About one month prior to this I finally paid off my car, got the title, and was fancying the idea of trading it in for a new and efficient car. But since I was just getting used to not paying car payments I wasn't terribly excited to chop away another hundred bucks or so from every paycheck again. Thinking about the motorcycle I wondered how much it would cost to make one myself and would it offset the cost of a more efficient vehicle.
Answer? Building a bike for $3500 or so? And not pay anything at the pump? Oh yeah it offsets the cost. So I started doing more research. I've been to the usual haunts: EVAlbum, Electric Cars Are for Girls, Uve's EV Calculator, and so on. They were all very helpful, and soon I was ready to find a donor bike.
My coworker Drew is a big motorcycle geek and was kind enough to make a call to Kissimmee Motorsports and find a good, cheap frame for me. Enter Aaron, who's in school for motorcycle engineering (or something). He had an old 1990 Yamaha FZR from his cousin in Minnesota that had a bad clutch (which he, unfortunately, broke himself). In parting it out he offered the frame (and wheels and electrical system, basically everything but the internal combustible engine parts) to me for $400. It wasn't in too bad of shape (some scratches, a bent mirror, but mostly cosmetic issues), and was exactly what I wanted.
I knew I wanted a sport bike because of a couple reasons: 1) it's aerodynamic, and usually light; 2) it's got fairings, which will protect the electric parts from weather; 3) it's flashy, and, if you're going to build an electric motorcycle you might as well make it a sight. The bike from Aaron fit the bill, and just today I got back from picking it up from his place and bringing it home.
So now I'm ready to begin. I promise most posts will not be this long, and I will try to be concise about the engineering decisions I've made. But for now I'll leave it with this: I plan for it to be 72V, go 70 mph, and go 20 miles at 65 mph. And cost around $3500 start to finish.
Let's see how close I come.
Here are more pictures.
