DIY E-bike noob question

[2DPrinter]

Hey,

I am building a DIY E-bike and am not familiar with electronics. If someone could help me with this in an easy to understand way, that would be appreciated. If your curious, this is what I am building: https://web.archive.org/web/20201124202015/http://thestuffwebuild.com/projects/diy-electric-motorized-bicycle/

So I have these two motor wires that I need to connect to the controller module (the motor wires are supposed to go to the yellow and blue connector thing on the controller that I circled in the image). My question is, do I just press these motor wires into the controller? Or do I do something else like solder or something like that?? 

Also, if I needed to extend the motor's wires or any other wires so it could reach the controller somewhere else on the bike, how would I do that? 
Thank you for your help!

[dizmo]

I sense a large fire in your very near future.

 

[artuc]

1 hour ago, 2DPrinter said:

My question is, do I just press these motor wires into the controller? Or do I do something else like solder or something like that?? 

Also, if I needed to extend the motor's wires or any other wires so it could reach the controller somewhere else on the bike, how would I do that? 
Thank you for your help!

 

If they fit in the connector you just insert them, not sure, have seen battery terminal to spade connectors that look similar.

 

If you want to extend wires I'd go for a slightly thicker gauge, it's still a fairly short distance however they often will use the thinnest wires they think they can get away with already.

 

As to the join, depends on what you have at hand and have the tools for, solder and heatshrink, crimp, crimp and shrink terminals etc.

 

I personally would just cut off the existing motor terminals and solder and heatshrink or use those new style crimp and heatshrink terminals to add a length of thicker cable and then fit new spade terminals or other connector on the end to suit.

 

Depends on what you're setup for, like if you don't have automotive terminal crimpers you can probably source a pigtail with terminals fitted and just do the cable join etc.

 

[Bombastinator]

So not even a kit.  A guerilla thing made out of stuff like repurposed parts from other things, skateboard wheels, and grip tape. And you want someone to talk you through it, and you don’t even know what a spade terminal is.  I’m not near qualified, but “bit off more than you can chew” might be an understatement here.  Those things look a lot like male spade terminals which are not generally soldered.  They’re a pretty standard car part.   Are there female spade terminals you’re plugging into? Or is this a make-things-fit-that-aren’t-supposed-to thing?  Blue and yellow are traditionally sensor colors but you’re going to black and red which are power colors, at least in home wiring.  Different industries can have different conventions.  Hot or positive is normally red, negative is normally black, neutral is normally white, and ground is normally green. 

[akio123008]

7 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

 A guerilla thing made out of stuff like repurposed parts from other things, skateboard wheels, and grip tape. And you want someone to talk you through it, and you don’t even know what a spade terminal is.  I’m not near qualified, but “bit off more than you can chew” might be an understatement here.

I partially agree, but then also, the risks are low¹, and these components are cheap, there's not much to lose. I'd say this is a great little project to learn about electronics.

 

I've seen that connector on some older electric vehicles/toys, if I recall correctly you can just stick the spade connectors in there. Just make sure they're well seated and make good contact and you'll be fine. 

 

7 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

 Blue and yellow are traditionally sensor colors but you’re going to black and red which are power colors, at least in home wiring.

I think in this case the controller uses blue/yellow for the output to the motor to distinguish between the battery side and the motor side of the controller. DC motors however always come with red/black wires attached, so you end up with a weird situation with different colors.

 

(that could be very dangerous in high voltage/high power equipment when other people who don't know about your weird color coding start working on the wiring, but in a low power setup like this, when you're also really the only one ever working on it, it's fine)