I've gone tubeless!

So I found a shop in Hull that had a little sign in the window saying they sold "STANs" which is an adhesive fluid that allows you to run your tire with no tubes!  Asking the price, they quoted me $25 per tire.. that's the cost of a replacement tube alone.  So I went for it and it's been fantastic ever since. I'm taking more trails then ever before!

The trick is, you have to get the STANs replaced every six months or so, so I've read.  Or you can just add more fluid once in a while, to fill out anything that might be getting thin.  In order to get the tire to install on my 26" rims I had to buy a 24" tire and stretch it over my rims, split the tube in the center, clean out the talcom powder from inside of the tube and let the rubber hang over the side.

Once the rubber was on, put a little pressure on the tube to force the walls to extend out to the lip of the rim and then gave it a shot of air.  Boom, sealed!

The Ghetto is the addition of the inner tube vs just packing the rim and hoping the seal is good enough for the lip to connect with the rim.




Lessons Learned:

• Let the experts do the work. I watched, learned and assisted.
• The experts were able to do the job in 1hr vs me, which would of taken a few days, I am sure of it.  I would of made it way more complicated then it needed to be.

Doing something right

After biking in, I noticed my heart was pumping hard, legs were a bit sore, was out of breath...  Yes, I am doing something right.  I can already feel that my legs are almost back to where they were before the rear motor gave out.  It's amazing how fast one can loose so much progress in such a short period of time.

Need to find out what the water break away is for fat bikes/motor bikes to ensure my rear fender is actually doing something.

Here is my guess so far but I could be TOTALLY wrong.

And it's done.

 The bike is back to being 100% functional.  The motor has been moved to the front of the bike instead of the back and I've completed a few test rides and even taken it as far as driving to work again.  The bike feels a lot more natural and hard peddling doesn't feel like I'm putting a pile of torque on back end tire.

I've removed the controller off the back all together, giving the back end that much lighter. I've put some weather stripping around the controller to allow it to breath but this should keep the controller safe from the cold winds of winter.  Next, will be cutting of old tubes to encase the wiring harness.

The motor is a little more obvious then when it was in the back but I'm okay with that.

Updates to the bike

Last time I drove in the rain, my entire back was one long strip of mud.  From my helmet, to my neck, etc.. I expect to get dirty when driving a bike like this but it was a little excessive.  I finally decided to add a rear fender to the back side of the bike.  I haven't tested it to see if it captures the break away water or not but I am sure I'll find out shortly! I had to screw it into the rack as the real estate on my seat post is a premium, due to my short legs!

As for the controller I moved it from the bag to a custom center tube device that give it plenty of breath and out of my way. It's a simple pray painted electrical elbow that I cut the guts out of with a steel saw, sanded and painted flat black. I put on new pedals too as the last ones cause my feet to slip off when they got wet.

Lungs are burning!

So I took the plunge and drove the bike all the way into work for the first time since the rear motor died a horrible death.  I've been driving around a borrowed mountain bike for a while but no super long rides (10-30min) and not the 1hr-2hr rides and my lungs are burning so bad.  With about two weeks off the bike, my endurance dropped significantly. I was shocked!

I feel like this is the first time I've driven into work on a bike, even though I've been doing it all summer long.  However, I had regained that "joy" when I came into work that I was missing..  Fresh air does wonders to my mood.

With the motor on the front, the bike feels a lot more balanced and lighter... It's strange but true.

Lessons Learned:

• Don't stop biking.. 

It's alive!

After a false start of having everything put together, the motor was mis-firing and faulting like crazy. The wheel couldn't even take off on it's own and needed a slight push to get it going.  Once the bike hit about 25km then the motor started to behave.  Reviewing all the wiring on the bike it all looked good but still wasn't working.  So in a desperate attempt I cut all my connections and redid all my splices again.

I worked into the late night, with only a white LED porch light to light up the area in which I decided to work at but I've completed my first drive around the block and the bike works.

So I ended up moving the controller into the front bag, insulated by some foam from the bag.  Moving the controller to the front handle bars ended up making the bike feel unsafe and I actually crashed when trying to get off the bike last night.  Glad no one saw me do that!  But the bike is alive and kicking.  Time to drive it around a bit tomorrow before bring it into work.

I think I'm going to mount some rear saddle bags in the back or just ditch the rear rack and put a nice long fender on the back side.  Over all I'm glad this is working again!

Controller move from the rear to the front

 I've talked about what is under my rear black box for a while and this re-do of the bike gave me the opprotunity to show what is under the hood (to a point) the controller creates a lot of heat, so the box itself is a simple heat sink with a mess of wires of the controller coming out.  The wire hole is cocked with a sealant to prevent water from getting in, in the event that water somehow gets into the box itself.  

Then to stop the rattle noise I put a layer of industrial Velcro to the bottom, to prevent it from moving around. I didn't want to put more screws in.. As that leads to sharper objects that can rub against the wires.

Each wire reads a different sensor from the bike, such as breaks engaged (disconnects the power from the motor), if I am using PAS, the speed at which I am travelling, etc.  The main ones are the Yellow, Blue and Green.  These are the power and halo effects sensors.  The little red box is a simple shunt fuse I added in as a per-caution.

Lessons Learned: 

• With a controller like this, take the time and map out which colour connects to which.  Both sides of the connector don't match up to each other and many of the connectors are the simple male/female two prongs.