Blog

Our store this year will be open throughout the holidays, so you can continue to count on us for parts, service, and support. However, from Dec 20th to Jan 3rd, the staffing levels will be much reduced, so we'll ask that any walk-in customers let schedule with us ahead of time before dropping by.

We're pleased to have EcoSpeed's new Mountain Drive conversion package available and in stock for riders in Vancouver and the rest of Canada. Although our specialty has been with hub motor conversions, there are strong cases to be made for mid-drive units that assist through the bicycle gearing in some applications. EcoSpeed in Portland, Oregon, makes one of the most powerful and professionally engineered packages available, and so we were excited when they recently released a model that was compatible with upright mountain bikes and not just recumbents. It may be a while yet before we have them properly explained and listed on our store site, so for now email if interested.

We've begun a series of experiments to help us fully understand the nature of bicycle fork failures where the hub motor axle spins out inside the dropouts. This can be a disconcerting failure mode with conversion ebikes that is all the more relevant with the rise of both aluminum forks and more powerful hub motors in recent years. Those interested in following these tests have a look at this thread on the endless-sphere forum, where we will be posting the methods and results.

We'll be learning the bounds of what regular bicycle forks with and without torque arms can handle, and hopefully from these tests we'll be able to engineer even better torque arm designs.

And the Testing of Hub Motors Too


Ever wanted to know how far you can push these hub motors? How accurate is the simulator when you are putting thousands rather than hundreds of watts into a hub? How long can they put out that kind of power before burning up? Well we sure did, and have recently begun posting the result of some tests to see where exactly these limits are. An interesting read for the technically inclined.

We've finally finished the complete Cycle Analyst Version 2.1 User Manual. It includes a thorough explanation of the many more advanced features that were added in this firmware update, such as serial data logging, on-the-fly current and speed limiting, using the CA as a 'current throttle', and additional details on the wiring and circuitry. 

There are two new battery options for our eZee and Nine Continent kit offerings. The first is a high capacity 14Ah lithium polymer battery that is exactly the same size and even less mass than the original 10Ah eZee pack. This should be a handy upgrade option for those needing an extended 50-60km range without any weight penalty. The second is a slick 8.5Ah lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO4) battery in a flat plastic enclosure for those wanting the iron phosphate chemistry. Both come with rapid 4A aluminum chargers which can top up a pack in short order.

The entire back-end of our online hub motor simulator has been revamped to properly model the effects of motor winding inductance. Although negligible with the low pole count Crystalyte motors, the winding inductance has a significant effect on the performance of geared motors and high pole count direct drive hubs like Nine Continent series, so our simulator now gives a much more accurate portrayal of these. While we were at it, we characterized and added several new motors to the simulator, such as our new 2805 NC hub, the fast 20" eZee hub, as well as the BMC V2 and MAC geared motors.

Anyone who has been on a kilowatt-hour or Critical Mass bike ride in Vancouver over the past 8 months has probably heard and appreciated the fine high fidelity music and thumping bass coming from amongst the crowd. That's been the productive output of Bruce Lau, who built a performance 100 watt amp to run off his ebike battery pack. Now you too can turn heads and make people on the streets smile with an ebike sound system that rivals that of pimped cars. Bruce has made a few extras and we have them listed on our store site. They are hand-made in Vancouver, and ready to spread joy all over the world.

Back in 2006 we were the first to bring fast winding 404 and 405 Crystalyte hub motors to the scene; in 2008 we had eZee make a high rpm motor for their 20" kits; last fall we had Nine Continent do a faster 6 turn winding of their 205 hub for us, and now in our most recent shipment we have taken this a step further with a 5 turn winding Nine Continent motor, which we'll call the 2805. This gives us a 20" wheel option that has the capability of doing 25mph or 40kph speeds with a standard 36V battery pack. The advantage of fast motors with a lower winding count is that they provide a path to achieve good speed performance without going to high voltage 72V battery arrangements, which is a frequent source of problems especially when people series connect BMS protected lithium batteries.

As well, the rear motors in this shipment have all been laced with the heads on the left side of the hub flange and are properly dished out of the box, so our earlier caveat about wheel dishing is no longer a problem. 

Our Infineon-based motor controllers now includes all of the changes we sought to make this a great universal controller option. We have an integrated rocker switch for ON/OFF power control, a forwards/reverse connector so that it is compatible with the eZee hub motors, and an ebrake cutoff connector that can enable regenerative braking with a small modification to the circuitboard. The current limit on the 6 mosfet version with the high performance IRFB4030 mosfets has been increased to 25 amps. That of the larger 12 mosfet version is still 35 amps. These items are in stock and are plug in compatible with all of our Crystalyte, eZee, and Nine Continent motors.