Ended up changing out the rear blinkers as the base ones with rubber boots are pretty much crap. Yes they blink well without a flasher relay, but they break easily at the stems and if tightened enough to stay firm the post will pull out of the blinker material.
So I topped up the batteries last night to 81 volts and then took it on an 8.4 mile ride through part of town this morning – presuming the odometer is correct. After getting out of the neighborhood it was a mile downhill at 45 mph (mostly coasting assisted), then about 2 miles at 45 mph with 3 stop lights to destination. The only difference is that on the way back it was back up the long hill.
What i noticed while returning home was that the loud squeal I was hearing from the front of the bike was the sound of the speedometer connection with the cable from the front tire spinning rather hard and vibrating like crazy. Will check it for alignment (unplug cable and replug basically) to see if it will fix.
Anyway, voltage leaving was 81.0 volts, voltage after the 8.4 mile ride was 77.3 volts. This is a difference of 3.7 volts, which comes in at 8.4 miles / 3.7 volts = 2.27 miles / volts. Roughly a range of 38.59 miles with a low cutoff of 64 volts. Need try longer, just not keen on finding out the hard way i couldn’t quite make it home.
Finally got it re-registered and insured. Street legal now. Just need to finish some optics (wrap gas tank & other side panel i think), add a clip to pull the charging cable out through the gas tank lid, and install a chain slide and it is good to go. Actually the only real thing is to add the chain slide as I am using a smaller than stock sprocket so it will rub on the swing arm. Or i could just increase the front sprocket size, lengthen the chain, and get on with life also.
With the completion of the wiring i was able to test the LED H4 bulb and light distribution. Low beam appears to be upside down to my Honda Nighthawk 250, but will have to drive at night to test and probably change the headlight angle a bit.
So I spend the day trimming the spaghetti wire nest in the headlight back so i could put the headlight on. Success. Darn engineers should make the headlight bucket 2 inches deeper than it needs to be to accomodate wiring. Anyway, progress pictures below. Just need to finish putting a bottom protection plate on, a sprocket cover, and finish the accent lighting and it will be functionally done. Then trimming back the gas tank a bit more to fit over the top of the batteries and it will be basic optics done. Advanced optics will have to wait a bit.
Modified a copy of an original (color) C3 model. Mostly deleting and then adding in. 12v source is the 72v dc-to-12v dc converter.
So have wrapped up just about everything in the wiring harness in the mid section and the rear of the bike. Just need to figure out how to mount the rear blinkers (yeah, not a standard blinker post depth), fix the negative line to ground to frame so the horn works (yeah, that stupid KZ method of using the handlebar as the ground path instead of a wire out from the left hand control can get in the way when trouble shooting).
Pics are from the front side, rear side, and top. The bright green material is the sleeve for the new wiring. Each positive wire is run directly from the headlight bucket or ignition out (inside the headlight bucket) back to the fuseblock in the middle. Positive to the tail light and negative for the tail light and blinkers is from the fuse block directly. The fuse block has 6 positive circuits and a negative bus bar where all the negatives com back to.
So took a picture with the charging cable rolled up on the top of the batteries. Still need to figure out how to attach this to the inside of the tank or lid for easy access when i put the tank back on.
So the fuse block is installed with some temporary wiring. Have also identified what colors from the new ignition go where and have pretty much tied everything together with wire nuts and temporary crimps, until tomorrow and next weekend.
Got the bike far enough along that the wiring harness redo is almost done so I figured it would be a good time to charge it for once. Moral of story, buy a faster charger. It took about 11 hours to charge from 74 volts to 82 volts with a 72v (84v out) 3 amp charger. On the flip side the batteries did not get hot, though the fan in the charger ran continuously. The charging cable is a 10 ga SAE extension cable i cut in half and attached one side to the terminals on the inlet/outlet of the battery back and the other i spliced into the outlet side of the charger (yes, had to cut the old connector off).
