kiltedcelt
100 W
So my 16T Mac motor apparently splayed out the dropouts of the fork on my Surly Troll. I was de-electrifying the Troll and had intended to use the hub motor on a cargo bike I'm building. I found out when I went to mount a dyno hub wheel back in the fork that the dropouts were no longer parallel. I was using dual Grin torque arms and I'd thought I had the bolts snugged enough, but apparently there was just enough play for the axle to start rotating slightly, thus splaying dropouts. I'd intended to put this motor in a 24" fork on the front of a longjohn-style cargo bike I'm building. The 24" fork I'll be using is actually a trials bike fork. Originally I thought this would be strong enough for this motor but now I'm having second thoughts. Maybe I should rig this motor up as a mid-drive, which will probably be a colossal pain in the butt, or maybe just sell the motor, custom battery case, and V3 Cycle Analyst and instead use those proceeds to buy a Bafang mid-drive. As it is, I had to buy a replacement fork to get my Troll back on the road. This Mac motor seems to have so much torque I'm kind of gun-shy now of putting it on the front of another bike as an actual front hub motor. Ad hoc mid-drive might be a better option. Also, when I first bought this it was paired with a 36v battery, but now I run with a 52v, which seems to allow it to develop a lot more peak power. I used to get about 900w max out of the motor (25 amp controller), with that 36v. Now it can push out more than 1200w. Any thoughts? Has anyone tried running a Mac as a mid-drive? I've seen some machined bracket kits but they're super pricey so I'd likely be trying to machine/weld up something of my own if I went that route.