I bought this at a garage sale, I'm having a hard time finding anything about it on the web. It's got a Currie electro-drive 24 volt/12 amp system and I believe a 250 watt motor. I think it's older (early 2000's). I have a hard time judging speed on a bicycle but I don't think it gets anywhere near 15 mph and at a normal speed biking, the motor isn't spinning fast enough to assist me in pedaling.
When I try and charge the battery it never reaches full and turns green. I'm going to buy another battery, but I'm wondering if anyone is familiar with the system and if it's possible to buy two and wire them in serial without burning everything up or if I should be looking for another motor (and controller?) that's more useful.
Hello,
I'm not sure how much has changed since the early currie systems to the offerings they have now, but they do sell an aftermarket "bolt on" kit that converts most bikes to electric. This is probably what you have found. I own a 2009 Currie Ezip Trailz and have found it fair in performance for pulling my 190 pound body around. GPS tracking shows the motor tops out at about 18mph, and starts disengaging at that point to avoid assist beyond 20mph, as some states require. The motor i have is a 450Watt noisy outboard design that sits behind the rear axle on the left. The rear rack holds 2 of their battery packs, but is designed to just switch between the two. These kits and bikes usually ship with just one of the battery packs. Now, as to wiring in series... that is, to wire the positive of one to the negative of the other and use the remaining terminals as if they were from the same battery..... would give you a 48V, 12A pack, BUT! , the controller and motor might not be able to take this. if you wire both positives together and both negatives together (parallel circuit) you will have a 24V 24A pack, that would be safe with the motor and controller's operational range. Here's the Currie web link, and the kits are listed under "parts"....
http://www.currietech.com/index.php
Hope some of this helps :-)
Ed,
I have had two of the Sierra Electric bikes since 1999. They work very well. The will top out at 17 to 18 mph on level ground without pedaling. The batteries that came with mine were 12 Volt, 12 Amp batteries wired in a series. This bike was made for 1 or 2 years and never did well. I bought one and liked it so much I bought another. The local dealer marked the price down to $499 and they were brand new.