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2014 Riding Season |
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2014 Start of Season Goals Here is a picture of the bike with 10,101 miles on it. My goals for 2014 are as follows:
 This winter I started work on home electricity projects and built a solar array to charge my bike. Click here to learn more.  |
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Solar Powered Transportation Here is a picture of me with my electric motorcycle. The solar panels shown provide enough power (100 kWh) for this motorcycle (81 Wh/Mile from the wall) to travel 1,200 miles a month.  |
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Summer Projects - 2014 Moved hub motor and batteries from mountain bike to recumbent. Don't like the recumbent seating, it is awkward to start and stop, seat is too low with feet too far out front. Need to design and build a 2 riding position bicycle.    Test Battery Pack from D-11 motorcycle in a Ford Festiva electric car. Festiva consumes 280 Wh/Mile and couldn't make trip to work and back without charging at work, so moved batteries back to motorcycle where batteries have more useful range.  Built and tested a Solar Trailer - turned out sweet. Very nice demo unit. But, I miss my motorcycle trailer and will convert trailer back to being my motorcycle trailer.  Clean up wiring and make electronics more waterproof on motorcycle  Removed extra relays, shunt, reverse switch and siren, 24volt power supply.  Cleaned up wiring. Added a 48volt fuse panel. Put reverse as a push button on the throttle instead of a 2 position rocker switch - this is much nicer.  Sold a bunch of vehicle parts from yard and workshop - notice the lack of blue tarp in background of D-11? The Honda Odysey is sold, along with a bunch of other frames, bikes and parts accumulated over the years.   |
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Battery Balancing The batteries were not balanced for 2 riding seasons, seriously cutting into range. The BMS unit has never worked correctly on this battery pack. So, the batteries needed to be balanced manually. This takes a lot of time when there are 32 cells to balance.  Sept. 2, 2014 note: Balancing helped, range is back up to 50 miles / charge at commuting speeds. |
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First Passenger - August 31, 2014 After 10,700 miles, a seat was installed to take the first passenger for a ride on the Delta-11 prototype. We wondered, would two position seating work with a passenger on board? It does! An 82-mile test ride on our wedding anniverary confirmed bike handles well and that the driver can transition from upright to lower riding positions with the same ease as without a passenger.    |
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Fix Ground Clearance Issue - August 31, 2014 Video of the passenger experiment revealed the root cause of the Delta-11's poor ground clearance during cornering. The rear suspension adjustment was set too low from day one! These pictures show how the suspension was adjusted.    After adjustement, the bike is riding at least .75" higher and has not had a single ground clearance issue in 1,300 miles and Kraig has been enjoyed testing it on as many twisty roads in the area as possible.   |
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Year in Summary - November 2014 2014 has been another good year. I found many parks with charging outlets (Downtown Grand Haven, Downtown Grand Rapids, Newaygo, Allegan, Sagutuk, South Haven), and I'm looking forward to organizing at least one electric motorcycle tour in 2015.  The best times this year were getting to share the ride with my wife Maggie. We went on a couple of rides and got to do something we both love - share a beautiful sunset.    The bike turned over 12,000 miles this year and continues to have a lifetime fuel economy of over 350 MPGe. See Data on EcoModder |
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Inventing a better tomorrow today... Copyright 2014, Schultz Engineering, LLC, written by Kraig Schultz |