yescomusa.com 48V 1000W rear motor kit

Ordered the kit 30th of June from their ebay store. UPS picked it up on the 1st and delivered it 10 days later. I spent good 3 hours changing the tire, setting up the wires and and adjusting my breaks to fit the new wheel. All said and done, shortly after midnight I was ready and had to take it for a ride . Just did 5 mins in the parking lot and all seemed good. Freewheeling wasn't as good as I thought (felt like the breaks are slightly touching the frame all the time, but they weren't), but good enough. Acceleration was awesome. I was pleasantly surprised. Overall I was ready to go on a long ride, if only it wasn't past midnight .

Today I decided to tune the shifters a little better, as not all gears were working smoothly. Also was going to do some better wire management and work on mounting the controller and the 12S LiPo I have (5A). As I was doing that, all of a sudden, the freewheel started to make strange clicking noises. I looked at it closer and noticed that it is traveling side to side on the shaft (towards and away from the motor). So started disassembling the back wheel to see what's going on, and the moment I took the chain off, all small BBs fell on the ground and the freewheel fell apart.
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I stopped all work there and emailed yescomusa. Will wait for their response. I hope they can just send me another freewheel, and not ask me to ship the entire 33lb package back, but we'll see. Problems happen and I understand that, so at this point I'm not mad. It all depends on how they handle the situation, so stay tuned.

BTW great forum!

I tried to return a 36 v rear kit to them recently 'cause the rim was way out of 'round and the spokes were bent. They didn't want it back instead asked for photos showing the condition. Upon receiving this from me they offered to refund $180 out of my $238 original purchase. Its either that or spend the $35 to send it back, wait the 10 days etc etc.

So its half a dozen of one and 6 of the other. So I took the refund. They still made their profit.

Thats it for me-no more e-bay kits from vendors who don't know the first thing about what they are selling. I ordered a kit from E-Bike.

Scoop up the bearings and put it back together. Need to take the base of the freewheel off the hub first though. That requires an FR1 tool with a 14mm hole normally, but you can probably get it off without one now. Here's good start point. Good luck. Might be quicker and easier to just order a new one. 5 spd freewheels are a dime a dozen.
http://sheldonbrown.com/freewheels.html

Kent, sorry to hear that you had a problem as well. At least mine entails changing the freewheel. So you ended up with a working hub motor with controller for $60, if you're DIY inclined you are probably pretty happy . I can understand the frustration though.

wesnewell, I will probably put the freewheel from my original back tire. It is about 1/4" wider so I hope I can still fit everything. If not, I'll order a new 5 speed one.

When I installed my 7 spd freewheel I just moved 1 or 2 of the big flat washers to the inside of the dropout on that side and it worked fine. If need be, I could send you the one that came with my kit that I didn't use.

Ok, got my FR-1 tool last night. As you said, it was only 10mm so had to drill it to a bit over 14mm. After that it was the usual removal of the wire connector, remove the washers and bolts, slide in the fr1 tool, remove what's left of the freewheel, place new freewheel, 2 washers and put back the connector on the wire. All in all another hour later I had everything setup. Took it for a ride last night and it was good. Going to work with it today and we'll see how things go.

So overall it is a good kit. I used the included bag and back mount to put my batteries and controller in. I do, however, want to make a nice big single connector for easy disconnecting and connecting of the entire system. Also need to wire up something like a monitor for the battery voltage to make sure I don't discharge them too much.

Thanks wesnewell for the help. Your thread helped me buy this kit. I also want to enable CC and regen from the controller, but have to reread your thread for that to see how it is done.

Best,
G.

Well today was great. Motor performed as expected. I didn't actually try to get to max speed, but the max on my cateye was ~45km/h (~28mph) using 12S 5A 25C LiPo. I'm fairly happy with that.

One strange thing happened though. Around 5km in on the fully charged batteries, I noticed that the motor lost a lot of power and one of my battery monitors' alarm started beeping. I had set it to 2.7V. When I checked the screen, it showed one cell at 2.66V and the rest at 3.9V. This was very strange, but I immediately stopped the bike and went home. When I connected the battery to the 6S iCharger to start balancing out, after the charge started I saw 2 cells at 3.78V and the rest at ~3.9V. I thought I'd taken the wrong battery, so plugged the other one and got the same stats. So in the time it took me to get the bike up the stairs and disconnect the batteries, that one cell had recovered from 2.66V to almost 3.8V. I'm not sure if it is because I was playing with the throttle a lot and caused a lot of spikes in current, or because the cell is bad but thought I'd share it. I have the batteries on the charger now in balancing mode to get them to full charge and tomorrow will take a long ride to check the range.

Has anyone done a DIY cell level monitor? A simple arduno style (or your favorite micro) controller with a 16 channel analog multiplexers (CD4067B?) should be able to monitor a hole bunch of cells in one single device and be quite affordable.

Anyway, I give the kit top marks so far. If I can enable the cruise control and battery regen it will be perfect. For the price, probably can't be beaten.

I would be keeping a close eye on that cell......2.7v sounds too low for LVC anyway......I am not discharging mine below 3.5v (except by accident, lol)

Kent said:

Thats it for me-no more e-bay kits from vendors who don't know the first thing about what they are selling. I ordered a kit from E-Bike.

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Sure, they don't know the product, they're not ebike specialists...you knew that when you ordered it. I'm not sure why you're complaining, I think that was excellent service. If that happened to me I would be over the moon! I have heard of way worse service from other supposedly reputable vendors.....

jonathanm said:

I would be keeping a close eye on that cell......2.7v sounds too low for LVC anyway......I am not discharging mine below 3.5v (except by accident, lol)

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I agree. 2.7V is too low of an lvc for an ebike. I would think 3.0v would be as low as you should go, and I don't think I'd go below 3.3v per cell to be on the safe side. At rest, I wouldn't go below 3.65V. And that's right on the edge of of the cliff.

Actually I take that back, it is set on 3.0V, not 2.7, just checked . And now I'm setting it to 3.3V. I really want to be able to do about 10 miles out of that 5A pack, but it looks like I'll have to get another pair of 6S bricks to be on the safe side.

Once more, thanks for the help.

I can get 10 miles out of 5ah with plenty of pedalling, and not hammering the throttle, but it's a close thing, and my motor is the 500w....I've ordered more lipo...

Range has a lot to do with how fast you go, terrain, and how much you pedal. I could get about 10miles without pedaling out of my 5ah 14s pack riding on level terrain and keeping the speed to about 15mph with my 500W kit. When I ride for exercise, which is most of the time, I could get upwards of 40 miles at 10mph just using the motor to maintain speed going up very slight (almost level) grades. With the 1000W motor at 5ah 24s (100V) I'm sure I can get at least 15 miles out of it at 20mph without pedaling. I've got 30 exercise miles on it now since the last charge and it's still at 96V. Can drop to 88V before it needs charging again.

Well just did my first long ride. Both batteries were fully charged (all cells 4.2V>@<4.0V) to find out that one of the batteries really is faulty. So here are the cells half way into the ride (didn't take photo when they were full):
View attachment 1

Then, after this ride:
Total Distance: 6.67 km (4.1 mi)
Total Time: 23:55
Moving Time: 19:02
Average Speed: 16.72 km/h (10.4 mi/h)
Average Moving Speed: 21.00 km/h (13.1 mi/h)
Max Speed: 44.45 km/h (27.6 mi/h) (this was downhill with no throttle. With trottle the max speed I was going was about 35km/h to not stress the batteries)
Min Elevation: 14 m (46 ft)
Max Elevation: 55 m (181 ft)
Elevation Gain: 77 m (252 ft)
Max Grade: 7 %
Min Grade: -7 %


(where I turned off the motor a little bit before the last downhill slope (~5km in) because I heard the alarm on the monitors at a traffic light (it must have been going for a while). The state of the batteries was this:



So I've contacted hobby king, hopefully they will send me another one.

Judging by the rest of the cells, my guess is that for the same trip (about 8.2 miles total) it will take the cells to about 3.8V, so if I pedal the same I should have no trouble getting 10 miles out of the 5A pack, which is nice. I'll have to see how far I get without pedaling, but I guess no ebike untill I get a replacement battery.

From what I've read, you will need to send it back to Hong Kong at your own expense, before they will consider a replacement. Many people just order a new one and be done with it.

I ordered LiPo from the US warehouse over a week ago and they still haven't shipped it yet, I ordered some other stuff from HK warehouse and they shipped it within 24 hours.

I always order 1 pack more then I need from Hobby King. Only once (out of 39 purchased packs) a dude cell in 4s 5a hard case pack. When you open the pack and remove those 2 cells, you will have 4s 5a pack and 2 can have fun overcharging until combustion dude cells!
Its just a pain to wait for replacement pack.

Edit. I do not know what controller you got, but I suspect you can go up to 15s lipo (under 63v, of the charger). Their kits looks like GM motors (you will se GM in serial number) with 15fet infineon controllers. For more info (If you need it) open the controller and post pictures of the inner life.

Looks like 2 bad cells in that one pack. What brand is it? I guess I've just been lucky. Of the 6 packs I ordered all were ok. I use 5ah 15C Zippy Flightmax from US warehouse.

parabellum said:

Edit. I do not know what controller you got, but I suspect you can go up to 15s lipo (under 63v, of the charger). Their kits looks like GM motors (you will se GM in serial number) with 15fet infineon controllers. For more info (If you need it) open the controller and post pictures of the inner life.

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wesnewell has the same controller....(i have the 500w) 63v caps. Wes and I both run 14s.

jonathanm said:

wesnewell has the same controller....(i have the 500w) 63v caps. Wes and I both run 14s.

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I sold the bike with the 500W a few hours ago. Since going to 24s and the 1000W motor, I didn't ride it anymore. I've still got the 48V controller that came with the 1000W motor for a spare.

oh, did you! how much did you sell it for, out of interest? did you sell it locally? without batteries or charger? I was wondering about doing that when I finish my next build....hard to quantify the value of these things used.....

I stuck 4 sla batteries back on it and sold it for $250. He had the same bike, so I just traded that part even. I figure I only lost about $25-$50. It was a local 23 year old guy that does nothing but rides bikes. He may end up just mowing my lawn to pay for it. He was broke at the time so I told him he could pay me $50 a week.

ha! good stuff....everyone's a winner

@wesnewell, the batteries are ZIPPY Flightmax 5000mAh 6S1P 25C (Z50006S-25) from the US warehouse. Any reason you got 15C over 25C (price difference is < $3)? Looks like I"ll just order 3 more. Mine were shipped the next day after I ordered.

@parabellum, I've never blown a lipo, might be fun . However I think I'll get rid of them. I think I'lll stick with 12S now. The charger I got is for up to 6S so going over that will just mean I'll have to buy even more stuff. But I'll keep it in mind when I get the urge to fiddle with the setup .

I think I'll also be moding the controller to add a switch on it because I don't like how every time I plugin the IEC I hear a spark, plus it will make storage easier.

Can anyone recommend a big connector that I can use to make the entire bag of batteries + controller a single plug/unplug?

I got 15C because they were the cheapest mostly and still provided more than double the max amperage I needed. They may be a little lighter too, but that wasn't really a factor. I look at them as disposables and probably obsolete in a few years anyway. Under normal use I probably don't go over 5C discharge rate anyway.

Just got my package with 3 new ZIPPY and one of them has a 0.33V cell . Do I have the worst luck or what?

Now the question is, can I get one of the 4 good cells I have in that first bad battery and replace the dead cell in the new battery to have a proper 6S ?

Ok, I should probably not touch anything this week... iCharger 106B+ decided to release the smoke of happiness today. I plugged in as usual, and when I turned on the PSU, it went to current limit immediately @ 5A. I killed the PSU but it was too late. The air in the room was already carrying the magic smell. Given that I now had 2 RMAs out of my total of 3 orders from HK, I felt like I'll just open it and see what happened. U8 is gone and everything around it is brown. Unfortunately the package was all ripped open so I have no clue what IC that is. If anyone has the same charger and doesn't mind opening it, can you send me a close up of the bottom of the PCB? Maybe I can just replace the components there and hope for the best. Meanwhile I'm shopping for a new charger.

Did I mention that I had a flat tire on the motor wheel?