Friday, June 7, 2019

Buying Parts Used

It honestly took quite a bit of effort to narrow down what kind of parts to use in my build, there are so many options to consider. Donor Bike Frame Type, Brushless or Brushed Motor, Motor Controller, Battery Type, Charger, To BMS or not to BMS, the list goes on an on. It honestly was quite overwhelming in the beginning, I knew nothing! Benjamin Nelson's Videos on how to build an electric motorcycle once again helped quite a bit. While they are now somewhat dated in regards to Lithium vs. Lead-acid, they provide an excellent road map to get a bearing on what questions you need to know to ask Google.

I ended up at a crossroads of cost, how much do I want to spend on this venture? And the answer to that question, as it has always been in my life, as little as possible, please. So I figured I would start to comb the internet for used parts off of other projects. I ruled out Litium batteries as I wanted to have a little more assurances that those would be in working order and the Donor Bike Frame because I could modify it to accommodate whatever choices I make with everything else. 

Honestly, finding the appropriate classifieds to browse was a task, I'll add the links to all the ones i used at the bottom of this paragraph. Some needed accounts to view the ad, but that's not to bad. I found Craigslist was not a great place to find anything. In the last 5 months, only two useful things came up. However, Maybe this would be different in other cities.


After browsing for a couple months, I found a Motenergy ME0201014201 Brushless motor for sale for $300 CAD which is a darn good price! It had a broken fan cover but  I figured I could fix this in post. Best part of it, the seller was in Calgary, AB. So I bought it and it was on its way over the mountains to me.


On Reflection of this, I'm pretty sure that it would have been better to buy all new, unless I knew exactly what I was looking for in parts. Buying off the cuff and cheap isn't a good was to make design decisions. Who Knew? Buying the ME0201014201 forced me to look into purchasing a brushless controller, without really considering why I should.

Anyway, it was time to find the matching components and making more decisions 

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