Justin Lemire-Elmore

This Friday May 11th we're pleased to be hosting the book release party for Kris Holm's hot-off-the-presses "Essential Guide to Mountain and Trials Unicycling". This is the first comprehensive treatise on modern unicycle technique and skimming through the pages makes you want drop everything and hop on a one-wheeler. Some drinks and snacks will be provided and a good stash of books themselves will be on hand for anyone wanting a copy signed by Kris himself.

Plus, if everything goes as planned, we might even have a Grin Technologies sign installed on our building to help you find us, and some more novel geared unicycle projects for brave riders try out.

It's been over a year since we moved to our new shop space in False Creek. Renovations are always ongoing but the last round included a big spring cleaning to organize piles of miscellaneous inventory we'd like to clear. This means lots of bargain goods on our garage sale shelf for those hunting for project parts. The list includes sample and prototype batteries, hub motors, slightly used or scratch & dent CAs and ebike lights, motor controllers and more. Available at the moment for walk-in customers only.

Finally, it is with some sadness that pay tribute to Justin's mom Louise, who died unexpectedly in a car accident at the end of May. She was large driving force in many of the ambitious shop and office renovations GRIN has done over the years, volunteering tons of elbow grease and bringing a special touch for all the colours, artwork, and plants that breathe life into a space. We will miss her, but the legacy of her help here will live on.

For those who've been a bit uncertain about ebike torque arms, when you need them, how to install them, etc. we've completed a long overdue section of our website devoted to this topic. Please have a look and let us know if it covers most all bases you'd want to know about.

One of the things we will have to show at Maker Faire is the infinitely geared Nuvinci unicycle project that Justin built in April/May. The hope is to have this fully electrified in time for the fair as well, after all, what could the world need more than a continuously-geared, chain-driven, electric-assist uni?

That said, it is always easier on the packs to have lower current discharges, so runningtwo in parallel is often a good idea. You not only double the range, you increase thelongevity of the battery by having lower currents. We have 12g ‘Y’ battery joiner cablesin stock using high detent Anderson pins to make parallel arrangements easier.

On a similar note, we’ve also made a standard ‘Y’ splitter for the throttle signal as well,making it straightforward to run two motor systems off a single throttle signal. It’s noteveryone who wants to run dual motors, but we help with enough interesting projects running front and rear hubs, or trikes and quadracycles with side-by-side hubs, to make this worth stocking.

We’ve had the BMS on both the 36V 14Ah and 48V 10Ah eZee lithium packs upgradedto handle up to 40A of current, meaning that it’s no longer necessary to run two batteriesin parallel for high power setups. These packs are all now made with the more premiumPP2250 Samsung Cells that are 5C discharge rated, as opposed to the 3C rated cells thatwere formerly in use.

If history is any guide, it takes us 12-18 months from releasing a product before wefinally get all the documentation and user guides finished. So on that note, we’re pleased to release the first proper revision of the Cycle Analogger owner’s manual. This explains many features that we had built into the device but had not yet advertized, from dualchannel temperature sensing to customizing the file names, and other tweaks. Feedback is always welcome.

While we were at it, we also had a set of spacers made up to help deal with caliperclearance problems that often accompanies disk brake compatibility with Chinese hub motors. This is especiallya problem with the Nine Continent hubs that only give ~15mm of space for the caliper. The spacers are 1.6mm thick and either one or two of them can be placed under the disk as required.

After a lot of design prototypes and field testing we have finished a new torque armspecifically for rear hub motors. This unit is made from thick ¼” stainless steel plate,meaning it can resist axle spinout in even highly overclocked motor axles. And theunique 2-piece design allows it to work with vertical dropouts, horizontal dropouts,machined cavity dropouts, and anything in between. The support arm clears up and abovemost fender eyelets and includes slots for up to 3 hose clamps for extra security.