Greetins... Electric CB750 Project

Hello,

My name is Adam. As you can probably tell, I'm a new member here, but I hope to read plenty of informative posts and hopefully make a few of my own. I'm a soon-to-be graduating physics major at University Wisconsin - Whitewater and an avid motorcycle enthusiast. Though not electric, this is my wonderful Suzuki SV650

But, that's not why I am here. I've started to take interest in greener things lately. When I was younger, I was always interested in GM's EV1. But, alas, it was never meant to see the rolling green hills of Wisconsin, nor was GM ready to support the electric vehicle revolution.

A while back, my room mate, Dave bought a defunct CB750 with hopes of restoring it to cafe racer beauty. But, college takes its toll on the time in our lives and Dave never had the time to get it running, let alone restore it.

After seeing a lecture at my university on plug-in hybrids with Dave, we were inspired to dive into the electric vehicle world. What better experimental chassis to start with than his non-running CB750? Sure, it's a "cult classic" and a bit of a pig, but we should be able to lighten it up substantially and it has plenty of room for batteries and a big ol' electric motor.

We've decided to document our progress on our project and hopefully create another resource for electric cycling. I've created a weblog that will track our progress and highlight other projects and advancements in electric two wheeled travel:

PlugInyourMotorCycle.com

The first step of our project is to get the chassis ready - strip it down to the bare frame, sand and paint, and generallly get everything prepped to receive the electric components.

I'll be coming back here often to research electrical parts for the bike, as we'll need just about everything. I'm still decided whether to use an AC motor or a DC brushless motor...