Going Electric: Brammo Motorsports Enertia
Brammo Motorsports's Enertia Powercycle
My EV650 Concept
The Tesla Roadster is out of my price range, and quite frankly I'd rather ride Pee Wee Herman's Bicycle into work than an electric scooter. Luckily I stumbled upon ground zero for EV motorcycle conversions, ElMoto.net. I had the idea that I'd try to find a salvage 2002 Suzuki SV650. I could build the motor as a spare for my racebike, and use the rest for my EV commuter. I even went so far as to mock it up using a model that someone did for Google SketchUp.
My EV650 Concept vs. Suzuki's SV650
I spec'd out the motor, motor controller, and batteries that I'd use. When I added that to the other small spare parts, I had an estimate of over $10,000. I realized that this was going to require some saving before I attempted it. Next thing you know I'm getting laid off and two years go by while I settled into a new job and new town...oh yeah, and recovered from a broken back.
Brammo Motorsports Enertia Powercycle
I had been following the EV motorcycle news and knew that the most promising model out there was Brammo Motorsports' Enertia Powercycle. Brammo took high-quality, off-the-shelf EV components and mated them with a custom frame/subframe/swing-arm and quality street motorcycle components to make an EV motorcycle beyond anything that I could have done. The only thing I had going for my EV650 was price. They came in understandably higher. All that changed when Brammo revealed a massive price drop to $7995 at the end of 2009. I knew right then and there that I was scrapping my EV650 and getting an Enertia in the Spring.
I started reading the Brammo forum on ElMoto.net, and saw that Brian Wismann, the Director of Product Development for Brammo, was a regular poster. Pretty much every question that you have is already answered in that forum, and usually by him. It certainly gave me a lot of confidence that they would be an easy company to get in touch with.
Stay tuned to read about Buying an Enertia.
Home Decorating with SketchUp
SketchUp has been out for some time, but I never got around to trying it out. I guess I've seen too many mechanical engineers with their 30" LCDs and their massive CAD machines. Well SketchUp is about as intimidating as my dachsund. I didn't realize this until just recently when I found a good reason to check it out.
Like lots of people this year, I got an LCD HDTV. It's a perfect fit for my small living room, as it takes up far less space than my old 35" tube HDTV. I'm using this new purchase as an opportunity to really streamline my livingroom and get rid of a ton of junk. I guess this means that I'm finally actually decorating.
That's where my problems started. I do have some design sense, but I don't really have a strong imagination for decorating. I'm pretty sure that I want to mount the TV on the wall, but I was have problems visualizing it...mostly because I still have akwardly large speakers.
This is about the time that it hit me. I'll just model that wall with SketchUp and see how it looks from just about any angle. It really helped. This image that I've posted above it a third draft, and I was sure that I'd like the tables in the first two. But once I saw them next to the speakers, they looked like garbage. I'm not sure if I'll go with this third design, but it's certainly much closer.