Blog

We've spent a busy winter doing lots of tests and experiments with torque arms, axles, and regen, and it's been most revealing. You can count on us making a video soon that dives into all these gory details.

But first, time to talk about the fruits we have to show for it! There are now 3 new torque arm models in production here at Grin, taking advantage of both our improved knowledge from all the testing and enhanced manufacturing facilities.

Torque Arm V5 takes the convenient eyelet mounting of our V2 arm, but adapts it to work on both front and rear hubs with any dropout angle using a splined insert. It also has a stronger linkage arm less liable to slip. This is the perfect choice for bikes with fender or rack eyelets.

Torque Arm V6 is an ideal option for frames that don't have eyelets near the dropouts. This attaches to any frame tubing using our machined frame clamp assembly that can swivel and slide to line up with any arm position.

Both the V5 and V6 arms include tight-fitting inserts for M12 and M14 axles made of especially tough 17-4 stainless steel alloys. This material is hard as rock and provides over 80% more spinout strength than the more common 304 stainless. It survives all testing unscathed even while axles shear right in half.

Finally, our Torque Arm V7 addresses hub motors with regenerative braking. Particularly geared motors with M12 axles which are notoriously difficult to keep in place. An entire clamping block assembly machined from 17-4 stainless can compress the axle with several thousand pounds of preload force.

These arms are available to purchase by themselves or included in conversion kits. We've even got fully detailed installation guides hot off the presses. 

We released a video last month showing how to modify standard geared hub motors to disable the clutch and make them regen capable.  

This can bring the benefits of regen to geared motors outside of just the GMAC system, including smaller and lighter hubs like the Shengyi SX1/ SX2 motors.

Excited but don't have access to a TIG welder? Fear not, we're now offering these motors pre-modded for regen here at Grin! That includes

• Bafang G60 and G62 Fabike Kits.  Now you have excellent options for powerful regen capable hub geared motors on fatbikes with 170-190mm rear dropouts.  
• Shengyi SX1 and SX2 Kits. These lightweight front and rear geared motor kits are the perfect option for commuter setups that don't need the power and weight class of a GMAC motor. And the benefit of a helical cut gear makes them extra quiet too. 
• Front eZee kits.  And finally we've got a good supply of eZee motors without clutches for those wanting a hub that is in the GMAC motor power class, but for a front installation rather than the rear. 

All of these hub motor options at their base are using threaded M12 axles with axle flats. Our ability to offering these systems was also contingent on our release of the new V7 Clamping Torque Arm.  (More information on our new torque arm series coming next!)

With the help of eevee's PEV shop we've now added four XLR charging adaptors to our lineup, allowing a host of electric unicycles, skateboards, and scooters to take advantage of the Satiator charger with a ready-made cable.  These GX12 and GX16 plugs have become quite common in this industry, and while not quite converging to one 'standard' there are at least enough models using 3, 4, and 5 pin plugs to justify us making a cable for each!

Our resident technician and UEC aficionado Gordon partnered up with Cole at eevee's to film a little video on the Satiator which you can view here.

You can get the 72V Satiators with GX12/GX16 adaptors directly from our store page, or at eevee's shop where they can preload profile settings to match your PEV.

This project took longer than anticipated as field testing showed some strange charge behaviors with certain EUC models, and that required some algorithm changes and new firmware to fully iron out. So if you get one of these cables for an existing Satiator, be sure to update to the latest 1.039 firmware as well.

Happy New Year everyone! We will be back to business as usual on Jan 3rd with some substantial product updates to launch in the coming weeks.  Hope you all continue having a great holiday break and we leave you with a little video treat from our staff Christmas party. 

At Grin we are wishing everyone a great remainder to the Christmas season, especially those who've been caught up in the wild weather and travel chaos! Our shop will be:

• CLOSED: Dec 23rd - Dec 28th, Jan 2nd
• REDUCED CAPACITY: Dec 29th - 30th 

Orders placed online will continue to get shipped out but expect some delays in email correspondence.

Simulator Vids

And on a totally unrelated note, we recently published the first 3 parts of what will become a lengthy tutorial series on how to make the most of our online ebike motor simulator tool. Not your typical holiday binge watching content, but surely riveting for a few people none the less!

It's a big day for pedal sensor options here at Grin.

ERider T17's

We've just received our first large shipment of the T17 model ERider torque sensors. These have the same convenient side cable exit as the T9 model (no need to drill your bottom bracket), but with two big advantages:

• They have 2 wire quadrature PAS sensing enabling the back-pedal regen features of the V3.2 CA firmware.
• In addition to the common 68 and 73mm bottom bracket sizes, they are also available in both 83mm and 100mm BB's to use with fatbike frames. So now no MATTER your frame type, we've got an ERider for you.

These sensors are in stock and available by themselves or with any of our conversion kits.

Budget Sensors:

For those who want torque sensing capabilities on a tight buget, we've aquired a large surplus stock of sensors made by the german company Fischer AG at a great bargain price. These are similar in electrical operating mode as the the THUN/NCTE sensors but with a more generous signal range.

• Single Side torque sensing (Measures right pedal torsion)
• 18 PAS pole pairs
• Center hole cable exit

We've had to snip and solder on a suitable connector and adapter cable to make them compatible with our kits. There is only a single size (68mm BB shell and 127mm spindle length) and installation requires drilling a hole in your bottom bracket for the cable exit. But if you are cool with that, the $60 price gives full torque control from a quality manufacturer at not much more than a basic PAS sensor.

Basic PAS with HiGo: 

And lastly we now have inventory of our two basic PAS sensors available with a 6-pin HiGo plug for direct hookup to the V5 Baserunner controllers. In our initial deployment they'll be used for activating back-pedal regen on the newly released TSM-A5 motor kits. 

The company TDCM has made some innovative motors over the years. For a while we carried their IGH motor that featured a 5 speed Sturmey Archer internally geared hub inside a direct drive motor. More recently they've introduced an even more powerful motor using a quick-release axle and featuring a torque sensing freehub body

It took us a while to develop a full kit package around this motor as it needed a custom controller, a custom torque-arm, and a customized CA3 firmware. But we've pulled it all together and are now releasing the TSM-A5 kit. Watch Robbie's summary in this video.

More detailed information including specs, user manual, CAD drawings etc. are on our Kit Info Page,and they can be purchased as part of a full conversion kit from our Ready-To-Roll Store page

This summer we actually had THREE people make prolonged stopovers at Grin while embarking on epic solar bike trips. We covered Mark Havran earlier this year with a Part3 Video. He's since continued all the way up to Alaska to catch the Northern Lights and and is now in Australia chasing summer sunshine while the days get shorter here. 

We then had one of our long term customers James visit, who's been criss-crossing america on a solar powered Elf ebike for almost as many years as we've been in business! 

And finally, a legend in the European Suntrip races, Stéphane Bertrand, has decided to do his own solo trip across both North and South America. He left from Montreal on a solar recumbent bike in August and was here in Vancouver 4 weeks later, ready to honor a debt to Justin from the 2018 Suntrip ride!

Stéphane has since progressed right down the coast and into Mexico, and you can catch more pictures of these travels on this Facebook page.

We just want to give a big shout-out to you three and everyone else out there using DIY ebike tech to explore all corners of the world, push both personal and technological limits. It is so very cool to see.  

Hey everyone we hope that you are all having a fantastic summer in between the various sweltering heat waves. We had some controller QC and supply hiccups starting this season that kept our noses to the grindstone. But things are mostly sorted out, with lots of good news to share:

G62 Hubs

Inventory keeps on trickling in, and an order from Bafang that we placed last October finally arrived this week. This includes their most powerful Fatbike motor, the G62, which will brought in to replace the G60 fatbike hubs.

The larger G62 motor has an wider motor stator and thick gear assembly to handle significant torque levels, and uses the higher amperage L1019 connector with a side-axle cable exit. This hub can seriously haul, especially with our Frankenrunner controllers at 90 phase amps, operating in a power domain we don't usually expect from Bafang. Torque arms are a must.

For fatbike projects needing a rear hub motor, this is the model to beat. We've got them available as ready-to-roll kits with downtube batteries, DIY kits with 3rd party batteries, and as bare hubs too, for both 170-175mm dropouts and 190-195mm dropouts. We also have spare gear assemblies for those who want to try welding the clutch and using them in regen capacity.

Here are the engineering drawings and 3D models.

MG62_170 Dimensional Drawing (101.74 kB)

MG62_170 3D Part File (8.34 MB)

MG62_190 Dimensional Diagram (100.61 kB)

MG62_190 3D Part File (8.26 MB)

They will be up on our motor simulator in the coming week.