Haul it AND Charge it??

[privateer703]

With everything going on I figured we needed some lighthearted posts. I was just looking at some hitch mounted bike haulers and remembered one style and then I thought, you could haul it AND charge it at the same time...



So how many miles would it take to charge it?

 

[Philip]

I used to transport dirt bikes like this a long-long time ago. I was removing the stock rear bumper and installing a steel beam with three horizontal pipe pieces welded to it. Remove the front wheel and attach the forks to the pipe with the stock front wheel axle. I could transport up to 3 bikes like this with one four-door sedan, if I removed the handlebar on the middle bike.

I usually removed the chains though, to cut down on noise and chain slider wear.

With a rear off-road tire, charging an Alta like this would probably be cost prohibitive, if you have to buy a new rear tire every other week.

 

[privateer703]

I would love to see that set-up driving down the road. Three bikes towed by a sedan... awesome! This is clearly a terrible way to try and charge your bike. However, it does beg the question how much charge does the battery get from regen. Let's say I have a power take-off on my vehicles engine and I can rig it to drive the main gear on the Alta. So this way I can basically spin the motor using my truck. Let's say I spin it at 30 MPH in map 4, how long would this take to charge? The only thing about this is that the bike would still be thinking it's driving and counting up those miles/hrs so not something you want to do all the time. But if this keeps me from buying a generator the next time I go camping and just want to top off the battery for another quick ride, it would be something to consider. I'm hoping our team of hackers can get us custom maps. I really think that middle button between the increase/decrease map buttons is a perfect on/off switch for engine regen.

 

[OneLapper]

Funny you should ask how far that will get you. I wondered that myself.

My first "tow of shame" with the MX was several miles on the street. While getting towed I turn on the bike and let it regen at about 20mph for several minutes. When we got to the parking lot I was able to rip around for quite a bit before it returned to a crawl. I was surprised.

The regen on the MX is nothing compared to the SM I had for while, btw. I'm sure the SM would have charged better if the tire didn't skid.

 

[Philip]

The brake force of the regen is only like 2-5% of the max power, or 20-50 times less. If you can discharge the bike at WOT in 20 minutes, then it should take 7-17 hours of driving to charge it via regen.

 

[privateer703]

It would be very easy to gear up the PTO so that I could spin the primary drive at much higher speeds, but going any higher than the motors maximum RPM is probably a bad idea. BUT if we could hack the software and customize the maps the regen could be set higher correct? If I could get 30-50% charge in 2 hrs, that might be worth looking into. It only makes sense if I can tune the regen to maximum though.

 

[Bionicman]

I specifically asked this towing/regen question to ALTA engineering prior to purchase & in short was told to never do this as
1 the key must be on so while your bike is regen-ed at 3% its also accumulating mileage
2 the system is not tested for this

buy a 300$ generator instead...

 

[privateer703]

There isn't much practicality in this. Started off more as a joke, then I just kept thinking about it.. I think I'd be way too worried about the physical linkage binding since there would be no good way to physically mount the bike to the truck so that there wasn't movement. Not to mention being worried about doing harm to the battery or motor. So no, I'm not seriously thinking of trying this.

 

[Redwolf]

It would be more fun to have a friend with a pickup truck haul me and the bike to the top of a mountain road, then coast all the way down to use the Regen to charge the battery. Repeat as required to complete charging.

Sounds like a winner to me!

 

[Dirt-E]

I was thinking this post might be about mounting a generator on your trailer or in the bed of a truck and running it while driving down the road in order to charge. I've considered this many times because
#1 it sucks to have to charge the night before or need a top-off and can't do it last-minute
#2 it would be nice to ride for a bit, charge while driving, then ride some more somewhere else.

Sounds kinda crazy, but I would do it a lot. Just would be worried about leaving the genny out in the open it without bolting it down. I would get something cheap just in case, but the trade-off is obviously reliability or more noise.

My last concern would be the charger bouncing around while going down the road. I don't think the charge port is worth risking with the company now out the window, but if there was a way to shore up the connector it would be a nice option.