Time to get serious about making battery boxes. (Part 1 Shrinker Stretcher)

Introducing the Woodward Fab shrinker stretcher.


Check out this video from Ron Covell.  If your serious about getting into metal working, I suggest you get his complete video tutorial set. I picked most of his video's up almost 20 years ago. I'm sure he still sells them.



Before you go out and buy a cheap shrinker stretcher from HF, check out this guys video's!

Project E-Stingray Part 2

Seven Speed E-Firmstrong Urban, not an actual Chicago Schwinn Stingray.

It's been a couple crazy weeks. I never got the chance to take the red three speed E-Firmstrong Urban down to the beach for photographs, and in the meantime I wound up swapping the BBSO2 motor into this black 7 speed. Before I do another three speed Urban, I want to have everything to make the battery and battery box. I hate zip ties on my bikes, and until I build the battery box, the three speeds will need zip ties for the rear break cable. When I have the battery box, that cable will be run threw the box. That's the main reason I swapped out for the 7 speed Urban. I may swap out the rear wheel and derailleur for a 3 speed Nexus IGH setup this weekend. The 7 speed is fine, but since I don't have any real hills in my area, the 3 speed is all I need, and it does better on the beach since all the gears are inside the hub. Believe it or not, external gears and derailleurs don't like getting sand in them!

Starting this weekend I'll be making the custom wire harness to clean up the bike even more. You can see from the first photo all the wires like a tossed bowl of spaghetti with the wire connectors everywhere. The short wires with connectors is the only real complaint I have with the Bafang BBSxx motors. It would be great if they made them long enough to tuck inside a battery box, or at least get below the handlebar height.

You can't tell from these photo's, but I've made a couple other changes to the trusty little BBSO2 motor. 
1. I added a 42T Lekkie chain ring. It's real nice, and only a little slower than the 46T sprocket. It should allow the motor to last considerably longer than the larger chain rings on the BBSO2 motor. With this ring, dropping chains has become a thing of the past! I also picked up another 42T Lekkie chain ring for the BBSHD motor, but I think I'll like using the 46T better on that one.
2. I changed the RevOshifter with a rapid click thumb shifter. Yeah, it's better than the RevOshifter, but I still need to find a better option than the one I used. I may wind up trying the 8 speed SA thumb shifter. 

I still need to make a better bracket for the chain guard, and trim the radius to match the chain ring. Right now I just made a quick little bracket to get it on the bike. It needs to come down more over the chain ring, and a little farther forward. I wanted to make sure I wanted to use the 42T chain ring before doing this. I only have one chain guard per bike, and I didn't want to start cutting into it, then change my mind later about what chain ring works best for this motor and bike combo.

It was a fun ride today down to Redondo Beach. I wound up stopping for pizza, then rode back up the beach to take these photo's before heading back home. I wish I had time to go on a beach ride every week! 

TSDZ2 Service

When it's time to service your TSDZ2 motor.

It appears to take less than an hour to do your service work to this motor. That's a big improvement over the BBSO2 Bafang motor where you have to take it all apart to access the internal freewheel behind the main drive gear. 

The only debate seems to be in how often you should do the regular service work on the TSDZ2 motor. Obviously if you have a problem with the motor it's time to take it apart and do the service, if you ride it hard, you should probably step up to a BBSHD in my opinion. So far I've heard everything from 300 to 1300 miles between needing service. I think it would be a good idea between every 500 to 750 miles to do a service weather the motor is performing like new or not.


I've found a good supplier for these motors now who offers them with both a throttle and ebike brakes. My old supplier was great, but didn't offer the brakes or throttle, and I wound up getting screwed from another company with way too high a mark up for those parts.  I ordered them but I never did get my throttle. It was infuriating enough to make me not want to offer this motor in the future. I still will not offer it for shipping. It will be local sales only because of the required regular maintenance. 

I think this is a great little motor suitable for many peoples needs. I'll be doing another post on it when I get the throttle I just ordered from my new supply guy.

Project E-Stingray starts today!

The idea for this build is to make a Stingray The Way Chicago Schwinn Would Of Made Them If They Had The Technology!

 Ed "Big Daddy" Roth's version of a Stingray with Rat Fink lighting up the tires.

I won't be using original Schwinn Stingrays for these bikes.  The cost would be astronomical to use the real Stingrays with almost non existent availability. I'll be using the Firmstrong Urban instead.

Photo of Stock Firmstrong Urban 3 speed.

For this first prototype I'm using a steel frame Urban 3 speed. I'm thinking about swapping out the 26" forks and wheel for a 24" setup from a 7 speed. This would give me factory brakes up front and give the bike more of a drag race look like in the Ed "Big Daddy" Roth art. 

In the future, I'll probably only use aluminum 7 speed Urbans and do the 26 to 24" front end swap. The 7 speed bikes can be converted to 3 speed Nexus Internal Geared Hub (IGH) or for people living in hilly areas they can be left as seven speeds. No sand grinding my gears with the IGH setup! The aluminum bikes are 10 lb lighter than the steel version, so that would make up for the added weight of the BBSO2 or BBSHD motors.

Original Schwinn Stingray.

A Schwinn styled springer front end can also be an option with either drum or disk break! Fenders and banana seat will also be options, but the base model will just use the 26" wheel and front end and the factory seat for a super clean minimalist beach cruiser look.

This is how I've been riding the bike with the ape hanger bars. I never got around to ordering the banana seat because I like it just the way it is. I'll order a banana seat this week just to check out how it looks on the bike. It won't be one of the cheap ones from Ebay. I'll get the nice one with real padding under the cover! It needs to look cool and be comfortable!

The Urban ready for ebike conversion.

Below you can see why I need to make my own wire harness for these bikes! The factory harness puts all the plugs in the worst possible place out in front of the bike. Nobody wants to see that shit! It ruins the clean look you expect from a beach cruiser bike. The mandatory break levers add enough clutter to the bars all by themselves without the Factory Frankenstein wire harness.

After brakes throttle and display have been installed with the factory wire harness.

The brakes I've been using are Tectro side pull. They look a little big on the bikes, but they work great. The break setup on the 7 speed bikes look cleaner overall, and that's why I'm thinking about only buying the 7 speed models and converting them to 3 speed Nexus IGH. Besides the breaks, another advantage to converting 7 sp to 3 sp is that they already come with cable stays. If I have to add stays, then I'll need to do some touch up painting to them. I'd rather not have to do that, and I think the extra labor needed would break even with the additional cost of adding the Nexus IGH. 

Anyway, that's it for today. I should be able to pickup the BB adapter on Monday, so I should be riding this bike this coming Tuesday weather permitting. We're supposed to get a bunch of rain here in So-Cal Monday and Tuesday. If we do, I'll have those days off from work to pick up parts and finish the bike inside the garage. If the weather man is full of it as usual, I'll ger her done next weekend.