InsaneJournal

How I Built an All Electric Three Wheeled Trike
welding, welding

A Toyota pickup was just the result. It was in proportion on the trike and the best part was it was clear of the wrecking yard. We took the trunk apart, sand blasted it and did the re-assembly. Several coats of red paint later it was an engineering marvel. The rear along with a set of leaf springs cannibalized from another truck, made mounting the whole rear end quite very simple. Ray added some leaf spring hangers on the base frame and four bolts later we had a rear in this trike. We opted for a stock 750 Honda entry fork with extended hoses and heavier springs to hold the weight of your bike. Using a stock top end made handlebars and other accessories a snap to mount and yes it looked good. The trike was now on all of it's three wheels.

Motor power was next so i spent some considerable time investigating how much horsepower different sized electric motors or generators may well produce. An electrical generator when given external power, becomes a very efficient motor. A friend owned an aircraft parts warehouse and had a bunch of generators from old WW2 plane. Checking with manufacturer we found that when supplied with twelve volts the generator could produce up to ninety horsepower. That's 100 % pure horsepower. A formula we found compares one horsepower with electric to three horsepower on the gas engine. That means our thirty horsepower electric motor was exactly like using a ninety horsepower gas motor. The biggest difference was our motor weighed about twenty three pounds. A simple flat plate welded to the the top rear end housing, several bolts and toothed drive belt and there were our drive train complete. The entire bottom section within the seat was laid out to hold on to twelve, deep sump 6-8 volt marine batteries. An on board charger was concealed under the rear deck area above the trunk end.

The most difficult part of that entire project was to help configure the electrical circuits to both run and cost the batteries. The throttle was a regular motorcycle hand throttle mounted on the handlebars. The cable end was directly attached to a rheostat that controlled the quantity of voltage being fed to the generator at any one time. The more you switched the throttle, the faster you went. Pretty very simple. As the cycle produced I realized that adding some type of charging system would prolong the battery life and improve the possible travel distance on a single charge of the electrical power. By mounting a twelve volt car generator for a ninety degree angle on the rear end and above the generator (powerplant) by extending the rear ends tail shaft together with adding another pulley and v-belt it was possible to generate power whenever the cycle was in motion including accelerating and decelerating. There was no power generated at a stop but then again no power was being used either. The very small amount of electric used for lights during the night time or turn signals had been so small it did not effect the available travel distance of the bike. welding