updated: October 2, 2023
Make a Battery DIScharger
Yes thats right. Not a charger but a discharger. Specifically, a load resistor. WTF is that? Well, have you ever charged your battery to 100% and then had to call the ride off? That means leaving the battery to sit at 100% maybe overnight until the next ride (which as any Catholic priest will tell you is a mortal sin)? Well, a gadget like this will solve that problem. It will also boil a small pot of coffee, and potentially destroy your battery, so lets talk this idea through and do it up right.
STATUS: I just got this idea after talking about it with someone this morning. Not the idea for the gadget… I have had two of them in service for quite some time and they work great. But an article writing up how to do this with some safeguards in play. This is most likely going to be the November 2023 post.
Ebike Displays for the BBSHD, BBS02 and KT controllers
This is going to be a sort of quick one I think. Its almost correct to entitle this article “BBSHD Displays” as most of what I will be going over will be geared towards that platform… but there will be some deviations so I’m going to stay a little generic.
I’ll be looking at display features, what I want to see in a display, and what I don’t, as now I have gone to minimalist displays, and found which ones work well and which don’t on things like 52v batteries, differing PAS levels and more. Worth covering also is how you can go VERY low cost.
Cockpit view on a 2-motor, 2wd ebike. Left: After. Right: Before. The remaining clutter in the center on the After view is the dashcam and the headlight.
I’ll be covering a variety of displays that I’ve used, evaluated and in some cases discarded, for reasons I’ll discuss.
- Bafang DPC-18 (old-style 9-level assist)
- Bafang 860C
- DM140 (the smallest full sized color display)
- Eggrider V2 / Bafang SW102
- VeloFox DM03 (Hangzhou Intelligent Velofox)
- Jiande Wuxing DZ40
- BN136 (pretty-small 2-color Bafang display)
- Suzhou Kunteng KT-LCD3/KT-LCD3U
- Suzhou Kunteng KT-LCD8H
- Suzhou Kunteng KT-LCD4
STATUS: Still in the idea phase, but I think this is going to be an easy one that I see a clear, compelling direction for organizing the outline. This is the target for my December, 2023 post.
Modern Survivable Mid-Drive Drivetrains
Things have come a long way since the cheapie pinned-together Shimano HG-400 steel cassettes were the only game in town, if you expected to run big power and have it hold together.
Nowadays there are multiple options out there for ebike drivetrains. I used the SRAM EX1 on my Cyc X1 Pro-powered Guerilla Gravity Smash. That was big money but at the time there weren’t any other real options. Nowadays we have quite a few, and it seems I have worked with most of them on the various ships in the Pacific Fleet. An incomplete list off the top of my head:
- Sram GX and NX 11 speed with Sunrace CSMS7 ( Surly BFD and Bullitt Lizzard King)
- Microshift Advent 9s (Mongoose Envoy and Apostate)
- Microshift Advent X 10s (Bullitt Hill Climber)
- Shimano Deore XT 9s (2Fat)
- Box Components Prime 9 (2Fat again, plus Apostate, plus Bullitt Hill Climber for a time)
- Sram EX1 (Guerilla Gravity Smash)
Some bikes are on multiple spots as I’ve done some mixing and matching over time.
This is worth digging into as I see questions on drivetrains with increasing frequency. Plus its worth mentioning tidbits like how you can use a long cage derailleur meant for a 2x system with a 1x mid drive drivetrain
STATUS: Still in the idea phase, but I know how I want to organize it. Target is to publish in January, 2024.
How to Treat Your Lithium Battery Right
I can’t believe I am writing this article to add to all the zillions of others already out there… But I have done one-off support posts one too many times and need something I can link to, with supporting source links, that I can just plug into the inevitable threads that come up on this subject.
STATUS: Outline completed and writing begun. This is not an article I have a burning desire to write, but since writing is already started, I don’t want to push DELETE just yet.
2Fat Gets A Major Facelift
The point of this exercise is so 2Fat can better handle long runs on deserted stretches of super deep, dry and coarse beach sand. This is the first alteration since the bike rolled off the laboratory table in 2017.
- Surly Moonlander front fork (installed but bad… needs a do-over)
- New (re-used from parts pile :D) front rack to take advantage of the Moonlander’s barnacles (installed)
- Box Components Prime 9 Drivetrain (installed)
- Box 2 Extra Wide 50T-capable derailleur
- Box 2 single-per-throw E-shifter
- Box 2 144 link chain
- Box 3 11-46T all-steel cluster
- Just-in-case Sunrace CS-M983 11-46T steel cluster (in hand… Spoiler Alert: its identical to the Box 3 cluster)
- Battery capacity increase from 25ah to 32ah (same size and weight) – (installed)
- Kinekt suspension stem with dampener enhancement kit (installed)
- Replace worn 26×4.80″ Snowshoe XL tires with 26×4.80″ Snow Avalanche’s (Rear installed; front needs a Plan B)
- Handlebar extensions using a similar method to what I did with the Surly Big Fat Dummy’s bars. (installed)
- handlebar extension inserts for XXXXL grips (installed)
STATUS: On hold. This bike’s future is uncertain given what appears to be a dead motor (or at least a dead connection) along with my not liking hating the new fork geometry. I am on the lookout for a new front fat motor to resurrect the bike. Prior to the motor failure, after some serious remote excursions, everything seemed to be working well.
UPDATE: I found a unicorn! Scored a replacement front fat Bafang G060 motor. This otherwise-dead bike is now in the resurrection phase. I may end up being able to write this project up after all. The Bullitt II project comes first, though.