Justin Lemire-Elmore

Vancouver is one of the birthplaces of mountain unicycling and has a large unicycle community, yet has always lacked a shop that specializes in them. We want to fix that and are ready to open up a small unicycle corner in our store, the preliminary website for which is here. You might wonder what unicycles have to do with ebikes. Well, not much, yet, though we're equally passionate about both.

After some development time we are pleased to make available a Lithium Iron Phosphate (LiFePO4) battery option in a triangular form factor. The layout is similar to that used in our frame mounted 36V NiCad batteries, only it is lighter weight (4.7 kg) and higher in capacity (10 Ah). These particular packs are made with low impedance 'F' size cells rated for 5C discharge in a 12S 2P arrangement. The overall pack has an internal resistance of just 130 mOhm, half the resistance of other 10Ah ebike batteries, which means less voltage sag under load and no problems delivering up to 40 amps of continuous current. Click the graphs at the right to see the complete performance details.

This finally means that we have a battery pack that can be recommended for higher power systems using the 35 and 40A motor controllers.

A heads up to everyone that we will be closed for a short summer break starting at the at the end of this week right through to the Labour Day weekend. So last day for order shipments to go out will be Friday, August 28th, and they won't resume again until Tuesday, Sept 8th. We will able to respond to emails during this period, but there will be no one at our physical shop and the online store will be temporarily de-activated as well. Hope that everyone is able to get out and enjoy the last weeks of summer.

One common problem with the rear hub motor maintenance is that people can't remove their freewheel, since the rear motor axles are too large to fit through the opening in the removal tool. We've now got a large supply of custom removal tools that were made up with a 14mm bore all the way through so that they will slide right over the large 14mm threads on the rear axles.

Just a short note that the Nine Continent kit sales are on again with the infineon motor controllers. More product announcements and details by the end of this week.

We've finished designing and testing an even tidier universal torque arm to offer for front hub motor installations. This model is made to screw into fender eyelets rather than being secured to the fork with a hose clamp. It too uses thick 3/16" stainless steel plate to restrain against axle rotation and can accommodate both 12mm and 14mm axles. We will still continue offering the hose-clamp variety for those with forks that don't have fender eyelets.

The Vancouver car-free festivals have been so successful that this year the city has approved recurring Open Space events every Sunday on both Commercial Drive and Main St. The theme this July 12th is "Before there were Cars", and we've been allocated the entire block of Main between 10th and 11th avenue to host a 'Car Free Vehicle Show'. Please any and all people in Vancouver who ride an ebike of some form, show up! We'll have our fleet of unique longtails, cargo trikes, unicylces, and skatboards. But for spreading the word of this grass-roots movement, nothing beats having dozens of people from the community come by to share their own personal ebike stories and experiences with the public.

On Saturday night there is a chance to view the first ever bicycle-in movie screening featuring a short film "The Cat Returns". This will be hosted by our good friend Bruce Lau who has built a collapsible 14 foot screen that straps to his ebike; and the projector, sound system, and lighting for the show are all powered from circuits Bruce made that run off his ebike battery pack.

If you are up for doing something unique this Saturday then pack your blanket, some popcorn, and come join us. We will be meeting up at our store (4570 Main St.) at 8:30pm, and then riding en masse to an undisclosed public lot where the stage will get setup for an outdoors movie theater.

As of June 2009 we have now standardized all of the hall connectors on our motors and motor controllers to the plastic style (SM series from JST) and pin-out used in the eZee kits. We've discontinued the so called mini-XLR format used on the Crystalyte system because of complications sourcing this connector for other vendors, and we want all the ebike parts we supply to be interchangeable whenever possible. The latest shipment of Crystalyte disk compatible hub motors which we have in stock now uses this flat plastic connector from JST, as does the latest batch of rear Nine Continent motors. We plan to embrace this connector pinout as a standard for all hub motors and controllers that we carry going forwards.

Aug 2nd Controller Status Update: We now have the infineon immediate start controllers available in both 20 and 35A models to use with both the Nine Continent and Crystalyte hub motors.

As many people have noticed, we don't currently have any stock of immediate start Crystalyte motor controllers, whether in the 20A or the higher current 35 and 48A models. We have been working on sourcing a higher end replacement of these for quite a while and hoped to have something comparable to offer by now, but several unexpected setbacks including parts shipments getting lost in transit have held things back. If everything goes well at this point we are expecting to have them available before the end of July. Until then, we don't have much to offer for 'complete package' systems other than the eZee kits.