Battery Cases

After searching Austin for 6" low-thickness PVC pipe, I found a great little mom-and-pop plumbing store called Crump Plumbing that had just what I needed, plus the people there were very friendly. It's sad that these places are getting replaced with Despots and bLowes.

P.S. I've never seen a greater concentration of toilets than I did at Crump's.

The guy at the cash register was suspicious that I was only buying five feet and asked if I was going to make "one of those pipe bombs." "With plastic pipe, I'd be as effective as Joe Stack stopping the IRS :)" I joked as they laughed. I then mentioned that what I was building might indeed look like a bomb, but was a battery case. On my way home, I passed by a rather large bike shop (rhymes with 'conformance recycles') to see if they'd build up a wheel for me using an old XT hub. The mechanic blatently said, "Fuck that, I'm tired of people coming in after tacoing their wheels and blaming me for not building it right. I could spend 2 hours building one wheel, but I'd rather fix the shifters on 10 noobs for 15 bucks each!" In short, I'll take it to a real bike shop and support local Austin businesses! When I got home, I built a new form to mold the pipe, cut two 24" sections, fired up the over, and in no time flat had two beautiful rectangular battery housings:

These tubes will hold a rectangular 6 by 2 by 8 cell A123 setup. Inside dimensions are 6.625"x2.75"x24", which leaves enough room for 1/4" shock absorbing padding around the batteries, plus room for wiring. If you want to make a mold, buy a sheet of 3/4" plywood (which is actually 0.6875"), cut out two 6.625x26" sheets, and then cut out 4 ~2"x2" chunks.

Heat the oven up to 250 degrees, wait for the PVC to loosen, insert the two long boards you just cut, pull said boards apart and insert two of the spacers on one side, then the other. This will stretch out the PVC to the desired dimensions:

These tubes are big enough that putting them in the XtraCycle bags would waste a lot of space, so I decided to mount them to the frame (something like this):

On the back, I'll form a metal bracket and then have the weight of the pack attach to the frame via the rear tube. The hole in the back will conveniently allow a pinion to easily mount/dismount each pack:

In the front, the weight of the pack will rest on the foot rests. The front of the foot rest should still be usable, but less so.

The only issue is that the brake is going to keep the right side from mounting flush with the frame. I'll probably just use some washers, or if I get adventurous, I'll solder the second pack with a slight bend (doubtful). I'll just have to live with it out a bit.

The weight of the batteries is going to be only 10" off of the ground, so it'll be really stable. I'll also have most of the space in the sidebags for cargo. There's so much space.