Super73 Z1 - Grintech Baserunner Build/Mod

greggerz

10 mW
Joined
Mar 30, 2022
Messages
21
I bought an used Super73 Z1 about a year ago ($700 - great deal). It was clear immediately that the 36V system was not going to cut it - not enough power, and not nearly enough range. Thankfully, Rick Cordero (RunPlayBack) put together a phenomenal ‘how to’ video on upgrading the Z1 to 48V system (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6SQyMFBmyc). So, within a few weeks, I gutted my Z1, installed the KT Controller/Display, and a 48V 15Ah battery from Brick Lithium. I also ended up adding a parallel EM3EV battery for more range. I rode that setup all last year, with mostly no issues. However, on hard rides and hot days, the KT controller would cut out from overheating. The KT controller was mounted inside the battery tray, with very little (if any) air cooling, so that's most likely the reason why.

Fast forward to this year, I decided to make some upgrades to the bike; to hopefully address the overheat/cutout issues, and just have a higher performing bike. Since Grintech’s Phaserunners are out of stock (for who knows how long), I opted to go with the Grintech Baserunner. I have not seen any Super73 / Baserunner build threads yet (here or elsewhere), so I figured I’d take ya’ll along for the ride (and probably crowd source some help where needed)….

First off - a pic of the bike. Basic black Z1 with the turquoise seat.
IMG_8260.jpg

I removed the seat and battery tray from the bike, as well as the KT controller and display. Below is the battery tray, completely gutted, with the exception of the battery.
Battery Tray.jpg

As a means of theft prevention, I designed and printed an AirTag holder. Simple design that mounts with 2 rivets.
Airtag Components.jpg

The AirTag holder mounted inside the battery tray.
Airtag Installed.jpg

After the AirTag was installed, I drilled and installed (with rivets) a few wiring standoffs. These will provide wire retention later in the build.
Battery Tray Wire Standoffs.jpg

Since the previous controller was over heating (most likely due to lack of cooling), I decided to design and print a custom vent (hood scoop).
Printed Vent 1.jpg

On the underside of the hood scoop, I glued a piece of window screen. My intent was to try and prevent larger debris inadvertently getting into the battery tray. Also, I added double sided tape around the periphery, to help with attachment, but also act like a gasket. Overall, I’m pretty happy with how it turned out, but won’t know how effective it is until I get the bike up and running.
Double Side Tape.jpg

To install the hood scoop, I had to drill 8 holes in the battery tray. The hood scoop was attached with ( qty 8 ) M3 fasteners, washers, and nylon lock nuts.
Printed Vent Installed Outside View.jpg

View of the inside of the battery tray with the hood scoop installed.
Printed Vent Installed Inside View.jpg
 
Onto the electronics....

The baserunner and cycle analyst straight out of the box. Baserunner looks like a cassette tape with wires....
IMG_8359.jpg

Since I’m attempting to use the stock Z1 motor, I have to splice together two different motor cables. The baserunner uses L1019 connectors and the Z1 uses L915A. The L915A cable was cut off the stock S73 controller.
IMG_8357.jpg

There is a direct 1:1 match for all the wires, with the exception of the grey wire on the L1019 cable. This grey cable is for motor temp. The Z1 motor doesn’t have a motor temp sensor (that I’m aware of anyway), so I simply capped it and left it unconnected.
IMG_8358.jpg

After hours (no joke) of soldering and heat shrinking these wires together, the resulting adapter cable is done.
IMG_8360.jpg

On the baserunner, the power wires were quite short, so I had to add some extension wire in order to connect to both batteries.
IMG_8362.jpg
 
Grin Tech does offer a few mounting options for the baserunner, but I wasn’t a fan of their standalone bracket, so I grabbed some 0.125” thick aluminum plate and made my own. Its simple, and the attachment holes align perfectly with some existing holes in the S73 battery tray.
Baserunner w Mount Bracket.jpg

The mounting bracket attaches to the baserunner with (qty 4) M3x0.5 fasteners. I used 10mm M3 screws, washers, and lock washers to make sure the fasteners don’t back themselves out.
Baserunner attached to mounting bracket.jpg

To attach the baserunner/bracket assembly to the battery tray, I used 6-32 fasteners, and aluminum spacers to lift the bracket off the surface of the battery tray, slightly. The bracket needed to be offset in order to clear the fasteners/nuts that attached the hood scoop.
Mounted Baserunner and Install hardware.jpg

Here is the baserunner/bracket installed in the battery tray. I actually had to use a couple extra washers in addition to the spacers, in order to gain enough clearance to the hood scoop attachment nuts. I miscalculated the gap when I ordered the spacers. Spacers are 0.125” thick…I ended up needing almost twice that.
Mounted Baserunner Installed.jpg

Here’s a shot with all the electronics hooked up, and wires secured to the standoffs. It’s read to be installed back on the bike, and start the controller calibration process.
All installed.jpg

Heres another (close-up) shot of the wiring installed. Clean!
All installed 2.jpg
 
Ok - here’s where things start going awry for me….

The baserunner uses a program called Phaserunner Suite. I’m sure many of you are familiar with it (or similar programs). It requires input of a few key motor parameters in order to function properly with the motor. Fortunately, there is an ‘autotune’ function, which only requires the pole pairs to be known (exactly), in addition to a swag at the kV (rpm/V).

I couldn’t find any useful information on this Z1 motor, so I had to pull it off the bike and open it up…. Below is a top view of the coil/magnet side of the motor. From my count, there are 20 magnets in this motor, which is 20 ‘poles,’ and a pole pair would be simply dividing them in half.

20 poles = 10 pole pairs. Please, if I’ve got that wrong, let me know...
Z1 Motor Poles.jpg

When I enter 10 pole pairs into phaserunner suite, the autotune function fails. After further reading in the baserunner user manual, there is some additional guidance…

From the manual:
“The effective pole pairs is a count of how many electrical cycles corresponds to one mechanical revolution of the motor and should be set correctly. The Baserunner needs this information to correlate its electrical output frequency with the wheel speed. In a direct drive (DD) motor, it is the number of magnet pairs in the rotor, while in a geared motor you need to multiply the magnet pairs by its gear ratio.

So I flipped the motor over, and sure enough, I’ve got a gears. I’ve got the pole pairs, but now I need to figure out the gear ratio….
Z1 Motor Gears.jpg

I figured I’d need to take some measurements, use a CAD system to figure out the geometric unknowns, then use some fancy math to determine gear ratio.
Super73 Z1 Motor Gears.jpg

I got as far as the fancy math part, before I realized maybe I was over complicating this? All I really need to do was spin the axle (the inner most gear) 360 degrees, then count the revolutions of the outer ring gear. For every revolution of the axle, the outer ring spun 6 times. So my gear ratio appears to be 6:1.

With my pole pairs count at 10, and my gear ratio at 6:1, it looks like the number I should be punching into phaserunner suite is 60.

Any phaserunner suite guru’s out there, please chime in and let me know if this thought process makes sense, or if I'm even following the manual properly…

I'll try and re-run the autotune procedure tomorrow and post results. I'm hopeful.....
 
To run the Phaserunner suite autotune procedure, the instruction manual says you need two parameters -
1) The kV (rpm/V) - This just needs to be close, and per grintech, most motors are between 7-12 rpm/V.
2) The pole pairs - This needs to be exact. And, per my previous post, I’ve determined it to be 60.

Since I do not know the kV, I ran auto tune at 7 (bottom of the range) to start. It didn’t work, so I bumped it up to 8, which also didnt work…all the way up to 11. Every single time it failed. See videos below for trial at each kV value.

kV = 7 rpm/V - https://youtu.be/XHNXNMAbQps
kV = 8 rpm/V - https://youtu.be/aR9ndwz8D1k
kV = 9 rpm/V - https://youtu.be/vWfsJmAuuRw
kV = 10 rpm/V - https://youtu.be/RRzISv6gTbk
kV = 11 rpm/V - https://youtu.be/WQy8LGCCYo0

Even though all these attempts were fails, one silver lining is the resultant Rs and Ls values were pretty consistent.

kV = 7 Kv = 8 Kv = 9 Kv = 10 Kv = 11
PP = 60 PP = 60 PP = 60 PP = 60 PP = 60
Rs = 29 Rs = 29 Rs = 29 Rs = 29 Rs = 29
Ls = 46 Ls = 46 Ls = 45 Ls = 44 Ls = 43

After fiddling around and attempting more autotune runs at various kV numbers, I finally got it to run properly. It autotuned at 9.52 rpm/V. See resulting parameters below.

kV = 9.52 rpm/V
PP = 60
Rs = 29.0 mOhms
Ls = 43.0 uH
 
So with the autotune success (kind of), I’ve input the rest of the motor, battery, and vehicle parameters as best as I understand. Pretty much everything on the right though - I have no clue (Feedback Bandwidth Tuning, Output Torque Ramping, Virtual Electronic Freewheeling, and Top Speed Overdrive).

z1 moto parameters.png

With these parameters loaded onto the Baserunner, the Bike is basically unrideable. When I engage the throttle, the motor just makes a high pitched squeal / screech noise, and it doesn't move. Its like there isn't enough torque to overcome my weight, or even the weight of the bike itself when I'm not sitting on it. So, I flipped the bike upside down, to see what happens completely unloaded. See video below.

https://youtu.be/Bbz8APPZOxo

Here is another video, full throttle, with plots of the Motor RPM, Battery Voltage, and Battery Current. Seems like a built-in dyno on the Phaserunner suite?

https://youtu.be/q1IKmOOPNo0

I really have no idea how to interpret these results, or what to do next. If anyone's got some feedback or suggestions, I would love to hear them!
 
I have a phaserunner/leaf-48V setup that work pretty good. I dont touch anything on the right side. Start by setting max phase current to about 90.
 
I spent some time this weekend messing around with various settings. Bumping up the current regulator bandwidth slightly, from 0 to 100 rads, seemed to get rid of the screeching sound and the faults/warnings, which is nice. I have no clue what a rad is though...

The settings below are currently loaded on the bike, which I can now ride (barely). The torque is almost non-existent. Any ideas on how to bump the torque up?

Working Z1 Parameters.png
 
E-HP said:
Your phase current should be set between 2 to 3 times the battery current.

I updated the Max Phase Current to 70A. It wouldn't let me go any higher than that. I also tried bumping up the Motor Max Power Limit to 2000W (up from 1000W prior). Both seemed to help - only slightly. Still gutless from stand still. The KT had instant torque - sometimes would almost wheelie out from under me....so, i'm surprised the baserunner is so sluggish...

See updated parameters below. Thoughts?

Update Z1 Parameters.png
 
greggerz said:
I updated the Max Phase Current to 70A. It wouldn't let me go any higher than that. I also tried bumping up the Motor Max Power Limit to 2000W (up from 1000W prior). Both seemed to help - only slightly. Still gutless from stand still. The KT had instant torque - sometimes would almost wheelie out from under me....so, i'm surprised the baserunner is so sluggish...

What was the rating for the KT controller. The phaserunner and baserunner are rated on phase amps, so the KT may have more current capability.

Also, you can lower the torque up ramp, and that might get you closer to what you want.
 
E-HP said:
greggerz said:
I updated the Max Phase Current to 70A. It wouldn't let me go any higher than that. I also tried bumping up the Motor Max Power Limit to 2000W (up from 1000W prior). Both seemed to help - only slightly. Still gutless from stand still. The KT had instant torque - sometimes would almost wheelie out from under me....so, i'm surprised the baserunner is so sluggish...

What was the rating for the KT controller. The phaserunner and baserunner are rated on phase amps, so the KT may have more current capability.

Also, you can lower the torque up ramp, and that might get you closer to what you want.

KT was rated at 25A max. So i think its substantially less capable.

I found a guy via Super73 Facebook group who's helping me fine tune some of the parameters. I'll report back any improvements.
 
greggerz said:
KT was rated at 25A max. So i think its substantially less capable.
I don't think that's necessarily a good assumption. The issue is probably more related to the ramping though. Set is to someting like 60 and see what happens.
 
Today's update -

I found some folks in various online forums (in addition to this one) who provided recommendations on parameter changes, in hopes of increasing torque on the bike. Unfortunately, before I got to try any of them, I got a fault code that I could not clear.

"Faults[7]: POST static gating test"

Fault - Post Static Gating Test.png

Per Grin's website -

"POST Static Gate Fault (1-8 Flash): This fault occurs if there is some stray electrical conductivity detected between one of the phase wires and either the V+ or Gnd bus. It will occur if there is a blown mosfet, if the motor wire is nicked at the axle and is shorting a phase lead to the motor casing, or if is water ingress inside the motor causing paths for electrical connectivity with the phase wires. If this message shows up, disconnect the Phaserunner from the motor, apply the throttle, and look at each of the phase open circuit voltages from the edit parameter menu. They should be around 0.5 Vnom. If you see a value of 0.00 or 1.00 Vnom, then it usually means there is a damaged mosfet. If there is a value more like 0.2 or 0.8 Vnom, then you can increase the open circuit test window from the default of 0.25 up to about 0.4 and then it will operate fine again."

I think I can safely rule out wiring issues. I was extremely careful with the wire splice; soldered and wrapped each individual wire. If it was purely a wiring problem, this likely would have shown up the second I plugged everything in?

Water ingress in the motor is ruled out. This bike hasn't ever been ridden in wet conditions, and has been sitting in the garage all winter. When I popped the motor open a few days ago, it was sealed and bone dry.

So - I followed the directions in the bold, italic, underlined portion of the paragraph above... and it appears I may have a damaged mosfet.

Open Circuit Voltage 1.png

Open Circuit Voltage 2.png

Voltage should be 0.5 for each phase. Blue and Green are reading 0.52V - good. Yellow is reading 0.01V - bad.

I'm starting to think this controller was faulty from the start - its been nothing but trouble so far. I'm going to reach out to Grin for support, and a local dealer to see if I can get some more experienced eyes on the issue. Stay tuned....
 
I'm doing a build with the baserunner myself, different motor.

I have some similar issues with the start, but not as bad as you. One thing i noticed is that you never added a proper heatsink to it. The part with the 4 holes that you mount it that is made from metal is the heat spreader for the mosfets.

When i picked mine up and spoke to the guys, they recommended i place a nice big heatsink and use some thermal paste. I have mine mounted to a large thick piece of metal (box designed for the controller). It has a large surface area and gets amazing cooling and still gets warm when i ride it hard.

20220609_132222.jpg
 
noctrin said:
I'm doing a build with the baserunner myself, different motor.

I have some similar issues with the start, but not as bad as you. One thing i noticed is that you never added a proper heatsink to it. The part with the 4 holes that you mount it that is made from metal is the heat spreader for the mosfets.

When i picked mine up and spoke to the guys, they recommended i place a nice big heatsink and use some thermal paste. I have mine mounted to a large thick piece of metal (box designed for the controller). It has a large surface area and gets amazing cooling and still gets warm when i ride it hard.

20220609_132222.jpg

Did you get your baserunner setup and your bike up and running? I've got updates on mine, I'll try to post today.
 
Update (sorry this took so long) - Per my last post, the baserunner was giving me a fault code, which ended up being a bad mosfet.

I spoke with Grin (via email) on the fault code, and they confirmed that it was a blown mosfet. They suspected the cause may have been my motor cable build quality.... Apparently this ends up being the root cause for blown mosfets a lot of the time. However, I was pretty religious about the build of that motor controller adapter cable, so I doubted that was the actual cause in my situation. I went through a lot of effort to ensure all the wires were soldered and sufficiently insulated and separated with shrink wrap (and even some electrical tape, out of paranoia that the wrap wasn't robust enough)...

Since I live in Seattle, I offered to bring the entire Bike up to Vancouver (BC) so they could inspect my work for themselves. If I screwed something up, I'd chalk it up to a learning experience, pay for a new controller, and be on my way. So, sometime back in Mid-may, I drove up there... One of their tech's disassembled the motor cable from my bike, and ran it through a continuity test, to see if any of the internal wires were touching, and sure enough, it came back clean. He actually praised my work, and apologized for insinuating I might have been at fault here; while simultaneously acknowledging that Grin has had a lot of quality issues with their mosfets recently, and that the most likely culprit in my instance, was a quality issue.

The tech provided me a replacement baserunner, and I was on my way. Below are the blow controller and the replacement.

IMG_8524.jpgBRL-1534.jpg
 
After I got the replacement baserunner controller, I installed it on the bike, plugged everything in, fired up the phaserunner suite, input the known parameters, and ran the autotune. This time around, it auto tuned perfectly on the first try (further proof the previous controller was junk from the start, and so troublesome).

After successful autotune, and setting up the other input parameters, I took the bike for a couple successful laps around the house. Once I had everything dialed in, needed to sort out the cable management - these cycle analysts are not well designed from a cable perspective, its just a nest of wires coming out the front side….

I designed and printed a little cable management bracket to mount on the front of the cycle analyst....

IMG_8807.jpg
IMG_8808.jpg

And then, designed and printed a cover to go over the nest of coiled cables....

IMG_8862.jpg
IMG_8864.jpg
 
After getting the bike setup, wires bundled and tied, and everything buttoned up (all back in mid-May), I was unable to take the bike out for a lengthy cruise / test run until this past weekend. The weather in Seattle has been garbage this spring, and finally summer struck (literally overnight), so I went for a 12-mile ride Friday evening.

Everything went pretty smooth, except power to the bike would cutoff intermittently. It seemed random - I couldn’t determine a pattern or a root cause. When the power would cut out, turning the system off then on again seemed to fix the problem. It was mostly annoying.

When I got home, I removed the down tube battery, and put it on the charger, and also charged the under seat battery.

Fast forward to Sunday morning, I was prepping for another long ride. When I tried to attach the down tube battery, the attachment plug had a wicked arc. Scared the living crap out of me. I quickly pulled the battery away immediately, then ripped the seat off the bike to check and make sure nothing was on fire. I disconnected the seat battery XT60 connector, visibly checked everything - nothing looked out of the ordinary, nothing else smelled of burning, so I figured maybe that down tube battery arc was just some freak occurrence? So I went to reconnect the seat battery XT60 to the controller, and sure enough, another huge arc! Totally melted the connector!

The picture below shows the destroyed male connector. One of the prongs is completely melted (red arrow)... yikes.

IMG_9684.jpg

I have no clue what could have caused this... (another faulty grin tech controller?) I voltage tested both batteries, and they clocked in around 54.1V each, so they appear to be unscathed. There doesn't seem to be any visible issues in the cabling. I did a continuity check on the controller power wires, and there appears to be a short circuit. Does that mean my controller is fried? Anyone experience anything like this? Thoughts?
 
nicobie said:
Glad you got everything sorted. It's great how Grin helped too.

BTW, excellent use of the 3D printer.

You might have missed my last post. The new controller might be fried. I don't really know what's wrong right now, but I cannot hook my batteries to it without torching XT60 connectors.

Grin's tech support has been down right awful. The only real assistance I've got is from random people in a super73 facebook group (all of whom have echoed Grin's terrible tech support, and banded together to help the larger community). Grin had no choice but to warranty the first controller, because it was clearly a quality control / mosfet issue on their end. I'm hoping some people chime in on this new controller's issue (or if it is even the controller).
 
Wow? I wonder what's going on? They always had such a good reputation for great service. It has been years since I've needed help from them, but when i did, they came through.

I wish i knew enough about those little controllers to be able to be of assistance.

If it was me, i think I'd send everything including a printed transcript of this thread, back to Grin. Write: ATTENTION JUSTIN and PERSONAL all over the package. Sometimes you have to go to the top in ordér to get any results.

Good luck...
 
Do you need a precharge circuit? Have you always gotten a spark when plugging battery to controller after charging? It appears you're got a driect short somewhere.

I'd keep the battery and controller seperated until positive you're solved the problem.

Bummer about not being able to ride.😔
 
nicobie said:
Wow? I wonder what's going on? They always had such a good reputation for great service. It has been years since I've needed help from them, but when i did, they came through.

I wish i knew enough about those little controllers to be able to be of assistance.

If it was me, i think I'd send everything including a printed transcript of this thread, back to Grin. Write: ATTENTION JUSTIN and PERSONAL all over the package. Sometimes you have to go to the top in ordér to get any results.

Good luck...

Per my conversation with their office staff when I was up there - they have been hit by supply chain issues, and don't have enough workers to do all the work currently on their plate. So its understandable, but I feel like they are their own worse enemy in choosing how to address tech issues - refusing to trouble shoot through phone call / facetime, and only work through emails - what an inefficient waste of time.

I sent them a large email outlining my current issue, so I'll report back any feedback they provide.
 
greggerz said:
noctrin said:
I'm doing a build with the baserunner myself, different motor.

I have some similar issues with the start, but not as bad as you. One thing i noticed is that you never added a proper heatsink to it. The part with the 4 holes that you mount it that is made from metal is the heat spreader for the mosfets.

When i picked mine up and spoke to the guys, they recommended i place a nice big heatsink and use some thermal paste. I have mine mounted to a large thick piece of metal (box designed for the controller). It has a large surface area and gets amazing cooling and still gets warm when i ride it hard.

20220609_132222.jpg

Did you get your baserunner setup and your bike up and running? I've got updates on mine, I'll try to post today.

I did, but ran into a problem -- their firmware cant handle the throttle being independent, took a long time to get a proper answer, i didnt use a CA but will probably switch to one just to get around this. The baserunner will work with a regular display that supports km5 protocol, but to say it's rough to get it setup is an understatement. The roadblock right now, if PAS 1 has a limit of say 200W, so will the throttle, which sucks. I'm gonna try a torque sensing BB to see if i can circumvent that but i doubt it..

I also got a few tips that i managed to extract from them --

1) as i said, heatsink is very important,t hat heatspreader wont be enough
2) the controller tries hallstart for like 1 seconds, if it doesnt spin, it will cut out. If you enabled fallback to sensoreless, it will do just that, so tune your sensorless regardless if u use hall or not.
 
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