Planning

I spent the 3 hours or so last night and another 2 tonight, measuring, recording, plotting and drawing points on graph paper with a pencil, measuring compass, ruler and trusty tape measure.

Practice makes perfect:
This isn't the first time I tried to translate the bike's dimensions onto paper, but all my previous attempts eventually had discrepancies, where one point no longer lined up when measured from 2 or 3 other points of reference. However, this time, before I started, I put small pieces of masking tape at all the important intersections of the frame and a single dot of blue ink on it to indicate the point I should measure to each time. Given that the bike is 3-dimensional, ignoring one of those dimensions and measuring straight from one point to another repeatedly will always yield a small amount of error, but I'm still very pleased with my results this evening. I ended up with a 1/4th scale nice side view of the bike that will allow me to plan for component placement, ground clearance, and even center of gravity if I feel so inclined later. It was a lot of work, but I would seriously recommend it if you tend to like things to be done as efficiently as possible - meaning well done on the first try. I'm going to make some copies at work on legal paper so that I can loosely sketch battery trays without messing up the original, a product of 5 hours' work.

Battery tray:
I've looked at a lot of bikes and other vehicles on evAlbum and elsewhere. For vehicles like cars and trucks, it's a little more important and common, it seems, to fit all the components under the existing panels, doors and frame. For motorcycles, it appears to be far less common. Tons have wires, plugs, and components hanging on for dear life, by the looks of it. Some builders at least took their time and bundled up, organized, or custom cut their wires to make the end result look nice. Then there are the few who get everything to fit under the original fairing, or even make their own fairing and actually have a great looking bike in the end - not that a bike needs full fairing to look good. I mention all of this because as much as I'd like the bike to be low maintenance, it is a vehicle and it's only a matter of time before I have to check, replace, or fix something on it. I don't want it to require 3 hours of dissasembly just to get to the part that needs attention. For this reason, I'm hoping to design a battery tray can be completely removed from the bike in roughly 10 minutes, after removing only a few bolts and disconnecting a couple easily reached plugs. I'd like it to feel really modular when finished, almost like the battery pack for a toy truck. Now that I can begin to decide on the potential placement of multiple batteries, I can start planning for how I might be able to do this.

To do:
Here's what I need to accomplish in the near future:

• I have yet too verify my choice of battery. This is priority #1 for this week, since the battery warehouse is only open from 8-5 during the work week.
• Use my 2D, quarter scale diagram to place the components and do some calculations and more measurements.
• Design a battery pack tray to be fabricated.
• Take a step back before I buy more or build anything to see what problems others encountered or solutions they figured out that I haven't even considered yet.

Maybe I can do most if not all of this by/during this weekend.
I'll try to upload a copy of the rendering soon.
-Colby