Suzuk-E – Suzuki Electric Bike Hack Continuation

Our friends over at TheWorkshop.ca have just completed the the next phase of the Suzuki Electric Bike Hack that we have been following. This phase includes some stats on top speed and possible distance this bike is capable of. I have to figure out how I can get a electric guitarist to play cool tunes while I work, I would be so much more productive. 🙂

"The graph is of the Suzuk-E’s speed in Km/h over a 1.25Km run down our road. The conditions were icy and snow covered with no bare sections to get traction on. The only flat section of road (checked against the elevation graph, not posted) jived with what I thought. The top speed is about 21Km/h in 6th gear on the flats… This translates backwards to approx 2,500RPM on the motor from the spread sheet posted in section one. Given the above data, I now have to decide which direction to take in rewinding the motor. Based on the results from 3 previous motor re-winds of the Dirt-E Bike’s motor last year, I have a good sense that winding heavier copper will raise the RPM/Volt but at the cost of lowering the low RPM torque of the motor. In this case my gut instinct is to rewind the motor with more turns of lighter wire to achieve greater low-end torque which should raise the RPM of the motor under a comparable load closer to it’s best efficiency. It sounds good to say "Heavier copper" and "Higher Current", but if the majority of that additional energy is simply converted into heat, the outcome is far from optimal."