[Gregski]

OK, I did a search on this forum and only found two topics on safety, neither answered my questions so here we go.

1.  Can building my own EV motorcycle conversion kill me via electric shock?

In my dense mind I am thinking hey I am working with 12v "car" batteries how bad can this be.  Then I am thinking hey dummy you will eventually be connecting 6 of these in "series" so the voltage adds up, so now we are talking about 72 volts.  Then I remembered reading somewhere that volts zap you and amps kill you so at what point does it get dangerous?  What volt / amp combination can hurt a human being?

Please provide some basic safety guidelines you guys fallow as you work in your garages, I am not looking for links to OSHA, LOL

[Bogan]

short answer is yes but you would have to try realy hard.

72 volts would feel unpleasant if you had a terminal in each hand but nothing more as the current has to travel a long way, however if you moved the terminals closer together, say one on each side of the chest then this would be an extremely bad idea!

the main thing with working with car batteries in series, is if you happen to created a short circuit there will be hundreds of amps flowing across it, which will probably severly damage something, so always keep all wires properly insulated. If you are grounding the frame, you probably want to leave the grounding till right at the end, that way if you accidentaly touch a wire to the frame it wont go bang!

[picasso]

safety guidelines when dealing with a large number of batts even at just 24volts, ALWAYS cover any exposed stud,bar,anything that is metal even your tools.  Chances of a shock killing at these volts I would not worry about. But the chance of shorting your pack out and setting things on fire and or melting metal is way way way higher. Any time you work on the bike remove power.  Also take off any metal on your body, watch/rings/magic copper arm band.

And read this story. But don't fear a plasma ball at these volts for most motorbikes
http://www.evdl.org/pages/plasmaboy.html

[Bogan]

jeepers, plasma sounds like some scary stuff!

[NewAge]

  Yikes!!