News

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.

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.  

The ebike season is starting to get in full swing and we're glad to announce a roster of new staff here at Grin to help us cope with the anticipated summer demands!

We've got Miguel now assisting with front-end sales to help customers navigate their kit purchases. Elvis is bringing to the table years of CNC experience to ramp up the productivity of our machine shop. Constantin has several years of experience as a technician the ebike industry and is helping in our support and repair department. Sean has worked in electronics manufacturing and the creative arts and had taken the lead in our LiGo battery assembly. And we have two coop students too, Ryan in software engineering making improvements to our website and Sam is doing his first mechanical engineering coop on our shop floor.

So help us in welcoming this crew of new faces to our team!

And that's not the end. We're still looking for someone exceptionally qualified at doing email based tech support. If you've got a wealth of hands-on experience assembling and troubleshooting ebikes, familiarity with the Grin systems, are looking for a change of work, well we could have an option for you so drop us a line. 

See: Info Page

First, thanks to everyone who came by to visit us at the Bike Show earlier this month, we had a great time meeting all kinds of folks with DIY ebikes on their radar.

One of our contributions to the event was a presentation on regenerative braking in ebikes. We've just edited and uploaded this talk to youtube since it's an a topic that's long overdue to get proper treatment.

If you are interested in the advanced regen control modes discussed in the 2nd half of the video, feel free to download and install the V3.2 beta firmware releases that are currently available in the Cycle Analyst software suite. We'll be making frequent updates and tweaks to this platform in the weeks ahead.