Introduction
For a few years after fitting the new batteries I happily commuted to work on the electric scooter. The tyres were cheap to replace at about £25 the brake pads were about £10. I changed the brake pads occasionally but that was about it. So for a while it was pretty cheap commuting. Then one day, this happened:
I hit a pothole on the way home and ended up with a large dent in the back wheel. There were a few problems with this
- The air wouldn’t stay in the tyre. Luckily I was close enough to just about make it home.
- This is a 4KW hub motor, so it wasn’t just a case of buying a new wheel.
- The dealer where I’d got the scooter had folded so spares were nearly impossible to get.
Spares Shortage
It turned out to be not too much of a problem as in the end I managed to bend the rim back fairly well and bought an inner tube for the tyre instead. However, I began to realise that if I wanted to keep this scooter for any length of time, the lack of dealer would be a problem. So I started to research similar scooters with parts that I might take. After a few months I found an advert on eBay for someone selling the whole scooter without batteries for pretty cheap. They didn’t really know what it was, so I made them an offer just for the back wheel and the controller. The scooter was in pretty bad condition apart from the back half so I didn’t want the whole thing and I was pretty sure I could get other parts.
So eventually, this spare motor turned up with a controller:
I decided to replace the motor with the spare and as I was working on the scooter, I thought I should probably tackle some other stuff.
The headlights were rubbish in the dark and I think I was beginning to get night vision to compensate for them. So, I thought I would try to replace the headlight bulbs with LED versions. However, for some reason, the bike would not power these. There was some odd wiring going on which meant the headlights somehow behaved like they were wired in series. Rather than try to figure this out I just put the original bulbs back in.
The rear luggage support cracked at some point and I managed to get a replacement. Again to be fair to the scooter, I was overloading it by carrying my laptop bag to work every day. It was well over the rated weight for the top box.
The front screen broke a couple of times and I kept having to 3d print parts to hold it on. Eventually, I got a new screen that fitted okay but I couldn’t get the front light for it, so again, some 3D printing of adapters was necessary.
I couldn’t see past my own shoulders in the mirrors as the scooter was pretty narrow, so I made some “interesting” 3D printed mirror extenders.
The heated handgrips never worked properly with the hall effect throttle assemble, so I 3D printed an adapter for it.
The headlights cracked and I had to replace them for the MOT – again, slightly different, so some more 3D printing.
I hacked some wind deflectors onto the handlebars – remember I was riding this scooter all year, including winter.
I rode through gales, torrential rain, heatwaves, snow, blizzards, halestones. I rode from 35 degrees C to -5 degrees C. I was pretty unforgiving on the little scooter.
I had to replace brake levers, fluid reservoirs, bearings, front shocks. The front shocks were a slight problem because I could only get ones that were marginally shorter but the fittings were the same.
I used to joke that at one point most of the scooter was in fact 3D printed.
The Final Straw
One fault that kept on recurring was that of the speedo cable drive exploding. Well, okay at least self-destructing. I was lucky enough to replace this a few times but eventually I could just not get a replacement anywhere.
It was possible to get a digital version to fit but there would be no way to get this converted to the speedo which was entirely mechanical. So, I used this as the final reason to perform the second part of my battery upgrade and put in a computer which would not only monitor the batteries but also provide the main interface for the dashboard. I had noticed when I got the second motor that both motors had a spare hall effect sensor cable. Only one was used by the controller, so this gave me a spare connector to monitor to read the speed of the back wheel.
It would take a lot of designing but as I said elsewhere, I like a challenge. Read the next part for the details.
