Tuesday, April 14th

Today was a life saver. As I said yesterday, Eli and I ran into some problems with our bicycle. A small piece didn't fit on the one we originally bought. However, Eli was able to find a bike at Isabelle Leonaitis' house that worked perfectly. After some heavy duty cleaning and WD-40 coating, the bike was as good as new. Eli and I then went to work installing the motor sprocket on the back tire, which took more time than anticipated. This was tricky because of the alignment of the sprocket. It had 9 holes that didn't quite line up with the spokes on the tires. However, after some jamming with our fingers, we were able to make everything fit, thank god.
Once our sprocket was attached and re-installed onto the bicycle, we mounted the motor on the bike. Though this may seem complicated, all it required was some simple screwing and tightening. Before we knew it, the motor was on there fitting like a charm. According to our horrible instructions, the next thing to do was install the clutch. This device is what starts the motor, which is essential. To do this, we needed to remove the gear shifter from the bicycle entirely, which wasn't very difficult. We then installed the clutch which looks like a brake handle. Once it was securely on there, we had to connect the clutch line to the actual motor, which took some intense times looking at pictures and videos. The clutch line is what makes the actual clutch handle work. So eventually, we got it on there and it seemed to be working fine.
Right as we installed the clutch handle and clutch line, Mr. Hwang showed up with Cuban sandwiches, which were delicious. We then spent some time showing him what we had done, and talking about our progress on the bike. Once we showed him the electric bike, Mr. Hwang wanted to take a spin. We think he was overjoyed based on his constant yelling of "Yipee!" He seemed to really enjoy coming down to Patrick's and also seemed to be pleased with all the work we had done. He thanked Patrick for all he had done for us, and then returned to Lovett.
Once Hwang left, we went to work installing the bicycle chain to the motor. This chain was not part of the original bike, but is actually a chain specifically for the motor and the sprocket we made. We had a lot of trouble with this though. It may seem simple, but we had to actually unscrew parts of the motor in order to thread the chain through. After some tough screwing and disassembling, we were able to get the chain attached to the bike.
Today was one of our most productive days, as we feel we made some major progress on the bike. Compared to yesterday where we thought all hope was lost, we were able to make a dent into the gas powered bike assembly. We hope tomorrow goes well!