike that he's building for his dentist, Tony. Watch while
the bike is designed in his head before your very eyes. Note the wide
variety of donor materials Dana has collected.
Tony brought Dana two Mongoose electric
bikes to use for this project. Both the 20"x20" Motocross BMX bike, and
a dual 26" cruiser. Dana used parts from both to create a fully
suspended LWB hybrid pedal-electric supercruiser.
Here you can see Dana has used
the front steer tube and part of the frame from the BMX bike, along with
it's suspension fork, wheel, and disk brake. On the back end he
used the rear triangle and motor assembly from the 26" cruiser, and
integrated the rear suspension from the BMX bike. The seat is a EZ-1
seat, which mounts to the 1" square top tube.
Dana chose to go with remote
steering to prevent the dreaded tiller effect. Note that the steering
support is mounted at the same angle as the rake in the front fork.
Dana used chain tubes to keep
Tony's pants clean as he is cruising to the office in the warm Florida
sun. A small idler mounted to the rear triangle provides a bit of chain
redirection.
Here's the completed bike,
ready for turnover to Tony to be wired and painted.
Tony spayed a nice coat of
white paint over the multicolored tubes and rust that come from re-using
frame parts from various sources. over a period of time. He added
fenders as well to make it more useable on those not-so-perfect days. I
especially like the locked battery box to keep it safe when parked
outside.
Here you can see an additional
tube that was added behind the seat to support Tony's backpack and bike
lock. Very cool. Tony says that even without the motor it rides
much nicer that his EZ-1.
6/01/07
Dana says "Tony came by with his 9T gear for the motor and wished to do
as Warren did by adding an 18T instead. I looked around and found a 18T
off a old 6 speed wheel. I just centered it & welded it to the old 9T
and he was ready to go for zip in cost.
He called back to say it's as fast as he needs now. So that worked fine.
