We recently bought a Ryobi electric lawnmower to replace our very very
tired 20 year old B&D electric lawnmower. The battery is quickly
swappable in the Rybobi (a big selling point) and we noticed that it is
the same voltage that our electric bicycle uses. Since the bicycle
needed a new battery, I thought, "Hmm... Why not?"
I bought a broken Rybobi electric string trimmer on eBay for $30 that
used the same battery as the mower, cut off the battery holder with a
bandsaw, and screwed it to the bike where the old battery used to go:
https://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xap1/t1.0-9/10441159_683153111721280_3124098421010783738_n.jpg
Works perfectly. Looks somewhat "factory". The bicycle is more
peppy than it ever was with the original battery and gets probably
2/3rds the range. The battery has an internal BMS, (as did the original
bike battery) so you just have to connect up the power wires from the
holder. Both the battery and the bike have a state-of-charge gauge, so
you aren't likely to run out. When you do run low, you just swap
batteries with the spare one in the charger, just like the mower.
(Mower came with two batteries.) We use the e-bike as a pit bike at
Bonneville. You really _need_ a pit vehicle to cover the looooong
distances in the pits at Bonneville. We aren't likely to mow and ride at
the same time, since there is not much grass to mow at Bonneville. :-)
You can see a couple more photos of the electric "Ryobi" bicycle pit
bike, as well as the Ryobi mower, on our facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/killacycle
(Just ignore the annoying prompts to join facebook and click
"Cancel" and you can view the pages without joining.)
Ryobi would be a natural sponsor for our racing program, (as we own
about 10 Ryobi cordless tools,) but we haven't been able to get in
contact with anyone there, unfortunately. Oh well, so it goes....
Bill & Eva
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