Blog

Well who would have guessed that the improved spoke calculator we put online last summer has been used to make over 75,000 spoke length calculations! We imagine only a small fraction of those turned into laced up hub motors, but it feels good to see our tools get put to such good use.

We've now wrapped up the the second phase of this project to include a dimensionally correct cutaway edge view of the laced motor so that you can see the effects of dishing, spoke hole offsets, and even of lacing the spokes with the spoke elbows inside or outside of the motor flange. We're trying to turn this into the ultimate wheel lacing resource for ebike enthusiasts and welcome any additional feedback. Have a look and play around!

Under the calculator results are full descriptions and explanations for the various fields, and we've updated all the hub motors in our database to include the offset from the flanges to the axle center for dishing considerations.

One of the key issues we wanted to illustrate was the importance of having the spoke elbows on either the inside or outside of the hub flange in different scenarios. This can be a significant consideration when lacing hub motors which often have spoke flanges spaced much closer together than a normal bike hub. We also wanted to make it easier to let people do hub lacing into Fat Bike rims which tend to have large offsets between the left and right holes, and included a simple "swap spokes" button to gain better triangulation.

Hey guys and gals, check it out:

We've completed what is surely the first online lithium battery charging simulator, with accurate renditions of the constant power, constant current, and constant voltage charge regimes. With this tool, not only can you see just how long it will take to charge a given battery type using the Cycle Satiator, you can also figure out the exact voltage profile for partial charge levels, and then download the resulting profiles right to your Satiator Charger.

We're hoping that this takes some of the mystery out of designing custom charge profiles for your battery and encourages you to produce partial charge routines to enhance your pack's longevity. With good management you can often make your expensive lithium battery pack give 2-3 times as many discharge cycles as it would with the stock generic chargers, and have the satiator handily pay for itself just on reduced battery replacement costs alone.  

Hey you'd think with the launch of the Satiator we'd take a little break and relax for the holidays, but not at all.

Field Oriented BAC500+ Controllers

Many of our custom EV projects over the past few years have made use of an advanced Field Oriented Motor Controller from ASI (Accelerated Systems Inc.) of Toronto, rather than the more generic imported Infineon devices. We've talked about these before, and have now made a small pilot batch generally available to the enterprising public.

Made almost 100% in Canada, this BAC500+ controller in a hardcoat anodized CNC'd enclosure can measurably increase your motor efficiency and torque output at low speeds, run sensorless with even the highest RPM motors, use field weakening to increase the top-end speed, and remove the motor buzz from even noisiest of hubs.

For more information, have a look the descriptions and test results in the ES forum thread. We are down to single digit quantities remaining for those who who are tech savvy and want to taste the future of ebike control.

Cycle Stoking a Yuba

On another front, we renamed the Right Side Drive Stokemonkey to the Cycle Stoker several months back, and are now pilot testing a new model custom fit for the Yuba Mundo cargo bikes. Mid-drives like the Bafang BBS02 have made the rounds lately but this stands apart:

• Patterson 2-speed crankset, gives the equivalent of a 62T chainring for unprecedented high speed gear ratios even at a comfortable pedal cadence
• Provides true Proportional Torque Assistance with all the custom settings of a V3 Cycle Analyst to dial in the desired performance
• Uses of standard bicycle chain and bicycle components for the entire drive transmission, no special proprietary gears in the mix. 

If you have a Yuba Mundo bike and like being an early product tester to help work through any early release kinks, then please be in touch as we should have a half dozen kits ready by early January.

Finally, we at team Grin want to wish you all a Merry Christmas. We'll generally stay open with reduced staffing during the holiday but should still keep up on all the online orders. And in case you didn't see it, the -20% Satiator Promo for loyal customers will continue until the end of the December if you want to treat yourself to a little gift.

We apologize that our webpage was down for maintenance much of yesterday. We were upgrading servers in order to make our site faster and better at handling high traffic. Now that the migration is finished you'll notice quite a dramatic improvement in the page load times when your browse our website.  

Unfortunately there was a time window yesterday evening and night when emails to any ebikes.ca address could have bounced. So if you sent us an message and don't receive the usual timely reply, there is a chance we did not receive it and you might want to forward the email along again.  Otherwise we hope you all enjoy the much snappier ebikes.ca ! 

This is a proud moment for all of us at Grin. After three years of development and 6 months of beta field testing we’re now launching the Cycle Satiator in full capacity. For anyone who’s been fed up with the overall shoddiness of battery chargers available for electric bikes, this should get you salivating.

Please click the link above for more information, and also check out the endless-sphere discussion thread for the most immediate updates on firmware and software enhancements and our development vision.

We managed to bring the Satiator into production without any kickstarter campaign or venture financing. Instead, this whole project was made possible by all the loyal customers and enthusiasts who caught the ebike bug and have been patronizing our shop over the years. Your business and your encouraging feedback has kept us motivated to keep developing new ebike technology, and well that's what we've been doing.

Time to Pay You Back

As a thank you, we’re giving a 20% ($60) discount on the Satiator from now until Boxing Day to anyone who has purchased either 2 or more Cycle Analyst devices from us, or has spent over $2000 in other parts from our shop. If you fit in this camp and like what you see, then simply email us with your order history and make sure you have an account setup on our current website, and we will hook you up.  Your faith in our business always has been and will be much appreciated. 

We all but gave up on Nine Continent hub motors in recent times for a lot of reasons (inadequate disc clearance, poor paint job, inconsistent wheel lacing, improper connector crimping etc.). But things change, and we were truly blown away when we got samples of their latest 2014 model of rear motor this summer. It was one of several motors we’ve been evaluating that finally uses splined cassette freehubs rather than screw-on freewheels for the rear cog set.

• Shimano Compatible Cassette Freehub
• 30mm Wide Stator Core (vs 27mm in older model)
• 20mm Clearance for Disk Calipers
• Side Axle Wire Exit
• 10K Thermistor for Temperature Sensing
• Paired spoke holes
• Diecast aluminum stator core
• Future tech styling

We’ve now got a large supply of these available in a very fast (3004), fast (3006), and medium speed (3007) winding, both as bare motors or in a complete kit form.

The performances are fully modeled on the motor simulator (as NineCont 300X), on our spoke calculator, and we’ve produced a mechanical diagram of all the key dimensions from our 3D CAD model. That should be sufficient data to have you sold!

Motor Dimensional Diagram	Bare Hubs for Sale	Complete Conversion Kits

We also made the decision to stock them all unlaced, given you the option of low cost international shipping, or having a quality hand-built wheel custom laced into the rim of your choice with butted Sapim spokes. As part of this process, we’ve increased the range and type of rims we carry, adding a new PR17 series in 20”, 24”, 26”, and 700c. All these goods are in stock and ready to ship for your winter build projects. 

There’s a new tab on our website that makes it easier to find our Grin distributed products from a local supplier.  Click on the “Dealers” button above to see our list of businesses around the world who have been great partners in getting electric bike gear into your hands.

We’ve tried to make it easy to filter by general product categories and geographic region so you can see if there is a business in your area that carries the parts you are after. If so, buying local can save on shipping, provide nearby service and support, and connect you to your local ebike community. So have a look today and see if there are dealers in your neighborhood to connect with.

These business partners all play crucial roles in the growth and development of the electric bicycle movement, and we’d like to publicly thank them for the many years of sticking together through good times and bad. It’s been a ride and collectively dealers now account for over 60% of our supplied goods.

On that note, if you know of a bike shop or ebike business with similar vision that you think should carry GRIN gear like the wonderful folks above, don't hesitate to make a suggestion to get in touch. Check out the summary pamphlet here which outlines our role in the ebike world.

Last month we received what was one of our largest sea shipments of Crystalyte motors to date, large because there were so many new motor models and enhancements to get us excited. Here is the short summary:

Crown motors with Normal Spoke Flange

Previously, the large Crown motors had a pseudo straight-pull spoke design which meant custom wheel builds or even run of the mill spoke replacement was a great inconvenience. Well no more, they’ve now been retooled with a regular flange taking standard spokes, giving freedom to custom lace at will.

Narrower Crown motors

As well, we’ve received a narrower version of the Crown motor with a 30mm wide stator, which allows it to fit in a 135mm bike dropout with a 7-8 speed freewheel (Normal Crown motors are really for 1 or 3 speed freewheels). Although that also means less power and torque than the 40mm Crown hubs, it makes for a much more rideable bike conversion.

NSM and narrow SAW motors for folding bikes

We’re also introducing two new motor series designed for the special requirements of folding bikes with 75mm fork dropouts and small diameter wheels.  The Crystalyte NSM motor is the smallest direct drive hub we have seen, and is ideal for Brompton and Tikit conversions with 200-300 watt assist levels. The 20mm SAW motor is larger in diameter for better torque, power, and efficiency, at the expense of a bit more weight. Both come with 75mm axles that are machined with 8mm axle flats for a drop-in fit on Brompton forks.  

The SAW motor we also have stocked in a larger 20” wheel suitable for the range of Dahon folders. We will be building more dedicated kit packages around these smaller wheels for easy installation with Brompton, Bike Friday Tikit, and Dahon bikes, but for now have the motors themselves available for those doing a DIY build.

Unlaced with Options

Finally we’ve increased the availability of motors stocked unlaced, including front and rear H series motors and the Crown hubs as well. This simplifies those doing custom wheel builds for fat tire bikes or rim matching, and reduces shipping cost significantly for overseas orders.  

For all of these new hubs, we’ve created full 3-D CAD models and also characterized their performance behavior and put them on the motor simulator page accordingly.

NSM CAD	SAW20 CAD	TC30 CAD	TC40 CAD

Battery Bags

We’ve also got a good stock of the Crystalyte rear trunk bag as a battery enclosure option for the Naked Allcell battery packs. This as a built-in wiring harness with an on/off switch, so that you don’t need to rely on unplugging and plugging connectors, and has sufficient ground and side padding to keep the heat-shrunk packs protected.  

At the start of August, Justin and Anne-Sophie packed up a pair of electric Brompton bikes, some competition unicycles, and a small stash of clothes for what was nearly a 7 week world tour. This included joining the 17^th international unicycle convention in Montreal, touring through France, Germany, and Switzerland to meet many of our European dealers face to face, attending the Eurobike show in Friedrichshaven, the Interbike show in Vegas, and finally spending a good week in the UK with some of our English comrades in crime. 

So we’d like to publicly thank all those who made this such a great adventure. From Martin and Bobby for taming the beast at Unicon, to Philippe, Jean-Pascal, Andreas, Florian, and Reinhard for the accommodation through Europe. To Guillaume, Jules, and Tristan for such good company at Eurobike, and Stefan + the Radkutsche crew for the t-shirts and making our day. Miles you were a kind host with mind-blowing knowledge, and Steve it’s great to meet early pioneers. And finally to Ron, Tora, Paul, Ching, Wake, and everyone else at Interbike. We’ll hopefully see you next year.

A lot of other progress has been taking place at Grin in the past 2 months too, and if you’ve browsed around our store site lately you may have some clues to what is coming. So stay tuned as we’ll be filling this blog site with a number of announcements in the coming weeks.. 

Our Ebike Trip Analysis Software is now posted live on our main website in the online tools section. We've included a number of new features since the last announcement, including the ability to label different segments of your trip then upload the results so you can share a link to the graphs and energy usage data.  Take part in the full discussion here.

We're really happy to see where this is going. If you’ve been logging Cycle Analyst data from your ebike/EV trips and have interesting observations to share, then please let us know and send a link of the results.