Gigarazor: The Practical Scooter (Backblogging)

About 5-6 weeks ago, I bought one of these from a fellow Georgia Tech Student.

What is it? That is a fully functional Razor E300 electric scooter. I bought it with the intention of making it even MORE functional.

I was looking at Cambridge and Boston now. A larger campus with more bumps of sorts from historical sidewalks and roads. I was planning some seriously legit mods to Razor Reloaded (another scooter you dont know about) but opted for the premade sturdy steel frame foreseeing a busy time ahead of me for the final few weeks of the semester.

So what was the plan?

• new motor
• new batteries
• proportional control
• big switch
• power consumption feedback
• new controller
• LEDs everywhere

I had bought a Turnigy Aerodrive SK3 6374-149 awhile back and decided it would be my motor choice.

After removing the old components, a motor mount was fashioned quickly from some 3/8" 7075 plate on the waterjet.

I had initially picked the Jasontroller as my brushless controller because my other graduating friend was selling his old equipment. Here is a unmodified no-load test from a bench top power supply.

The battery was comprised from generous donations from A123. This 8s3p pack shown below was bridged using copper mesh instead of copper braiding. I figured the equivalent copper cross section couldnt be any worse than the 12ga wire exiting the pack.

Completed and bundled. Yes, that is a DE9 female connector being used as a balance plug. It works wonderfully.

By this time I started riding it about campus. It did not have a main switch (on order from RMP) nor did it have a top plate. Regardless, it was hella fun.

Then came the top plate. Attempting to bend polycarbonate with a 40W heatgun...

...failing to bend polycarbonate with a heatgun.