October 17, 20205 yr I guess the title says most of it... I'm a semi retired engineer who has taken the Covid19 opportunity to have a play with electric bikes. I'm dipping my toe in the water by purchasing an elderly broken bike to experiment with. The idea is to reduce the use of my car for local trips, motivated by environmental consciousness and parsimony. Unfortunately significant surgery prevents me from using pure pedal power in my slightly hilly home area. The bike I have purchased is a Yamaha XPC-26 that appears to have never been used and parked in the dry. However, unsurprisingly the battery is beyond redemption and, there is no charger with it. I've temporarily grafted in a 24v SLA battery and pumped the tyres up and it seems to work. Now I need to remedy the ravages of time on the fittings but more importantly convert it to a Li Ion battery. For the battery, I want to convert the existing casing to accept a 7PS6 array of 18650 cells which looks like it would fit and give plenty of range. I have managed to get hold of three spare battery cases so for the time being I am making a 5Ah SLA unit until I can sort out the more complex version. Any advice would be welcome, particularly if anyone has a workshop manual.
October 17, 20205 yr Sounds like an interesting project. An early crank drive & a bit of a vintage - had to google it and 1994 wow! http://extraenergy.org/main.php?language=en&id=667 Cannot be any help I'm afraid but am sure someone on here may have owned one at some point. Will look forward to following its progress. Isla...
October 18, 20205 yr Some pictures would be helpful. Making your own battery is possible, but not cost effective as a one off. You will need a welder as well as a bms, nickel strip, insulating tabs and a steady hand. E-bike batteries (advert on the right) will cell your case for you and arrange courier pick up and delivery. Used them myself, good service. You'll need to know the maximum draw of the controller so the right cells and bms can be chosen.
October 18, 20205 yr Author Thanks! On reflection I can see the benefit of pictures so I'll try to post some later. I can see that building my own battery is probably not the most cost effective but one reason for buying the bike was to explore the technology myself. What better or more relevant starting point than to build a battery? I will post a bit more about the design process I intend to follow in the technical forum.
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