If I had the money and a truck with a trailer…

This would be the powertrain for the T-Bucket . Seriously, I would love to have a battery-powered bucket, but the up-front outlay would break me if I made the range work for cross-country trips between races. And it wouldn’t be a very practical car if I only put in enough battery for running Goodguys or SCCA Solo racing to keep the weight down. Most of the issues are due to budget constraints caused by not actually having enough money to call it a “budget”.

I’m going to be honest in that I have wanted to make an EV for a while, particularly for the T-Bucket project. What always stopped me was the low performance or the weight and range issues caused by the battery chemistry available at the time.

And I’m face-planting into the keyboard again, so time to put the post and the writer to bed.

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I just got a news item that really bothered me, and the Feed

I read several on-line newspapers as part of looking for bike articles to post here, and in one there was a report of a 21 YO white dude shooting up a black church in Charleston SC while berating the victims for raping white women and other such nonsense. This is much worse than what we get as cyclists. At least as a cyclist you know that once you get off the road and put the bike away you are no longer in any more danger than anyone else of your demographic age, but being a Person of Color is not something that you can put away and be done with at the end of the day. My heart goes out to all the people of Charleston who were affected by this tragedy.

Up first because it’s in TX, Houston cyclists are getting killed faster than they can put up Ghost Bikes to mark their passing. THREE HOUSTON AREA CYCLISTS KILLED IN THREE WEEKS Seriously, all those cyclists getting hit and nobody is even getting a ticket for failure to pass 3 feet or more away? TANJ!

Another double dose of Our Daily Ted. Morning Links: Bike rider shot to death in LA’s Mid City; LADOT GM Seleta Reynold is new interim VP of NACTO Another senseless shooting death.

Part 2 is a guest post. Guest Post: Testing to Destruction I don’t like this post, it places too much blame on the victim for being there to get hit.

Some good news from NYC. Report: City Will Partially Ban Cars From Central, Prospect Parks and New Maps Reveal Expanded Car Ban In Prospect And Central Parks

A VT wreck is suspected to have been caused by a drunk driver. Police: Suspected DUI in crash that killed cyclist Really a 0.123% BAC and DUI is “suspected”? Oh, the perp is a cop’s wife…

This kind of wreck is very rare, but unfortunately it does happen. UPDATE: Cyclist dies from bicycle crash The juvenile mis-judged the clearance when he(?) made his turn. This might have been a case where a helmet would have helped.

This was a wreck where the helmet made absolutely no difference, in spite of what the LEO posited. Brooks cyclist escaped serious injury thanks to helmet When a big truck hits a cyclist they either have a head injury, or they don’t. Presence or absence of a helmet is not going to make any difference one way or they other. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a fool.

Trigger warning: the video in this clip shows a cyclist being assaulted from a moving vehicle with intent to cause harm. Disturbing footage captures laughing yobs shoving cyclist off bike from moving car The people inside the car thought it was hilarious as the cyclist face-planted in the grassy verge. I did that a few years back and even wearing a full-face BMX helmet it wasn’t fun. I got momentarily stunned but the helmet prevented skin to ground contact. This guy didn’t even have that level of protection. There is a special circle in Hades for animals like this.

One reason the aforementioned animals might have done their assault is articles like this. Dorrington cyclist fatal hit-and-run: Suspended sentence for lorry driver Cyclist wearing HiViz and equipped with flashing lights still gets hit and killed, and the driver gets 200 hours of community service and a 2 year ban on getting caught driving.

Still in Jolly Olde is this report on a wounded veterans support ride. North East cyclists support wounded soldiers on gruelling bike ride

Ozzie cyclists strike back at crap infrastructure. Bike activists take guerilla action by painting ‘unsafe cycle lane’ on Sydney roads A cyclist was killed a couple of months ago riding in just such a lane as he was thrown in front of a truck after bouncing off a door opened in his path without warning.

If building your own is too much trouble, or you lack the skills, then Pedego has your assisted cargo carrier needs in mind. Pedego Introduces a Superhero Bike — the Stretch Cargo! I wonder if it uses the industry-standard Xtra-bike seats and cargo bags?

In other e-assist news scientists are studying how battery materials act under overcharging conditions to design next-generation batteries with higher capacities. X-Ray Imaging Reveals Secrets in Battery Materials

And on a sad closing note, WoaB lost one of the founding employees today when Brian the Security Cat died on the job. Brian has been “working” for WoaB since before we started writing a blog. He had lost a lot of weight in the last few months and we were getting worried about his health, then his breathing got raspy this morning and he couldn’t find a comfortable place to rest anywhere in the house. He went to take his afternoon nap under the bed and never woke back up.

Brian 2000-2015, RIP

Missing Pagan Fellowship Night tonight, and the Feed

The tight financial situation of the last couple of months has had a negative impact on my social life tonight. We have a tax preparer appointment on Monday that both of us have to be present for which means that both of us will need a bus pass, which means that I can’t spend $5 for a pass to get to the gathering at church tonight. I will be so glad when I get the money to repair Blue so I don’t need to keep dropping $ on bus fare for a slightly over 3 mile trip each way, plus when I take the bus I have to leave early, which won’t happen when I have Blue back on the road. Speaking of Blue, I’m currently putting some charge cycles on the cells in the headlight to try to save the one cell that was drawn down to 0.2V during the time the bike was stolen. The first test I had 3 cells at over 1.3V with that bad cell at 0.2V when I stopped the test and recharged. I’m working my 6th cycle now and I have 2 cells at 1.22 and 2 at 1.20 and I stop the test when the first cell reaches 1.1V or less. The 6th cycle has already gone twice as long as the first test, so things are looking better on that front.

Up first, just down the road from WoaB World HQ in the Beautiful Suburbs of Hell the folks in Austin say you can’t depend on drivers actually driving at a safe speed around people unless the infrastructure forces them to slow down. Neighbors want safety improvements after cyclist’s death And the first comment was asking if the cyclist cut off by the truck was wearing a helmet… TANJ!

Our Daily Ted came late today, and was not pleasant. 44-year old bike rider killed near LAX I still feel sorry for Ted whenever he posts these, because he rides those streets

One thing that has been consistent ever since I started this blog was admonishment to “Don’t hit the pedestrians”. Northampton marathon runner has cut the ‘size of tennis ball’ after being knocked over by cyclist at Pitsford At this point I can’t say for sure if this was a collision or a close pass, but either way, stop and render aid.

The recent action to exclude MTB from an area that had been one of the few places in Portland where a person could ride MTB inside the city before the city bought it has raised many questions about what happened to the process. Closed-door Parks bureau committee was set to recommend bike trails at River View So, up to the last meeting of the advisory committee MTB were good to go, then Amanda Fritz declared in March that MTB would not be allowed anywhere in the park that MTBers had invested hundreds of thousands of man hours in maintaining up until the city bought it and after. Something is rotten in the state of Portland.

Other people are wondering what’s going on with their infrastructure. Tucson and the Case of the Missing Bus Lanes Bus lanes in the plan right up until concrete and asphalt are poured then all of a sudden Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot?! no bus lanes. Just like the parks that Dallas voters voted for back in the ’90s where the Trinity Tollway is being planned for right now.

Some good news from the US DOT. DOT Rule Change Lets Transportation Dollars Stay in Local Communities Instead of outsourcing the labor this will keep the money circulating in the community longer. That’s a good thing for the local economy.

Some infrastructure issues from the Great White North. Egan: High time the NCC looked at Canal’s low cycling curbs I love that people are demanding licenses and registration were first in line to comment about this hunk of bike/ped infra.

This just makes me think of criminal charges that should be filed. Cyclist killed at roundabout where Westminster Council rejected safety overhaul When money is offered to rebuild an intersection that gets refused, and then a very predictable death occurs at that intersection, are the politicians involved culpable for the death?

Other UK infrastructure news, proposed changes in the legal infrastructure. Lorry and cyclist accidents: HGV drivers must prove innocence, says Green Party leader Natalie Bennett The HGV industry has fought changes to their vehicles tooth and nail for the last several years, so payback should be expected.

Still more legal infrastructure from Jolly Olde. PedalSure offer cyclist insurance policy focused on you, the rider

Moving on we have a bit of real lifestyle. 13TH ANNUAL FILMED BY BIKE TRAILER PRESENTED BY ORP See what I mean? This is Bicycle Lifestyle, the essence of riding a bike as part of your life. Lots of beer in that film 🙂

Another Wounded Warrior event. Inspirational Cycling Event Helps Injured Service Members Heal

More on the response to a Canadian cyclist’s death. Bowmanville’s Roman Manko’s death ‘a huge loss’ to cycling community

The Canadian version of the Wounded Warrior project. Tribute to British invasion of a musical variety

A Philippine lifestyle story. Police chaplain on nationwide solo bike ride to honor SAF 44

One of the limitations on e-assist bikes is the rate at which the batteries can accept charge. New aluminum battery for smartphones can be charged in a minute This shows the cell can accept a C60 charge rate (60 times the ah rating of the cell), which is a good indication of how it would work as an e-assist battery. At this point the chemistry is only being developed as a power source for mobile devices, but then again so was all the Lithium chemistry at first, except the LiFePO4 and a couple of other chemistries.

And I’m all out of links.

Billed @€0.02, Opus the Poet

The case of the missing boots on a Wreck-Free Sunday

Tonight’s evening service was in honor of the Veritan archetype Trickster, and the archetype was definitely in play. One of the female congregants took her boots off because her feet were hurting, and because this is a normal behaviour for my church. The person sitting behind her moved her boots to a hidden location, then another person moved them while the first person was looking away, somewhere along the way the house ghosts got in on the act and the location of the boots was lost to everyone for a while, then they were found (but not by the owner). Finally the boots were placed in the passenger seat of the owner’s ride home, which I was not able to witness… And which I will relate next week after I hear the results.

Something else I have been watching on the idiot box this weekend was the Long Beach round of Formula E. While I’m heavily biased towards liking this kind of contest, I’m conflicted. One thing was there were two drivers that had to switch to their second car way early and even though the race was very short neither was able to finish, even with substantially reducing speed and acceleration from the rest of the cars. The race was over a distance of only about 80 km which is only 50 miles +/-, and they did not use the full Long Beach street course with the long curving “straights” and two tight hairpin turns, which they said on the pre-race were judged to be too harsh a test of the battery system because of the high speed of the straight. That was what triggered me, race cars that couldn’t race at top speed are not race cars. I think the culprit is a combination of the controller and the battery that just sucks the energy out of the system.

And this has been a long day, so I’m packing up and going to bed.

PSA, Opus

I’m not hairy on a Wreck-Free Sunday

I just finished doing the annual Spring head-shaving in the back yard partially in preparation for a trip to my PCP tomorrow to have that lump on the back of my neck taken care of. The other part is I leave the hair removed so the local birds can use it as nesting material. This was one of the years I take the porn-stache off to make sure there is nothing growing on my upper lip that shouldn’t be there.

The trip to the PCP is because the lump is between tennis ball and baseball size, and severely restricting my range of movement moving my head back and left to right. Also, I can’t even get my helmet all the way over my head because it hits that lump. So, the lump has to go, and the first step in that is tomorrow’s doctor visit. This is one of the downsides of my insurance, having to go through the PCP before getting anything that he (they) can’t do. And I’m pretty sure this is going to take a surgeon to deal with because it was originally a lipoma about the size of a walnut and now well just go back and read that first sentence in the paragraph again.

My cheap gene has been kicking in on the powertrain for the Sprint-T. I got a link to a $7500 conversion from ICE to EV and as this conversion is less than the cost of the engine and transmission… And this does not violate Mrs. the Poet’s decree against donor vehicles. The down side is there will be a major performance and range hit unless I drop the SLA and go LiFePO4. But then we are looking at thousands of dollars more, or roughly the same cost as the ICE installation and still not anywhere near the daily range of the ICE. Actually I just finished checking on the cost to get the same range as a 10 gallon gas tank and I am looking at $32K just for the batteries, so green is not as fast as brown or grey. The batteries for the same range as the SLA are about 3 times as much money and less than ¹/₃ the weight, so a slightly greater range on the same amount of electrical power. And I would need a truck to trailer the car for transport to races, so there is nothing to gain there. So, unless I want to totally abandon the major reason I’m building a T bucket rather than buying something like a Kia Rio, I will stick to the ICE. But the intellectual exercise of packaging the EV components in a T bucket was a brief entertainment for me.

I’m currently watching the Sprint Cup race out in Fontana CA, and it has been all JGR and SHR up front. I would call this one a good race anyway, because those are both 4 car teams, and they both seem to have 2 or 3 cars that can run up front at some point in the race. The last segment seems to have degenerated into a fuel economy contest at 190 MPH, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a nail-biter. To the contrary, now it’s a question of who will still be running at the end. This has been a fairly wreck-free race with most of the cautions being for debris. And just now they had a debris caution with 15 laps to go, so that means back to charging for all they’re worth to the end of the race. Unfortunately Matt Kenseth broke an axle leaving his pit box, taking his car out of contention if not out of the race. 😦 And they just had another caution with two to go, which put Kenseth back on the lead lap. Kevin Harvick decided to only take two right side tires… It’s a Green, White, Checker finish. And now we have another caution for a second GWC attempt to finish (they get three tries) but at least Kenseth got the Lucky Dog to be on the lead lap. And Brad Keslowski won after starting back in the pack from getting 4 tires on the caution that brought out the first GWC. Harvick keeps his string of top-2 finishes alive at eight.

And I’m out of things to say, so I’ll stop writing now.

PSA, Opus