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Thursday 4 August 2016

You want a folding electric bike?

There's two very suitable bikes available on Ebay, the seller wants £50 for the pair on "Buy it now", you might get it cheaper if you bid in the auction. If you're thinking of making a folding electric bike, they would be very suitable, and at that price, I'd buy the pair, because then one is the bike you convert, and the other one will be a very cheap source of spare parts.

This is a very sturdy folding mountain bike, very suitable for rough terrain, and suitable for conversion.

Add the Xiongda double speed motor from Panda, three batteries from Hobbyking (and a charger) and you'll be on the road in no time.

5 comments:

  1. Can 3 of those batteries really total 48 Ah? (for £114)
    Specialist ebike batteries of only 10Ah are £300!
    Thieves?!

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  2. Each battery is 16 AH at about 16 volts. When you put the three in series you get 16AH at 48 volts (50 volts when fully charged, 40 volts is as low as you should run them). And yes, they really are the price that Hobbyking shows (and if you linger on the page, a popup will offer you an even better price!).

    These are LiPo batteries, not quite the same as the LiPo4 batteries that are usually sold for bikes.

    The difference is, Lipo is lighter (and a lot cheaper), but *MUST* be charged with a proper Lipo charger (an extra £20 maybe) and *MUST NOT* be discharged to below 2.7 volts per cell. I use a cell alarm that I've set to start beeping at 3.2 volts.

    So the bike batteries you buy are aimed at being "foolproof", whereas the Lippos from Hobbyking can be abused, if you're really silly. Like if you ignore the beeping, for example.

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  3. Batteries and charger now ordered.
    No luck with lower price pop ups this time.
    Just need to order a motor now and excitedly await deliveries.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Some progress.
    Picked up a mid drive motor today from warehouse in Hayes.
    Have started fitting to bike.

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  5. Well done! Email me is you need any help.

    ReplyDelete