News

We're often in the midst of evaluating and revising our product offerings and figured it was a good idea to shed some light on our plans for 2016. In addition to the Thru-Axle motor discussed in the last blog post, we’ve got some other items that are actually available now.

9C+ Front Motors with Statorade:

Our plan for 2016 is to have Statorade and 0.35mm laminations by default in all of our direct drive hub motors, reducing the rolling drag and increasing the heat dissipation capabilities across the board. We're starting this off by introducing what we call the 9C+ hub motor series which we quietly slipped on our website last month.

Outwardly this looks like a generic 205mm DD hub. But internally it has the 0.35mm core, a drilled through disk hole for injecting fluid, a thorough silicone sealant on the side plate to prevent fluid leakage, an embedded thermistor for temperature sensing, and is already pre-loaded with 5mL of Statorade. And at just $175 for the hub it's probably the best value drive option we've ever offered.

The 9C+ motors are available in front drives in a 5,6, and 7 turn winding, either as a bare hub, hand-built into a wheel, or as part of a complete conversion kit. They are also modeled on our simulator as the 9C+ 27XX option.

Mini Geared Hubs, from Outrider to Bafang:

We've stopped carrying the small geared motors from Outrider, and are replacing these with a similar sized G01 series hub from Bafang. This particular motor is much easier to service, has cables exiting from the side plate rather the end of the axle, has better disk brake compatibility, and is customized for us with an internal thermistor for motor temperature sensing.

It should be a dandy option for the light weight lower power (250-500 watt) conversion systems, and we've got both fast (10rpm/V) and standard (8rpm/V) winding options for to suit different wheel diameters and pack voltages. The hub is already on our simulator, spoke calculator, and is available either as a bare hub, laced into a rim, or as part of a complete conversion kit.

Stokemonkeys Back with Options

And finally, we've largely finished setting up our CNC machine center and welding stations in our new space, allowing us to resume fabricating the stokemonkey kit hardware which was out of stock for a little while. We're now now offering the stokemonkey clampset with specific ID's to match several common tube diameter for an ideal clamping fit, and even have a custom option where we will CNC it to your specific tube size.

We've also switched the motor source back to Crystalyte just like the very original SM motors were based, but using their newer SAW40X motor line instead of the 400 series.

Well that was quite the whirlwind tour through Taiwan and China, Justin and Robbie would like to thank all of those we met up with at the Taipei Bike Show and tour visits afterwords. Benjamin, Tora, Ching, Britt, Harry, Paul, and all the AU and NZ folks it was great to hang out and share our interests and visions for the ebike movement.

There are a lot of good things that will be coming from this trip, and we're looking forwards to closer relationships and some joint endeavors this year with Juiced Riders, EM3EV, TDCM and other companies doing innovative product developments. We feel strongly that some collaborative efforts can help bring signifcant ebike tech advances to a larger audience. And on that front, we also brought along 3 of our own projects that are at the end of their long development cycle and are ready to show:

(Direct Youtube Link)

The Thru-Axle Motor, 2nd Gen Phaserunner Controller, and Potted LiGo battery packs have all sub-components in place and are ready for production, if only we hadn't just lost our production facility when we moved shop this past month! So we are still busy doing all the electrical wiring, machine installation, and related manufacturing infrastructure at the Powell St. address before we can make these available. We should be ready well in time for the 2016 bike season so please stay tuned to our homepage or newsletter if you want to be first in line during the rollout.

Well this is it. Our last outgoing shipments from 4^th Ave have been picked up and the big tear-down is taking place in earnest. We’ll be fully closed on Friday as we peel back the 5 years spent making this place into our home and pack everything over to the new digs. It’s an exciting expansion and we’ve really appreciated all the words of encouragement that many of you have sent our way.  

Business as usual should be able to resume after the weekend on Tuesday, but do expect delays before all normal operations are up to speed. As well, Justin and others from the engineering team will be the Taipei bike show next week and so technical inquires and conversations may be deferred until their return in mid-march. 

After running out of stock of the first production run of Satiators earlier this year we've now got our next batch on hand which includes the same hardware updates as the 72V devices, with the AC inlet cable on the back side.  The other awesome electrical specs for rapid charging of 24-48V batteries all remain identical, but this modification does mean that the original UL/CSA regulatory approval is no longer valid. 

For now we are shipping with the regulatory markings covered up as shown in the image above until we have the test approval completed. In the meantime, if you do have a requirement for UL listing on the device then the chargers remaining at Amazon.com all are all from the original run.

Once again we have a "For Lease" sign on our building, and once again fear not because we are simply moving our business to an even bigger and better location.  While we've enjoyed the False Creek neighborhood for the last 5 years, it's clear that this vestigial industrial area in the heart of Vancouver is rapidly changing in character to serve the nearby condo developments, rather than the historic manufacturing industries it once spawned.

On March 1st we'll be fully moved to a new location in Strathcona at 950 Powell Street, with nearly 3 times the space, great neighbors like EatART and Maker Labs, and room to grow for years to come.  This is a big and exciting next step for Grin, and the team here has been hard at work the past few weeks getting this space renovated, setup, and ready to serve as our new home well into the next decade.

We will try to continue with business as usual during the entire transition process next month with a minimal amount of order disruption.  However, it's a significant job and much of our staffing manpower will be redirected to the move, especially towards the 2nd half of February. So please be patient if there are delays in communication as lower priority jobs are put on hold.

In the meantime, in order to lighten our load on moving day we are having a significant sale on our entire inventory of the large Crystalyte H35 and Crown motors and kits, ranging between 25 to 30% off.  There isn't a better time to start a winter build project than this. You can get a great deal on a direct-drive motor package and simultaneously help us out with the moving process!

The sale will go on from now until Feb 25th, and we’re hoping that you can help us clear a good number of these boxes from our rack shelving before we need to move out.    

We do also have a slight ulterior motive in that we want all of our direct drive motors in 2016 to be compatible with Statorade coolant, but the stock Crystalyte side covers aren't always sealed well enough to prevent leakage at high RPM's. Our next Crystalyte motor batch will be certified Statorade-ready, but these ones require reworking the side cover seal with silicone before adding a fluid coolant inside.

Our tidy wiring kit has been a popular way to get clean cable runs and covered connectors on your ebike project. And being all black it does a reasonable stealthy job of it. But what if you’ve got a colourful bike and want a bit more zing? 

Grin’s manufacturing crew has been playing with fabric dyes and suppliers of coloured spiral wrap and zip-ties to produce bright yellow, red, and blue wiring kits too.

We love seeing ebike conversions where people pay extra attention to the look and details of their installation. So we’re starting a little contest for people who order one of the coloured wiring kits between now and Mar 1^st.  Send us a picture of your finished ebike project featuring one of these routing kits and we’ll award our favorite 2 conversions with a 20% off coupon for your next order.

The company TDCM from Taiwan has been among the more innovative players in the electric bicycle space. We’ve been carrying their bottom bracket torque sensors for a while but last year one of their motors really caught our eye. This was a direct drive motor surrounding an internal 5 speed Sturmey Archer hub.  You get the benefits of a derailleur-free 5 speed transmission with a 243% gear ratio plus a ~500-1000 watt hub motor all in one tidy package. 

We wind tunnel and dyno tested this motor last summer and liked almost everything about it, and are happy to have this in stock in a fast winding both as the bare hub and also as part of a complete kit.  The motor includes an internal 10K thermistor for temperature sensing with a V3 Cycle Analyst, and is the first hub that we are offering pre-filled with Statorade for improved thermal performance. 

Great news to kick off the New Year. We are now dropping the price of all our V2 and V3 Cycle Analyst devices, to just $95 for a V2.4 CA-DP and $125 for a V3.0 unit. Having served as our flagship product for a decade and financed most of Grin’s R&D activities, we owe a lot to the Cycle Analyst, but we feel it’s time for other products to move in as our main breadwinners and pass the CA savings back to you.

The V3.0 Cycle Analyst firmware is now officially at 3.0, no more Prelim6, p12, p13 etc.  as the latest tweaks have made it as rock stable as we could hope. Anyone with an existing CA3 can update to this firmware via the software download page. On new CA orders the USB->TTL programming cable for updating firmware is now no longer included in the package, but can easily be added as an accessory if desired.

Thank you all for the many well wishes for our 10 year anniversary celebrations, it’s been a joy having so many customers who have been around for huge chunks of the ride.

Extended Range Satiator Family

While the 10% sale is over, there are other great things to be excited about. First and foremost? We’ve started our beta sales program for high voltage Satiator chargers. Now rather than being limited to 63V or 15s packs, the 72V 5A model can work all the way up to 103V for 24s lithium batteries for those hot rod ebike applications.

There are a limited number of 24V 15A and 72V 5A units from our pilot production run available for early adopters who don’t require UL/CSA certification, and if you order by this weekend with Fedex shipping it should make it in time for the Christmas Tree.

Flexible Power Cables

Secondly, after years of wondering why there were no great heavy gauge cable sources for ebike battery and motor wiring, we decided to bite the bullet and have thousands of meters of our custom cable manufactured. 

The 3 phase motor cable has high flexibility 413 strand 12 gauge phase wire with Teflon insulation, and also includes 7 signal wires too, for your motor hall sensors and thermistors. All of this is bundled in a round 9mm diameter flexible jacket and it stays flexible all the way to -30oC.

For our custom battery cable, instead of going with 2 conductors, we went for a 4 conductor instead. A pair of heavy 13g wires and a set of thinner 18g wires also with high strand count and flexibility. That allows one cable to have say both the charging and discharging ports on a battery, or an additional tap point for powering accessories. Or, you can just parallel connect the thin and thick wires together to have 12 gauge equivalent.

2015 Housecleaning Garage Sale

And finally, we’re clearing out a bunch of used ebike stuff that has been allowed to accumulate over the past year. So if you are looking for some bargain priced garage sale items, John’s got everything posted up on an endless-sphere buy/sell thread.