Boosted eBella

EBella

I’m writing these overdue updates on a plane and can’t access the site to see where I got to, so let’s just say I made the Bella electric… bought a nasty golden Chinese bike that happened to have a 12 inch hub motor – switched it all across and voila… if only it had been that easy, but I either have or will write that up elsewhere. It worked, but was a bit slow and I wanted more – hence eBella v2.

If the 2000w 72v eBella v1 didn’t cut it we needed more power – 3500w is good, but in for a penny, I went for 12000w. The six 12v motorbike batteries were also a bit heavy and archaic, so I went for 96v lithium… yes it’s going to be a beast.

Of course, its not just a case of swapping bits over, the new controller was twice the size, the battery box needed redesigning, wiring and converters etc needed upgrading, it was effectively starting from scratch. In fact, I did start the wiring loom from scratch, learning a lot as I went. With it all in place and after many nights of head scratching I finally got it running. Just one wire frustrated me for a week. Buried deep in the loom an e-lock function, single wire, attached to ground, stopped everything, but I found it in the end and with the rest all good it was time for a test.

It was lethal!

I have ridden and raced drag-bikes, landspeed bikes, nitrous bikes, you name it. This was lethal. A slight twitch of the throttle to pull way and the front is up and up hard. I mean a slight twitch – 2-3 degrees. Once you nursed it back to ground and up to speed, the same twitch, same result. I know electric vehicles have instant torque but this was ridiculous, hilarious. All of my bodyweight hanging over the front and the result was the same. I guess we need some calibration, but that’ll have to wait as a mile to so into the maiden test voyage, it locked up the rear wheel at about 40kph and skidded to a halt – wheel never to move again! I thought it was magnetically locked, but no it was seized solid. I’d stupidly use an aluminium spacer on the rear and whilst the shaft didn’t rotate, of course the wheel it was sandwiched with did and it welded itself to both! I had to strip the bike roadside, battery out, wheel out etc and walk to home of a trolley, in the heat!

Good news is I have spare motors, albeit smaller wattage 10kw. With this in place and some downtuning on the FarDriver phone app and the bike is manageable.

I’ll be honest I haven’t riden it much – I need to get it registered before I can do much more testing on the road and I’ve been distracted by another Bella, an R200, once that is ready I’ll taken them both to Sharjah for registration as Classics, I’ve already had Zundapp registered as a brand in the Road and Traffic Authority database, so it should be straightforward…