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Build Your Own Electric Tricycle
20+ miles per hour for 200 miles
on a tricycle? Yes, it's possible.
While electric bicycles dominate the light Electric
Vehicle market, there are a lot of good reasons
to put your Wilderness Energy electric bike conversion
kit on a tricycle instead. Here are some of the
reasons why:
* STABILITY - Three wheel electric
bikes are much better than two wheel electric bicycles
in many respects. They don't tip over and they grip
the road better which translates into a safer and
better braking electric bicycle.
** WEIGHT CARRYING CAPACITY - On a
two wheel E-bike, there are a couple of issues that
you must deal with regarding batteries that you
won't have with an E-tricycle. Where are you going
to mount the battery pack, and what is the maximum
weight battery pack that your bicycle can handle?
If you put your battery pack on a rear bike rack,
(recommended solution for the Bike Electrified kit),
then your battery pack should not weigh more than
30 lbs., or your E-bike will tend to tip over and
will be unstable when taking corners or on rough
terraine. With an electric tricycle, you usually
have a large rear cargo basket, and quite possibly
a front handlebar basket too. Plus the three wheel
configeration allows you to carry a great deal more
weight with little effect on the E-Trike's stability.
What this means is that you can use much larger
batteries, in effect quadrupling your electric tricycle's
range. For example: the battery pack that comes
with your Bike Electrified BD36 kit is made up of
3-12 volt, 12 amp/hr batteries, and it weighs 28
lbs. However, you can build your own battery pack
using either 30 amp/hr Lawn & Garden/Motorcycle
batteries, Car batteries, or even Marine batteries.
It's up to you to decide how much weight you think
your electric trike can handle, and how far you'd
like to go on a single charge.
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This Wilderness Energy dealer in Vancouver
used our Bike Electrified BD36 kit to build
this e-trike, but instead of putting the battery
pack inside the rear basket, they mounted
the battery pack just in front of the basket
on the frame.
Unfortunately WE don't have a picture of
a similar E-trike with large batteries put
inside the rear basket. But rest assured
our customers have put as much as 200+ lbs
worth of batteries (something like 3 - Deep
Cycle Marine, 108 amp/hr batteries weighing
70 lbs each = total battery weight of 210
lbs.)
108 amp/hrs is 9 times the capacity of Wilderness
Energy's 12 amp/hr battery pack, which means
you could conceivably get 180
miles out your Deep Cycle Marine Pack!
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| Here is an example of another type of electric
trike. Note: this model also allows you to mount
a very heavy, large capacity battery pack. |
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And finally, if you still want to ride your
electric bicycle, here is an idea to get crazy
range!
This inventive customer built a trailer to
haul 100+ lbs of batteries, with cargo stapped
on top! Note: he also continued to use
the battery pack that came with his kit, probably
as a back-up.
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*** Batteries used with our Bike Electrified universal
electric bike kits can be any amperage size, as
long as you build a battery pack that puts out 36
volts. Most batteries used in the car, boat and
small engine markets are 12 volt batteries, so you
will need to get 3 - 12 volt batteries and connect
them together in series. Click here to see a battery
wiring diagram illustrating how to connect your
batteries together.
As far a charging goes, you can use the 36 volt
charger that comes with your Bike Electrified electric
bike kit, or you can contact us to special order
a heavier duty, faster-charging lead acid battery
charger. The charger that comes with your electric
bike kit is a 2 amp charger, which means it puts
out 2 amps per hour. If you have a 30 amp/hr batt-pack,
this means it will take 15 hrs to recharge a completely
dead battery pack. Anything over a 20 amp/hr battery
pack should have a higher capacity charger. SONEIL
INC. in Canada makes a high-quality, 5 amp, lead
acid charger. This will charge a 20 amp/hr pack
in 4 hrs, a 40 amp/hr pack in 8 hrs, etc. Call us
to special order these chargers, since you will
pay a lot more if you order one directly from Soniel
yourself.
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