Blog

These are rough financial times for many people, so we felt like making life a little easier for those who are contemplating an electric bicycle conversion project this winter. We are now offering free shipping anywhere in North America for the eZee conversion kits. This promotion will be last until the end of November, so treat yourself to an early Christmas present.

The November 2008 Crystalyte Shipment has been unpacked and the new items added to our store site. This includes a large number of 5300 series hub motors as well as rear 400 series motors. The inventory listings are all up to date and current.

Well it has been quite a long wait but we have finally received the proper cell balancing battery management circuits for the Iron Phosphate battery packs. For any customers who purchased a 24V, 36V, or 48V LiFePO4 battery from us, please send us an email and we will ship you a new BMS circuit that will bring all the cells back into balance, restoring the full capacity from the pack. These BMS circuits are also less prone to tripping from the capacitor inrush current when plugged into the larger motor controllers.

After a decent beta run, we are now shipping the conversion kits based around the Nine Continent hub motor and a Crystalyte sensorless 20A controller. The main lesson we have learned is that because of the higher torque output and the lack of an extended keyway on the axle, these hub motors are more prone to axle spinout than the Crystalyte 400 series. So extra precaution during installation is required, and we will have matching torque arms to offer with the kits in the near future.

Come join us to make the October Kilowatt-Hour bike ride the largest one yet! This monthly event has been going on for over a year now and offers electric bike riders in Vancouver a chance to meet up together and go for a social group ride around the city. The meetup starts at 6pm at the downtown library, details are here:

https://ev.meetup.com/1/

And if you haven't seen it yet, this will be your chance to see and maybe even ride the trans-continental ebike that is now reassembled and rolling again.

Justin's train is scheduled to arrive back in Vancouver sometime during the day on Oct 7th. There has been considerable interest in having a bit of a welcome back gathering and we would like to book a reservation at the Foundation on Main St. and 7th ave to celebrate. If you would like to join us, please help by sending an RSVP to rsvp@ebikes.ca so we can plan accordingly. The party would likely start around 8.30pm.

Since the summer of 2007, Steven Luscher has been organizing a monthly meetup for electric bicycle riders at the Vancouver Central Library. This last ride in October was by far the largest to date, and we hope to see this event continue to flourish as the electric bicycle community expands as well. The video below shows a time-lapse journey of this trip from us leaving our store on Main Street to the final photoshoot just after dark.



The next meetup will be on November 14th, and word is out that it may be more of a social and culinary gathering than a large ebike ride. We'll see, and we hope to see many of you there too. 

Repeat of the Conversion Workshop

Our ebike conversion workshop earlier this summer was a great success, with approximately a dozen people attending, two ebikes fully converted, and a lot of knowledge spread around. We would like to repeat this workshop in November and are sending out feelers to gauge the amount of interest there would be at this time of year. The only difference is that last time we were able to offer the workshop for free, while this time we would have to collect a small participation fee to account for the rental of the shop space from the Pedal Depot. If you think you would participate, please send us an email to workshop@ebikes.ca

We have found a bit of a flaw with all the newer 3-LED Nexcell NiMH/NiCad battery chargers. These chargers use a programmable mircochip for controlling the charging process, but the overvoltage cutoff point was set too low to fully top up and balance Nickle Cadmium battery packs. The image from our testing station below clearly shows the difference between using the old and the new chargers:


The newer chargers terminate early at 61V rather than waiting for either a significant temperature rise or voltage drop that occures when the cells are allowed to overcharge slightly. This means the cells don't get a chance to balance out and causes a greater likelyhood of cell reversals developing over time. It's not a critically serious issue, but we have had more than the regular percentage of batteries coming back to us for which this was identified as the source of the problem. If you have a 3-LED charger and NiCad battery, we should have replacement microchips available soon for upgrading the charger parameters.

This coming Tuesday, Oct 14th, is the end of Canadian thanksgiving as well as voting day in our federal elections, and for us to fulfill these national responsibilities the store will be closed from regular resale activity. We'll be open again as usual on Wednesday from 12-6pm.