Meet our unsuspecting heroes: a Trek 800 that was headed for the curb, and a Hover-1 Maverick that had seen better days. Two forgotten machines, sitting in the weeds and on the pavement, with absolutely no idea what they were about to become.
The plan: tear them apart, and use the hoverboard's battery and motor to add power assist to the bike. What could possibly go wrong? Quite a bit, actually. And that's kind of the point.
This first session doubled as a prototype run for an afterschool program planned for that fall. So nobody expected it to go smoothly — and at The Constructive, challenges, mistakes, and reworks are simply called "fun." Because when something goes wrong, that's when the real learning takes place.
Presenting... another exciting expedition of The E-Bike UpCycle!
When last we left our unsuspecting heroes, a weary Trek 800 and a battle-worn Hover-1 Maverick had been lured into a garage in the alley on Monroe Street, told they were "teaming up." What they didn't know was that teaming up meant getting taken completely apart by a crew of very enthusiastic strangers holding pliers.
They did not go quietly. But by the end of Session 1, both heroes lay in pieces on the workbench — and that, dear viewer, is exactly where our story really begins.
Our heroes and exploration team weren't the only ones who showed up that first Tuesday. Partway through the demolition, a razor scooter and a pull-behind trailer wandered onto the scene — sidekicks nobody had auditioned, but the team welcomed them in anyway. Scooter got the same treatment as everyone else: fully dismantled, right alongside the hoverboards and the bike, no favorites played.
By 8:30pm, what had once been a bike, two hoverboards, and a scooter was now just... parts. A glorious, slightly terrifying mess of wheels, wires, and mystery brackets spread across the tables. The team looked at it, looked at each other, and grinned. Excitement: officially building.
With the wreckage laid bare, our explorers turned detective. The question of the day: what are heroes actually made from, and what makes them tick?
So they followed the electrons. From simple brushed motors running on nothing more than an on/off switch, up to variable speed control, and finally to the brushless hub motors humming inside the hoverboards — the team traced the signal the whole way, listening in on what the electrons were telling the motors to do.
Meanwhile, our stout mountain bike frame was flexing a little muscle of its own. While the electrons got their moment, the team learned what makes a frame hold together in the first place — beams, cantilevers, torsion, and the torque hiding inside every gear.
Between the electrons and the beams, our heroes had — without really trying — walked the team through roughly the first three semesters of Mechatronics. Not bad for two things that were headed for the curb.
Feeling inspired, feeling competent, and maybe feeling just a little too confident, the team decided it was time to see if any of this actually worked.
An e-bike controller was wired in. A hoverboard hub motor was mounted. Hall sensors were aligned by hand. A frame was built to hold it all together. The wheel went on. The throttle got plugged in. The display powered up, bright and confident.
And then... nothing. The wheel just sat there.
When last we left our explorers, the wheel just sat there. Power connected. Sensors aligned. Display glowing. Nothing.
The team regrouped, scratching their heads in unison. Before troubleshooting, the Episode 2 veterans walked the newcomers through the stations — motors, switches, the electron trail — so everyone was starting from the same page.
Then the real hunt began. Each controller was tested and each of them kept showing errors. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Finally someone asked the question nobody wants to ask: could the motor be bad? A known-good controller on a known-good motor spun right up. That same controller on the suspect motor — dead again.
Verdict: guilty. And not just any motor — this was the one from Episode 2's tug-of-war, hauled out to prove how strong its magnets were. Turns out it had "somehow" picked up a loose wire since then.
Motor swapped. Trek 800 spinning in no time.
Attention shifted to bike number two: a Diamondback, donated by the neighborhood's favorite scrap recycler, paired with two more hoverboards someone on Facebook Marketplace just wanted gone. New hoverboards meant new recruits, and the newcomers got the same welcome everyone else did — straight to the teardown table.
This time the team applied Episode 1's hinged cantilever beam approach to the mount. Diamondback's wheel started spinning — well, wobbling, courtesy of a bent rim and a few missing spokes. No trouble. There's no shortage of bike parts in the trash.
While all eyes were on the wobble, a streak shot down the alley. Somewhere in the chaos, the team had quietly remounted the Trek — and it was already flying under hoverboard power, first successful ride in the books.
Stay tuned!
Diamondback's wobble had a simple diagnosis: a bent rim and a few missing spokes. The fix took a fresh trash-sourced wheel and, while the team was in there anyway, a little redesign. They swapped the cantilever mount to the other side and pulled it in tighter to center, trading the wobble for a proper fit.
By the end of the night, Diamondback was rolling down the alley under its own power — right alongside Trek. Two heroes, both running.
Then, out of nowhere, the sidekick made its move. Remember the pull-behind trailer that wandered into Session I alongside the razor scooter? It had been waiting patiently ever since. The team suited it up with the drive motors sliced off the back of the very scooters dismantled back in Episode 2 — and just like that, the sidekick had power of its own.
...before we "light it up" for the grand finale of The E-Bike UpCycle!
Everything hit the table: hoverboard lights, batteries, and a new buck converter to step the voltage down to something the LEDs could live on. Something the LEDs could live on, ideally. First smell of the night was smoke — turns out 3-volt LEDs have opinions about being fed 5.2 volts. Lesson relearned, buck converter recalibrated.
But the real prize was the 36-volt light strips: one positive pin, and separate connections for red, green, and blue. Suddenly the team wasn't just adding lights — they were choosing colors. Then something strange happened wiring them to the bikes: two connections got crossed, and the colors blended. Cue the debate of the night — one color, or all of them at once?
Trek settled it with purple up front and red tail lights. Diamondback went the minimalist route: sleek teal, nose to tail. Headlights went on for good measure, and both bikes rolled out into the late August twilight, lit up and running.
From a bike and a hoverboard headed for the landfill, to two bikes and a sidekick, lit up and rolling under their own power — that's The E-Bike UpCycle.
THE END
— The Constructive