I stood for a while, staring at the empty frame. Now a bike, only because I say so, this gutted chassis waited patiently while I mulled over my next move.

I could pull it all apart, clean and replace components, then start the build back from scratch. But that didn’t seem right. I didn’t feel like that was the next step.

Some time ago, I decided that one of my goals was to be able to reassemble the bike so it looked stock. Or rather, so I could use the original plastic. Now, as I looked at this chassis, the next thing I needed to do was to verify just how much I could stuff into this frame.

My goal is to insert a motor with a 6.7″ outer diameter, 13″ long and up to thirty lithium iron phosphate (commonly referred to as “LiFePo”) batteries yielding a system voltage of 96 volts.

That meant the next step was obvious. I needed to build some batteries. One way to do it is to make them out of cardboard. I took some time to measure out the dimensions of a battery and cut out one box to use as a template. I would use this one to mark up the other boxes, helping me achieve some uniformity.

They’re not perfect, but good enough. My cardboard batteries are about 5% larger than the real thing. If you want to get closer to an actual size, make the cuts on your template just a little smaller. When you fold up your boxes, the thickness of the cardboard will make up the difference.