My Faith, restored

So I had the good luck to have a work day scheduled in Santa Rosa, home of the electric motorcycle shop Thunderstruck. The father and son operation know their shit. Bryan, the owner, works 12 hour days, and has built several electric racing machines. I also had a young co-worker with who likes me and is a fellow motorcycle enthusiast. Furthermore, we had to kill a bunch of time in the middle of the day up there, waiting for some solar trackers to do their thing at sundown.

It was great! We loaded up the electric boogie at sunrise and headed up to Santa Rosa. We got to Thunderstruck and unloaded the bike around 10 AM. Bryan told me what I had to do to make the bike everything I dreamed of. Apparantly, I was experiencing a lot of loss through the steel bolts I was using in the battery lugs. He also suggested that I buy and disassemble some Dewalt battery packs to put more cells in parallel with the ones I alreadyly have. Finally, Bryan programmed my controller in such a way for me to have max current without f-ing up the cells.

So I have a new list of work to do on the machine. Bryan restored my faith and made me realize that the Electric Boogie can be everything I've wanted it to be. He said I should be able to go 30 miles, but not straight highway miles. He said I'd have to keep it under forty to get that kind of range. I've got five Dewalt 36V, packs in the mail. Apparantly, they utilize A123 cells which are also the shit. The cheapest price you can get on those cells is available when you buy dewalt packs and take them apart. I will put 2 of these cells in parallel with each of my hipower cells. This way, short blasts can come out of the smaller cells and the hipowers will pick up the rest. I can't wait! Bryan said "it will be like a rocket." I look forward to that...