Electric ATV

Some friends and I decided to create an electric ATV from an old broken gas ATV that our teacher had. Last year we tried to make a go cart and it didn't turn out that great. So we decided that this year we would try to do something different that would work better. After our teacher told us that he had an old ATV that doesn't work we decided we would use that as our base. Our goal for the project was to take a gas non functional ATV and convert it to electric while making it run.

Supplies:

frame of a Vento Avalanche that can be found at this website.

a 48 volt brush less motor. this has the power to get the ATV to faster speeds while keeping it safe. It also comes with a speed control box and throttle grips. The throttle grips are also spring loaded for safety so the ATV doesn't run off. It can be found on amazon.

we then got a different sprocket and chain for the motor but if you want to you can use the sprocket that comes with the motor. We switched to a different sprocket to fit the larger sprocket that we had put on earlier in the build. With this sprocket we used 35 chain so everything would fit together. you can get both on amazon.

The larger sprocket you will have to enlarge the hole to attach the sprocket to the axle. This can also be found on amazon.

So this is where you can customize it a little,m for batteries we used four led acid batteries. However these are very heavy and quite annoying as they are very large and take up a lot of space. We also got wood for this so we could make a box to hold all of our batteries. To make it easier you can get some lipo batteries which are a lot smaller and pump out the same voltage.

This is also optional but you can put on a speedometer with an arduino uno, LCD board, arduino wires with some normal wires, electrical tape, and a potentiometer. It is also recommended if you do this that you can solder wires so that you can connect the wires to arduino wires so your not having a chain of arduino wires going all the way across the ATV.

you will also need some nuts and bolts for attaching the motor and other things that you may want to attach to the vehicle.

you will also need a steel plate to attach to the frame so you can place your motor on it.

Skills and required equipment

For this project you will need to have welding experience and have welding equipment. You will also need something to cut the steel plate, we used a

Get all the required materials and then take out the engine and other gas related things for the ATV. Or use the ATV until it o longer works.

For this part we soldered the sprocket to part of the axle so that we can have our chain move the back wheels forward or backwards. For this step it is very important to mark and figure out where you are going to put your motor. This is because you need to make sure that the chain will not be at an angle because that will cause a lot of problems later on in the build and during riding.

For this part measure out how long you want your piece of metal to be so that it sticks between the top and base of the frame. It is also extremely important that you make sure the sprocket on the motor and the sprocket on your axle are lined up when you place the motor as there will be problems later on if it is not strait. Mark the holes for your motor and drill holes into the metal plate. Attach the motor and put on your chain. it is very nice that this frame has a tensioner on it so feel free to mess around with it until the chain is tight.

This is where you can choose if you want to do the battery system the same as we did. We used four led acid batteries as they are pretty safe as we are in a school environment. However if you want to use lipo batteries that is fine it will make this a lot easier and lighter. When using these bateries we made a battery box that we connected to the bottom of frame under the seat. We then stung up the four batteries in a series pattern so the voltage of the four batteries would add up. we then connected our box to the frame and got to charging.

for this part you will need to find a connector for the led acid batteries as that will give power to the system. Find a place for the electronics box you can use whatever you want to to connect the electronics box that comes with the motor onto the frame. We used zip ties and it works very well then it comes down to connecting all the wires and putting on the spring loaded throttle onto the grips. This is fairly easy just loosen the set screws and attach the throttle to the handle bars.

Congrats if all the wiring worked out then it should work! Enjoy and thanks for checking us out!