I attended a boarding high school for my senior year, with a shop full of tools and equipment I knew I wanted to use. One day a classmate showed walked me to the junk pile behind the dumpster and there was a small weathered motorcycle. After talking with the previous owner who had taken it apart and rebuilt it, I learned there was an issue with the piston head. I knew that I wanted this to be my high school capstone project but I the only machinery that could fix the issues with the engine were off campus and inaccessible to me due to covid-19 protocols. This led to my exploration into the electric vehicle world, if i couldn't fix the current motor, i could at least replace it with an electric powertrain and convert the whole bike to electric.
Phase One
This phase involved stipping the bike of any unnecessary parts (carb, spark plug and wiring, exhaust pipe, clutch, engine etc)
While taking apart the engine layer by layer, I used a sketchbook to document the process and develop my understanding of its internal mechanism.
Phase Two
The second phase consisted of rebuilding the little motorcycle by creating mounts for the powertrain, assembling and testing the wiring, and modifying components including the back sprocket, the seat supports,
After wiring the throttle, controller, electric motor, and batteries together to make sure all components worked, I began mounting each one separately.
To mount the motor, I heated and bent three strips of steel that screwed to each other, to the motor, and directly to the frame.
I wired four 12 volt batteries in series and housed them in a box I welded from a large scrap of rusty metal. I used the grinder to sand the rust off and used another scrap to make a lid for the box. I designed the lid to slide easily down over the opening of the box by fitting neatly between the box's two sides and catching on a lip at the bottom.
I painted the box black then heated and bent two strips of steel to mount the box to the frame of the bike. After this, I made some adjustments to the seat height, mounted the controller on top of the battery box, and wired it to the throttle, batteries, motor, and on/off switch.
