Hello all:
I am TheScrutinizer. I have lurked here a bit and finally went ahead and signed up.
I put my introduction in the Small Scooters forum because this is probably where I will spend the majority of my time here at V is for Voltage.
I have been riding electric scooters for about 10 years now. They have really come a long way since then.
Here's a list of the scooters I have owned over the years.
1) Goped Hoverboard
2) Two Citybugs (modified to 36V)
3) What was the name of the $1000+, 20 pound, 20mph scooter with lithium batteries? The company promptly went out of business. They were from somewhere back east. Anyway, I had one of those.
4) Several Currie scooters
5) Badsey Racer
6) HCF 707 (modified to 36V)
Now I am on my second Schwinn Stealth 1000.
I am in my early 40s, I live in Seattle and I am a Software Engineer.
Anyway, why is that most scooters don't last very long? The HCF lasted the longest and eventually was stolen.
I'll be talking to you.
Cheers! :)
WELCOME!
Looking forward to more of your posts.
What was your first electric scooter 10 years ago?
Are you running your Stealth with stock batteries and gearbox drive?
This is a great place to share ideas, problems, and solutions.
Peace and safe travels.
My first e-scooter was the Goped Hoverboard. Pretty gutless and prone to all kinds of mechanical and electrical failures.
Soon after that I got my first Citybug. Then I got another one for my girlfriend.
I was looking at the remains of my hoverboard (the hoverboard uses 4 6 volt batteries) and I got an idea to add another 6 volts to the Citybugs series.
I remember telling my friend that either it was going to get ruined or it would go really fast.
Fortunately it just went really fast so I added another 6 volts to the series.
I can tell you that a 36V Citybug can keep up pretty well with 25mph traffic. Too bad the brakes sucked.
If added volts to Currie scooters as well. I've never exceeded 36V before however.
The Stealth is completely stock and I'm sorry to say that I was expecting a lot more from a 36V, direct drive scooter. It's been kind of disappointing. I think I'll up the voltage to 48V soon.
Thanks for the reply.
Welcome! I'm a newbie as well, working on making my gasoline mo-ped into an EV.
I think the reason scooters don't last long is that they are mostly designed as cheap novelty items that a kid might play with for a summer or two. They're really being made for everyday commuting and bashing around like we do with them.
So they use cheap die-cast metals and substandard components that will eventually fry. The nice thing is that most everything is interchangeable one way or another, and so a lot of us have frankenmobiles with parts from various machines.
Karen
Working on a Piaggio Boxer (mo-ped) EV conversion: http://gpsy.com/ev
Welcome aboard! John Law here, aka Ruprek. I've been riding electric for about 5 years. One I-Zip 1500, one Schwinn Stealth 1000 (48 volts) and one Extreme 500. You'll learn a lot from this forum. Some of the manufacturing reps keep tabs (informally) here as well which can be really useful when questions or problems arise.