LightningRods mid drive kit

I used a 100T chainring when I did my 1x9 conversion. It worked really well, but I do not like the weight in the back wheel anymore. In the meantime I have bought a mid-drive Qulbix and will be working on a change of the double chains. I tend to ride quite fast and I cannot pedal more than around 25mph with the factory setup. I might be needing help on that.
 

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My "lowrider" with LightningRods belt mid drive kit.

Powered with tiny Trampa Vesc 6 75. Battery Li-po 14s 54V. Currently power up to 2.7kW. No monster, but I don't want to stress bike components too much.
Non original pedals used. As with original pedals the large belt wheel had too much side to side movement (wobbling), while rotating the pedals. Depending on the pedals position the belt was sliding to the sides.

Drive is silent, very smooth and linear. At current power the motor even doesn't gets warm.

As a negative, while coasting the power has to be applied to match wheel/chain speed in order to avoid chain/rear hub smashing.
IMG_3809.jpg
 
Remus said:
Greetings all,

After 8 years and just shy of 10000km the 2 chainrings that came with my Lightning Rods 2014 Small Block kit are starting to show signs of server wear.

Existing drive train is 2 x 9

I'm considering transitioning to 1 x 9 drive train with a wide ratio cassette.

I would appreciate comments and suggestions from those with some experience with this modification.

Best Regards,
Remus
Click to expand...

Hi all,

Approached a few LBS's asking about 1x9 group sets to be told the average price for all the parts was about $500. So I decided to just replace the 2 original chainrings that came with the Small Block Chainring assembly. I could not locate the original shimano model anywhere so just went with 2 budget 9 speed Shimano chainrings. replaced my chain and rear cassette with shimano 9 speed parts as well.

Since then I've been getting regular chain drop at the front chainrings, chain drops between small chainring and frame for no apparent reason. Chain drops outward from large chainring as well.

I've tried adjusting the chainring to cassette alignment by adding washer's to the bolts securing the chainrings to the LR chainring assembly with no major improvement.

I've approached 2 LBS's about the problem and they were unfortunately unhelpful mostly due to the custom nature of the LR chainring assembly I think. I guess they prefer to work on stuff straight from the bike factory's. I also asked them to at least check the chain tension and condition, which they said was fine, no problem with the chain at all.

I'm considering removing the front derailleur and converting the LR chainring assembly to a single chainring and attaching a chain guide / catcher type gizmo.
Gonna order this from ebay https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/313694189132?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=705-154756-20017-0&ssspo=k6vdnpgdt8u&sssrc=2047675&ssuid=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY

And see how I go with it.

Thoughts and comments welcome :)

Peace all.
 
I can’t imagine why you’d need more than nine gears. I haven’t sold dual chainrings in many years. I’d recommend a Wolf Tooth ‘Drop Stop’ front chainring in a 1x9. Your chain drop issues have nothing to do with the mid drive. It’s 100% the interaction between the front chainring and chain. Most commonly it’s caused by a worn chainring that has turned the teeth into hooks.
Some LBS mechanics can be amazingly ignorant and cowardly. When you find a good one you have a treasure
 
LightningRods said:
I can’t imagine why you’d need more than nine gears. I haven’t sold dual chainrings in many years. I’d recommend a Wolf Tooth ‘Drop Stop’ front chainring in a 1x9. Your chain drop issues have nothing to do with the mid drive. It’s 100% the interaction between the front chainring and chain. Most commonly it’s caused by a worn chainring that has turned the teeth into hooks.
Some LBS mechanics can be amazingly ignorant and cowardly. When you find a good one you have a treasure
Click to expand...

100% agree and understand the issue is with the chain / chainrings / angle of chain ect. I've ordered a chain catcher gizmo for just under $20 aud and will give that a go.

The chainrings are brand new, and 9 speed compatible, however they sure look different from the ones that came with the kit 8 years ago. the new ones have all sorts of strange bits and pieces on the sides of the teeth and the teeth are angled to one side, I recall the original chainrings were symmetrical and tidy, no strange things on the sides of the teeth, more like a bmx chainring. I think the original chainrings were very well suited to preventing chain drop.

If the gizmo I've ordered does not resolve the issue, I'll purchase the recommended wolf tooth chainring.

Thanks for your thoughts and suggestions Mike.

P.S. Keep up the good work on developing your kit.
 
The best setup for chain retention these days seems to be a narrow wide chainring and a clutch type derailleur. If you want to go 1x9 check out a microshift rear cassette and derailleur. I am having great luck with their Advent system. Its 1x9 11-42 teeth and a clutch derailleur. It was insanely cheap. The whole setup with cassette derailleur and shifter is about $130. I run a USA Made narrow wide front chainring. They are about half the price of the wolf tooth products. This is the most reliable drivetrain I have heard of for less than shimano/sram money. If you do go with microshift get the steel large ring cassette not the aluminum one.

Sorry if I sound like a commercial for microshift. I'm pretty cheap and never buy myself new stuff. I just could not believe this stuff when I discovered it.
 
Thanks for the tip. Narrow/wide was my point. I’m just familiar with Wolfs Tooth and had good results with them.
The biggest advantage to a 1x system is that you can run a single speed front chainring. Chainrings designed for easy shifting have overall short teeth, sections of even shorter ramp teeth, and depending on the brand other bumps and gizmos to encourage the chain to jump sprockets.
I’m looking forward to the new generation of ebike IGHs coming out with 250 nm torque capacity. We’ll be able to run 510, 219 or 415 chain. We’ll wonder how we ever put up with derailleur systems.
 
I am also shocked that these high power drives work with cross chaining angles and conventional derailleurs. I cringe at the crooked chain angles on my human powered bikes. Then again I am a machinist so anything less than ideal that causes even normal wear makes me cringe.

I have always wanted to try a chainring mounted on studs where the chainring bolts normally go. I think it would be nice if the chainring could float axially to better follow the rear gear. This would probably be too heavy in the normal bike world but for us ebikers a few more ounces for reliability is an easy compromise.

I saw something cool the other day called an Ochain. Its an active crankset spider. It apparently disengages from the pedals when they are level and under no torque. This prevents crank angle and chain tension from negatively effecting the rear suspension by decoupling the chainring from the cranks until you pedal. Seems like some of this tech could be borrowed to help with the challenges of freewheeling cranks.

https://enduro-mtb.com/en/ochain-active-spider-review-2020/

Done derailing the thread. I have more ideas than free time or I'd try some of these things.

Here are those USAmade chainrings. $20 with free shipping. They are teflon hard coated too.
https://usamadeco.com/collections/sharktooth-94mm-4-bolt-bcd/products/copy-of-94-32t-sharktooth-narrow-wide-mountain-chainring

USA made website seems a little glitchy. May be worth an email to make sure they are still in business before ordering.
 
How do these motors compare to the cyclone? I am thinking about using one of the two in my Pitbike project to replace the rough running my1020. I wouldn't run the gearbox in either I don't think because I already have small wheels and a large rear sprocket.

Looking at the website it seems to have very similar specs to some of the cyclone offerings. With the $125 shipping the cyclone is about the same pricing as well.
 
The Cyclone 3kW and 6kW motors are internally nearly identical to my original ‘small block’ motors of 2012. They have magnets mounted on the exterior of the armature and run the phase and hall wires through the same sheath. The Cyclone motors are decent motors but only work well with square wave controllers at lower rpm. At high rpm the magnets come loose and trash the motor. If you want to run a cheap 48V battery and square wave controller it doesn’t matter which you use. If you want to use a sine wave controller and/or higher voltage my IPM motors are a much better choice. The main benefit of the Cyclone is it’s planetary gear box.
 
LightningRods said:
The Cyclone 3kW and 6kW motors are internally nearly identical to my original ‘small block’ motors of 2012. They have magnets mounted on the exterior of the armature and run the phase and hall wires through the same sheath. The Cyclone motors are decent motors but only work well with square wave controllers at lower rpm. At high rpm the magnets come loose and trash the motor. If you want to run a cheap 48V battery and square wave controller it doesn’t matter which you use. If you want to use a sine wave controller and/or higher voltage my IPM motors are a much better choice. The main benefit of the Cyclone is it’s planetary gear box.
Click to expand...

Thank you for the response. I am dipping my toe into Vesc controllers so FOC and more advanced control capabilities is important. Seems like a good fit.

Which motor size would your recommend for 4kW use in a Pitbike? I am tempted to go bigger than necessary for bulletproof reliability. I guess mainly what I am curious about is if your rating are conservative like the QS motors for example or if they are closer to real world limits. I have lots of hills around (mountains of Reno) and I want to register the Pitbike as a moped.
The XXL seems to be in a different class. Is it more comparable to motors like the QS138 or Golden Motor "5kW" etc?
 
My ratings are more realistic. I’m going to put an XXL in a ‘66 Honda Sport 90. It’s a great motor for a light motorcycle. It is different from my three smaller motors. It has a heftier axle, bigger bearings and is slightly larger in diameter. A customer powered a 1/2 scale car with it. It’s quick!
 
LightningRods said:
My ratings are more realistic. I’m going to put an XXL in a ‘66 Honda Sport 90. It’s a great motor for a light motorcycle. It is different from my three smaller motors. It has a heftier axle, bigger bearings and is slightly larger in diameter. A customer powered a 1/2 scale car with it. It’s quick!
Click to expand...

Oh damn, that would look cool, like a Puch Maxi.
 
Nominal. I’d like to try 30S with the IPM motors. A customer ran the old external magnet motor at 130V. It did fine until a magnet came loose. The IPMs won’t have that issue.
 
Only in their design. If you mean is each armature run on a balancing machine and fractions of a gram removed, no. They run smooth up to 10,000 rpm. Beyond that I can’t say.
 
All the talk about their top voltage made me wonder if they were individually balanced with putty.

10k is still very good though.
 
The important feature is the internal magnets. My original motors had external magnets that would come loose above 7,000 rpm. The SurRon motors have the same issue. The new IPM motors have the magnets buried in the rotor.
 
What are the best matching controllers for these IPM motors? Is there some experience with different brands and types of controllers already?
 
High Voltage Kits produces complete plug and play ASI controller kits for my motors. The ASI controllers are very advanced but are notoriously difficult to set up properly. Greg at HV has dyno tuned the ASIs to run perfectly and made a dedicated wire loom. (greg@highvoltagekits.com)

A new controller that I’m very excited about is the NextGen from PowerVelocity. This controller is also a very advanced sine wave, puts out 300 phase amps, and also runs at up to 130V. All of the ASI controllers are limited to 85V max so this is a big advantage. Vad at PV says that the NextGen are user tunable using the VESC Tool app. (www.powervelocity.com) I just received one of these new controllers and I’m very eager to try it out.
 
Small corrections:
1. NextGen uses Field Oriented Control, not Sinewave (usually used to denote Sinusoidal control). There is a big difference in performance and efficiency at higher RPMs. Sinusoidal commutation tends to lose torque as RPMs increase. This is well felt at above 20 mph or so in most cases as the throttle becomes less responsive. With FOC, the acceleration is very much agile at any RPMs.

2. 400A/200A phase/Batt supported for 140v versions and 600A/300A for 100v version (two versions are available with more coming).

3. It's VESC compatible, so yes, vesc tool can be used for setup but the easiest way is to use the app:
https://youtu.be/bFhLUlv6b88

Or a wireless capacitive watch display:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65g3jR9TUfM
A larger 4.3 inch touch display is also coming soon.

LightningRods said:
High Voltage Kits produces complete plug and play ASI controller kits for my motors. The ASI controllers are very advanced but are notoriously difficult to set up properly. Greg at HV has dyno tuned the ASIs to run perfectly and made a dedicated wire loom. (greg@highvoltagekits.com)

A new controller that I’m very excited about is the NextGen from PowerVelocity. This controller is also a very advanced sine wave, puts out 300 phase amps, and also runs at up to 130V. All of the ASI controllers are limited to 85V max so this is a big advantage. Vad at PV says that the NextGen are user tunable using the VESC Tool app. (www.powervelocity.com) I just received one of these new controllers and I’m very eager to try it out.
Click to expand...
 
Small corrections:
1. NextGen uses Field Oriented Control, not Sinewave (usually used to denote Sinusoidal control). There is a big difference in performance and efficiency at higher RPMs. Sinusoidal commutation tends to lose torque as RPMs increase. This is well felt at above 20 mph or so in most cases as the throttle becomes numb. With FOC, the acceleration is very much agile at any RPMs.

2. 400A/200A phase/Batt supported for 140v version and 600A/300A for 100v version (two versions are available with more coming).

3. It's VESC compatible, so yes, vesc tool can be used for setup but the easiest way is to use the app:
https://youtu.be/bFhLUlv6b88

Or a wireless capacitive watch display:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65g3jR9TUfM
A larger 4.3 inch touch display is also coming soon.

LightningRods said:
High Voltage Kits produces complete plug and play ASI controller kits for my motors. The ASI controllers are very advanced but are notoriously difficult to set up properly. Greg at HV has dyno tuned the ASIs to run perfectly and made a dedicated wire loom. (greg@highvoltagekits.com)

A new controller that I’m very excited about is the NextGen from PowerVelocity. This controller is also a very advanced sine wave, puts out 300 phase amps, and also runs at up to 130V. All of the ASI controllers are limited to 85V max so this is a big advantage. Vad at PV says that the NextGen are user tunable using the VESC Tool app. (www.powervelocity.com) I just received one of these new controllers and I’m very eager to try it out.
Click to expand...
 
Thanks for the corrections Vad. I’ve heard that FOC does great things with IPM motors. This should be a match made in Heaven.

I appreciate your excellent support and hands on expertise Vad.
 
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