For a while now, I have been looking for a project that would be technically challenging and a good exercise of my creative skills. About 18 months ago, I brought a bike to Boston with the intent of using it as transportation from my apartment a mile away from campus to daily classes. As my comfort level with biking grew, I discovered a new freedom to explore the city without being limited by the cost of public transit or pre-determined routes. It was then that I decided I wanted to build my own bicycle, from scratch.
The first step in this process was to learn how to weld. I sought out welding classes in the Boston area and stumbled upon the resources of the Artisan's Asylum in Somerville. I took a 3-hour MIG welder class that introduced me to the basics of welding technique. In no way am I prepared to weld together a bicycle frame, but I better understood the difficulty of my intended project. Summer classes and fall classes stalled any progress I might have made and this idea got put on the back burner. In the meantime, I moved back on campus and don't use my bike as often, but I use it for longer trips to destinations in Boston. The deficiencies of my current bike were made apparent when I decided to sign up for Postmates, a delivery service, and was losing money because I was too slow to drop off orders. My bike is probably 25+ years old but was not maintained well before I acquired it. The derailleur is on its last legs and would cost more to replace than the whole bike is worth. The small hills of Boston become more like mountains when I don't have full use of all of the gears. On top of that, the bike frame itself is too small for me, so using it for extended periods of time puts a lot of pressure on my wrists. My new idea is multi-faceted: I would like to get a new bike that fits me better but also retrofit it with an electric motor to help me get around Boston faster. Initial research leads me to think that a pedal-assist attachment is going to be better suited to my needs, but I'll need to do an exhaustive search when I start looking for good places to purchase the parts I need. An electric bike hack would satisfy my original goal of being technically challenging, as this would be my first ever independent project. I hope to learn more about motors, gears, and bikes in general, and boost my confidence as a budding engineer. I know hardly anything about electrical systems or batteries, so I anticipate that I'll have to source out some advice from some EE comrades. Next post will be a better outline of the scope of the project, anticipating problems, and identifying a starting point.
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