When making a motorcycle from scratch, the first thing that you'll need is a jig. A jig, or a frame jig as it is sometimes referred to, is a structure that is used to hold the metal parts of the motorcycle frame in place during the process of welding. The jig is the skeletal layout on which you need to place the metal parts and weld them together.
Converting a motorcycle to an electric vehicle is not as difficult as you might think. An EV conversion can be done with 100% off the shelf parts with the aid of various build instructions available for free on the internet. Lots of people have built these things before.
But that's not to suggest that an EV conversion won't benefit from research & engineering design. College research labs and professional racing teams know all kinds of fascinating information, but they choose to share it in long boring doctoral thesis papers, if they share it at all.
What you never see is the awesome engineering work presented in a conversational tone, let alone an instruction manual. My intention here is to summarize all the good sciency stuff in down to earth terms and share it online for other people like me!
This instructable details the process of physically converting the motorcycle AND the decision making process of optimizing the design.
These are 8 main steps to converting a motorcycle that will guide the structure of this instructable:
1. Initial Planning. (Get a Donor Bike)
2. Gut & Clean Chassis. (The Dirty Part)
3. Design & Planning. (The Nerdy Math Part)
4. Mount Motor, Batteries, Controller, Charger. (The Frustrating Part)
5. Mount Peripherals. (Main Contactor, Throttle, Fuses, Etc)
6. Wire Everything Together. (The Be-Very-Careful Part)
7. Build Body & Paint. (The Other Dirty Part)
8. Drive off into the Sunset. (The Put-On-Your-Cool-Guy-Shades Part)
Converting a motorcycle to an electric vehicle is not as difficult as you might think. An EV conversion can be done with 100% off the shelf parts with the aid of various build instructions available for free on the internet. Lots of people have built these things before.
But that's not to suggest that an EV conversion won't benefit from research & engineering design. College research labs and professional racing teams know all kinds of fascinating information, but they choose to share it in long boring doctoral thesis papers, if they share it at all.
What you never see is the awesome engineering work presented in a conversational tone, let alone an instruction manual. My intention here is to summarize all the good sciency stuff in down to earth terms and share it online for other people like me!
This instructable details the process of physically converting the motorcycle AND the decision making process of optimizing the design.
These are 8 main steps to converting a motorcycle that will guide the structure of this instructable:
1. Initial Planning. (Get a Donor Bike)
2. Gut & Clean Chassis. (The Dirty Part)
3. Design & Planning. (The Nerdy Math Part)
4. Mount Motor, Batteries, Controller, Charger. (The Frustrating Part)
5. Mount Peripherals. (Main Contactor, Throttle, Fuses, Etc)
6. Wire Everything Together. (The Be-Very-Careful Part)
7. Build Body & Paint. (The Other Dirty Part)
8. Drive off into the Sunset. (The Put-On-Your-Cool-Guy-Shades Part)