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Okanagan teen builds motorized bike

All the parts used to build the motor obtained at the local landfill and carefully assembled by the 17-year-old

Jeremy Sorokovsky is 17-years-old, from a low income family in Vernon. While he is currently saving to buy a car one day, in the meantime, he got creative by building an electric bike from scratch.

All the parts used to build the motor were obtained at the local landfill and carefully assembled. The only item that Sorokovsky purchased was a $30 part speed controller, which he bought on e-bay after he had no success in searching the local landfill.

“I saw a motor in the dump and that gave me the idea,” Sorokovsky said. “It took me about a month.”

The front drive wheel is from a discarded bike; the bike frame from another; rear wheel from another bike. He used more than 50 discarded laptops he had found and disassembled for their batteries, removing 336 working cells and wired together in series/parallel pattern to get 67 volts DC. Discarded electrical wires were salvaged for the circuit connections and controls. Plywood pieces were also salvaged. And duct tape was used to hold everything together.

“I am not sure if a red seal electrician would be able to put this together this way, but he did it alone,” said his uncle, Walter Sorokovsky.

Though Jeremy found school somewhat uninteresting because it wasn’t hands-on enough for him, since building the bike he is now considering an electrical career.

“I’m willing to get out there and see what’s available but I can see electrical being a good choice,” he said.

Sorokovsky is currently employed at a local alarm company. He hopes to soon be registered as a Security System Technician apprentice. When at work, the bike is being recharged for the ride home.

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