errantember

My friend trippedbreakerneeded Late Night Cat Food, so I offered to let him borrow my electric scooter. He happens to convert vehicles to electric for a living, which will become ironic shortly. While talking to spottedvasa on the phone around midnight, I got a text from him informing me he was stuck at a gas station a few miles away with a dead scooter.

I replaced the scooter batteries a few months ago, luckily with ones purchased from Alien Scooter on South Lamar, meaning they have a warranty. His opinion was that the batteries were acting as though they were just about to die (as in die-die, not die-just-discharged.) They cost approximately $500. Recently, the scooter has been suddenly nearly dieing when only about 20% into its range, and I had forgotten how cold it was tonight. Lead-Acid batteries lose a huge percentage of their power in the cold.

So I swooped in to the rescue with the charger and an extension cord. We plugged it in and left it for about two hours. My original plan, which I'm very happy I vetoed, was to bicycle down to the scooter, lock up the bike, and ride the hopefully-charged-enough-to-get-home scooter back. Instead I decided I'd rather take the Metro down to it, park it, and take the bus or something tomorrow when it's warmer. At 3:05 AM, I just got home after a chilling low-speed-into-the-wind scoot home. The scooter is now charging in the carport, and I am going to *bed*.

On my quest to repair my second-most-fuel-efficient vehicle, I rode to the Home Despot on my most efficient vehicle, my burner bike. Despite not having been cleaned or worked on since Burning Man, and despite being coated in a highly corrosive alkali dust, it got me to and from my destination without excessive amounts of "exercise." My friend Adam Rice just accomplished the Major Miracle of bicycling solo from coast-to-coast, which got me to thinking that it might not just be rumor and innuendo that you can *go* places using bicyclic transportation. I turns out that worldmegan took one of her first bicycle trips in years the same beautiful day. Coincidence, or great minds thinking alike?

El Scooter, Rupert, has been down for a few months due to dead batteries. I have now purchased new batteries, and in addition to simply re-wiring them back into the bike, I will also be adding extra terminals that will allow me to check the voltage of and charge each individual 12V battery separately. Previously it was only possible to check and charge the whole pack at once. According to trippedbreaker, this can cause the batteries, which are never exactly the same, to become more unbalanced over time, which shortens their life and the range of the vehicle. Previous plans to replace the 34Ah batteries with 50Ah batteries were dashed due to size and weight constraints. This was a bummer, since that extra capacity would be enough to go anywhere in Austin and back, even on a cold day, on a single charge. Now I will occasionally still have to plug in while out, so the great Outlet Hunt will continue.

Rupert, my incredibly-unreliable-but-incredibly-cheap-to-operate EVTA R-20 Electric Scooter is once again ready to roll! Our latest round of Drama involved a leaking valve stem (minor) and a fairly badly bent front axle (major.) I was very impressed with the help at Urban Moto Shop on Lamar just north of Barton Springs. They not only fixed the valve stem on a busy Saturday afternoon in under an hour, but they gave me a new axle for *free*! Preliminary investigations online indicate the replacement cost would have been closer to $50 from other sources, and I wouldn't have been so certain it fit.
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I decided to head out on the scooter today to do my Farmer's Market/Wheatsville run and to work on my resume and read The Web That Has No Weaver : Understanding Chinese Medicine as part of my latest head trip. I saw there was a chance of isolated thunderstorms later in the evening, but I figured I'd be home by then. Because the scooter is a) electric and b) is missing 50% of its main body panel, I generally don't drive it when I think it will rain. Not to mention the fact that it's dangerous and uncomfortable and I was wearing sandals.

I was headed north on Lamar when some idiot in a huge black pickup pulled a crazy stunt where he pulled out into the oncoming lane and *stopped* while waiting for a spot to open up in his lane. It had started sprinkling earlier, and I'd already had the thought that it was a very dangerous time to ride because it hadn't rained hard in a long time. All those fucking SXSW (GRR!) people had been hosing the streets with oil from their low-end, poorly-maintained shitboxes and the road was likely to be slick. When I hit the brakes, the scooter tried to lay over. It got to about 45 degrees before I caught it with my *sandaled* feet in Horse Stance and narrowly stopped it from smearing me over the pavement.
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I went from my house in South Austin all the way up to north past Mueller airport on my scooter in very cold temperatures tonight to go to a Re-Evaluation Counseling class I recently signed up for with my old Permaculture instructor Selwyn Polit. The scooter's range is reduced by as much as 40% in very cold weather, as it has lead-acid batteries. I charged the it for three hours there, which is respectable, but definitely not a full charge. I *then* proceeded from Mueller down to Elysium for Combichrist, *then* drove home *without* *recharging*.

By the time I was going pulling into the driveway, the E-meter was blinking red. It's the closest call I've had so far, and it's an *awesome* test of maximum range on the bike, since it's rarely this cold in Austin. Taking these kinds of risks is exciting. It helps me feel like I'm pushing the envelope for sustainable transportation, and the consequences of getting it wrong aren't *too* bad.

At least, they aren't when it's not nearly below freezing outside. :)

...the R-20 is now *officially* fun again.

After strapping, glueing, and zip-tying on a few more pieces, the only thing really left to fix is the body panel that needs painting (meeting with Amy tomorrow) and re-reinforcing the trunk. After closing everything up and checking things, I took it out from here to Central Market and back again, and it was a total riot. I can't wait to ride it again when the roads are dry, which hasn't been the case since I got it moving again. The ride is a *lot* more solid now, and the front faring no longer scrapes the front wheel, all due to the improved shocks. The bike *seems* to accelerate faster than before, but I haven't ridden it in about five months, so it could just be the infinite contrast between movement and stasis.

Too bad the bike doesn't spend more time in this auto-mobile state.

After a night of work by myself and trippedbreaker, the R-20 is nearly ready to ride again. A new controller, throttle, DC-DC converter, and shocks were installed, and the motor is responding to throttle. Installing the new controller require physically re-constructing the controller mount, because the new one they sent is two inches longer than the old one. Now I just need to figure out how much of the body, which I'd like to re-paint, should go back on. In the short-term, I may decide to simply try to airbrush over the imperfections rather than re-doing the entire bike in hot metallic pink, which was my original plan.

I've just completed the hour+ long job of removing the controller from my EVTA R-20 electric scooter, which died recently. The controller and the throttle are under warranty, and will be replaced for free. Several other items, all of which were probably damaged due to the inclusion of too-wimpy shocks on the original model, are *not* under warranty despite having been damaged or destroyed by either a design flaw or manufacturing defect. Let me make a short list of what I can remember off the top of my head of things that have gone wrong with the bike since I've had it.

1) Wouldn't recharge when I first got it due to a disconnected charge connector, stranding me at my friend Adam's house and costing me over $100 in cab and towing bills.

2) Front wheel scraped on inside of front faring, wearing completely through the fairly thick plastic in under two months from when I bought it.

3) Speedometer/Odometer slipped out from top assembly, meaning neither work anymore.

4) Front brake cable was scraping against front tire, wearing through all of the two layers of outer jacket and abrading the inner hydrolic cable

5) Consistent problems with bottoming out the shocks, hurting both the bike and my back, and likely causing most if not all of the above problems.

6) Throttle (which is actually the handle you hold onto on your right hand) broke off and literally slid off the handlebar while I was in heavy traffic. I was able to keep it working by jimmying it long enough to get home.

7) One or both rear passenger folding pedals broke off due to insufficient ground clearance.

8) The battery box on the bottom of the bike scrapes in some turns for the same reason

9) The bike would randomly cut out, generally in conditions of what could be overheating. This problem was intermittently present for about four months, but finally resulted in the controller itself dieing a few days ago, stranding me yet again. This time costs were mitigated due to trippedbreaker's help and a near-suicidal U-Haul run where I had to have the truck back to U-Haul in less than two hours during rush hour or face a $150 fine.

I'll be mailing all of the damaged parts in question (at least those I can find) back to EVTAMERICA tomorrow. I related news, I just got a marketing announcement regarding the R-30, the "new and improved" version of the R-20. Read this and tell me it doesn't sound like "The R-20, but not broken anymore."

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So, last night when I went over a bump on the way to poly dinner, the throttle broke off Rupert, my EVTA R-20 scooter. The throttle is basically a sleeve that fits over the end of the handlebar and attaches on one side to a spring-mounted rotator mechanism. The plastic ring that joins the two parts evidently broke. Luckily I got all the pieces, and was able to spastically limp home. Leaving from the downhill-and-over-a-speedbump exit from Planet K directly into heavy traffic on Lamar without any real guarantee I could get the throttle to work was the most thrilling part of the adventure. Today I used Crazy Glue Gel (vastly superior to Superglue in that it's actually possible to use the same container more than once) to try to re-assemble it, and, so far, it's looking pretty good. I don't expect it to hold forever, and I've already mailed the manufacturer pictures of the failure. I expect they will send me a new throttle, but I didn't hear from them at all today.

I hope it holds out to and from the Peter Murphy concert tonight! I've got duct tape, just in case.

This is becoming so common I'm thinking the fucking thing will need it's own blog soon.

Today the speedometer stopped working. I suspect this might be because of the banging noises I've been hearing from inside the front faring, where I'm assuming internal electronics are not properly secured.

On a brighter note, the odometer *also* stopped working. Perhaps, since it turned out to be in kilometers instead of miles, it's simply taking a break until the mileage catches up.

Tomorrow I can dig into it and see if something came loose.