Another project! Weird Italian Electric bicycle

I picked this up earlier today on Craigslist for $140.


It's a Prima L'eco, Italian bicycle from a few years back. It may sound expensive for a weird bicycle, but it's electric! Pedal assist, does about 18 MPH and the battery will last 15-20 miles at that speed. These did retail for about $700-1000 new when they were made, and used they seem to fetch about $400, but this one has one major issue... it's missing the battery and charger. The rest of the e-gear is intact and wired up to go.

More pics will come soon, but here's some others:



It has a luggage rack, unique planetary gearset in the rear, brake / tail lamp, and head lamp. I have priced out the battery and it looks like I'll be wiring 3x 12v 10AH lead batteries in at $27/each (the NiMH and LiIon routes were $300+ total). I also need to fix the rear shifting. I already removed the generator for the lamps because it was dragging and didn't make sense considering it's electric... but it rides great and should make an interesting project.

It's late for now, but I'll post more about it soon.

:lol: I agree, I just found a couple nice ones on Ebay to match it.

Yep, the lead batteries I think I'm going to use are $17 each (plus $10 shipping each) for a total of about $81. They aren't proprietary, just three 12v, 10AH batteries that'll be wired together to give me the same power and capacity as the stock ones. I haven't figured out the charger situation yet, but my roommate assures me it's simple.

I'm a total rookie when it comes to anything electrical, so this should be a good learning experience for me.

Mine's tan! I'll fix that with black and red paint, NASCAR stickers, and beef entrails hanging from the rear wheel.

Yes, I've driven it almost every day since I bought it.

Sure, I bought three of these:
12V 10AH SCOOTER BATTERY SCHWINN MONGOOSE - eBay (item 170344673651 end time Jul-14-09 15:50:45 PDT)

There are tons of updates on my thread. I'll post more of the wheels with new lugnuts and stuff once I paint the bearing caps. The carpet's ordered... should be in soon.

I paid $360 for the whole set, that's original German style heavy duty pieces, and it's in like 12-14 different sections. Each one has a vinyl liner, too. PRetty neat stuff.. I'll show some pics when it arrives. You're posting in the wrong thread! :lol:

Look what came today:



6.7 pounds each. I don't know when I'll mess with this thing again but I need to figure out a wiring plan (and maybe a quick release) and charger. Plus I need to fix the shifter.

Most electric bicycles cost around $1000 new, and I have yet to see one under $400 used even. So this should be a pretty good deal once I have it up and running.

Definitely, I understand.

Got the charger a couple days ago.. it's a standard 36v 2A charger. I'll take some pics once I start wiring things. Way too busy this week for it though...

Maybe, but these should last a year+, I doubt I'll have it that long even... And those LiIons get soooo expensive.

Those drill packs just don't have the capacity needed. They'd supply enough voltage but only last like a mile probably.