Old unknown Ebike - Restoration/Upgrade

Joachim said:

The dropouts are not realy strong,only a single torque arm is stil not save i think best way is to beef up the dropouts and put 2 good torque arms on the bike.

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Yeah, I should have made it clearer, but I intend to use 2 torque arms.
I can't really beef up the existing dropouts though as I don't have any welding gear.

I think with 2X good quality torque arms it will be strong enough.

Cheers

Made some more progress on that old battery rebuild tonight.

I ran out of flux and although I've ordered more, I got impatient waiting for it to come so I used tip cleaner paste instead...results aren't quite as good, but it works.

This was my first ever battery build like this, so a few mistakes (corrected) and a ton of hot glue to hold everything together nicely was in order:






There's still plenty of room for more cells, or a tool kit to be added on top.

I'm still figuring out padding for the metal casing, and am waiting on some 2S JST connectors so I can make the balance leads 6S and 2S to work with my BC168 balance charger.
Hopefully the torque arms arrive soon and I might have this running by Christmas.

Cheers

Well so much for having this thing up and running by Christmas...(see my previous post)
I have now...finally got it to a running state.

I changed plans on the motor choice and decided to try and bring the old geared "250W" 8Fun motor back to life with some new gears:


I also upgraded the phase wires just outside the axle since I needed to lengthen them anyway:


I didn't take any photo's of it, but I tried something new I haven't seen anyone else do before. I added Ferro Fluid to the stator, and then added some oil to the hub shell. This gives the windings a direct thermal path to the shell (theoretically) since the Ferro Fluid is in contact with the metal magnet ring which is in turn in contact with the oil bath. I also added a good amount of thermal paste to the side cover before reattaching.
I only added about 3ml of Ferro Fluid, and about 10ml of oil, but it does seem to be doing it's job. After a very brief, but brisk ride around the block (less than 1km), and a few min resting, the motor shell was at 45C.


The update on the battery I 'recovered' in the last few posts is that it is pretty much just crap. Drawing just 20A (4A per cell), I only got to the end of my street before my LVC alarms went off at 3.3V per cell under load. :lol: I will keep the battery on the bike as a backup "get me home" pack for when/if I need it, but I can't see it being good for more than 10-20km at most.
For now I'm enjoying a 9AH 12S LiPo backpack battery I will probably more permanently attach to the rear rack at some point soon.



Anyway, there is still a good amount to do on this bike before I can switch over to using it as a daily commuter;
The gears are out of whack, and the front chain ring drops the chain in low gears. The front suspension does almost nothing. The rear tire is almost worn through...oh and the pedals feel like they've got rocks for bearings.



All in all though, I'd say this bike has some potential and life left in it yet. I just need to take it easy on the motor and keep reminding myself...it's no Stealth!

Cheers

So I took this bike for a decent ride of about 17km yesterday so sus out how it will stand up to daily commuting.

A few things happened, but nothing too bad.
The motor got quite hot, especially up hills when I wasn't pedalling. I live towards the top of a long incline and when I got home the motor was reaching 70C on the covers. :| This is ok, but about the limit I think I would want to reach on this motor.
Potentially contributing to the motor heat, the rear drum brake seems to be out of alignment. After a good hour trying to figure out what was wrong, I tried spinning up the wheel and repositioning the brake all over the place when I realised it's just the angle to the hub which matters. If it's not perfectly square with the hub it will rub badly and drag on the motor. I need to either bend the mount out, or find a longer screw with a bunch of washers to make it work.

When in 6th gear the chain is rubbing against the rear stay a fair bit. I plan to move the front chain ring in a bit so this might help, but I think if I just keep letting it rub it will wear a groove into the stay enough that it's no longer an issue. Hopefully it doesn't weaken the stay at all, but I doubt it will as it's not heavily brushing it.

The front chain ring is not straight...that leads to all sort's of obvious issues, but I plan to get a larger chain ring anyway, so not a huge deal for now.

My amazing success with finding and fitting the large bottom bracket was partially undone. I had used some cloth to take up some slack between the axle OD and the bearing ID as there was a 2mm difference. Well that didn't hold for obvious reasons and when it let go the cranks started flopping all over the place.
The axle OD is 15mm and the BB cup ID is 30mm. I've searched high and low and there is no bearing made with an ID of 15mm, OD of 30mm and width of 7-10mm.
So the next best solution, which I've already ordered the part for, is a 2mm thick shim with an ID of 15mm and OD of 17mm. I'll shove this in between the 17x30x7mm bearing I already have and the BB axle, epoxy it in place, and should be able to call it a day.

So yeah, this bikes back in a few pieces and not quite yet up to the task of taking over as my daily commuter, but I don't think it's too far off now.

Cheers

Just had another setback today with this bike.

I flipped it over to work on the bottom bracket last week, and since I'm waiting on the part still, I left the bike upside down on the seat/ handlebars all week.
I didn't notice till today that my handle bar power switch was being pushed in by the ground pressing up onto it from below when the bike's upside down.

Well, over the course of the week, it drained my LiPo.

So anyway, 2 cell groups were at 0V and my charger couldn't bring them back, so I removed them from those bricks and resoldered/ heatshrinked the bricks back together.
The remainder of the cells were between 1.3 and 1.8V. A gentle 1A charge brought them back up to ~2.8V before a normal charge from there and all seems good.

So situation is mostly salvaged and the irony of it is that now I'm running a 10S/~37V 10AH pack which is pretty much what the original stock battery on this bike would have used to have been. :lol:

Anyway, the BB situation still isn't resolved as I don't have the shim in hand, so the bikes still not able to do commute duties.

Cheers

I took this bike for a spin with my kids the other day after fixing it.
I ended up just putting the BB axle back in the bike without the shim as once it came I realised it was too big. The amount of play between the axle and ID of the bearing is less than 1mm and barely noticeable when riding. I've epoxied the bearing OD to the BB cup, so it shouldn't move anyway.



On the last (steep) hill before I got home after this ride, the motor died on me. Today I got around to opening it up and discovered it was just a hall sensor has popped loose. Probably because of the oil inside the motor.





Also, as you can see, the windings are pretty dark, but at least the gear's are still in good condition.
I think I will leave my power settings as is (20A @ 36V) as when not towing a trailer, it's not too hard on the motor. I think I will add a lot more oil before sealing it up this time around though. I don't think I had enough in there to absorb heat spikes last time.

Cheers

So a bit of an update on this bike.

I re-assembled the hub and put as much oil as I could in without using something to inject it after sealing which I don't have. It has leaked a bit since, but I think it's stopped now and I would guess it is at least 1/4 full of oil still. It seems to be doing it's job though as I've gotten the motor up to 75C on the covers a couple of times lately and it cools off pretty quick.

I also swapped the 36V 10S 10Ah Lipo over to a 12S 45V 15Ah setup after I freed it up from my Recumbent commuter recently.
The extra speed is welcome and after mounting a cheap wireless speedometer recently, I've seen 32-33kph at 100% WOT and 36-37kph using the 120% switch, which is more than enough for this rickety bike.

The bottom bracket cup fell out on me again the other day. I was going to epoxy it back in, but in the end I just went nuts at it with a hammer and jammed it in as best I could. The threads were already destroyed, so it really makes no difference. If it comes out again, I will just hammer it back in again, but with epoxy next time.

I've also been towing my kids in the trailer a fair bit as none of my other bikes have an easy place to attach it. At a decent speed though, the kids have a rough time going over bumps, pot holes, etc.
I could just slow down for the bumps, but that's no fun, so instead I added some thick padding to cushion their little tushins.




With padding this thick, they shouldn't feel anything short of a crash.

Cheers

Wow...very nice work CD. I have to admire your patience. There are few things in life more satisfying than bringing an old clunker back to life. Hat's off to you.

sonnetg said:

Wow...very nice work CD. I have to admire your patience. There are few things in life more satisfying than bringing an old clunker back to life. Hat's off to you.

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Thanks for the kind words.
My 'thing' with this bike is to only use the cheapest recycled parts I can unless absolutely necessary.
So far, the original motor is working well at 3 x it's original power with oil cooling, so no need to upgrade that.

My controller is an 18Fet Infineon I used to run on my Stealth Fighter before I replaced it with an Adaptto. The infineon has an intermittent hall sensor issue which cannot be fixed, but it doesn't seem to happen in colder weather or at low power anywhere near as often, so powering this bikes little geared hub is a perfect job for it.
Similarly, the throttle and power switches came over from my Stealth Fighter with the Infineon controller.

The batteries have seen a bunch of use elsewhere also. Initially they were in my Stealth Fighter:


Then, once they started hating the 5-6KW abuse they saw on the Fighter at around 150 cycles, most of them moved over to my Recumbent and managed another 200 cycles at 1-2KW:


And now with over 300 cycles they are good enough for use on this old clunker which draws a max of 750W:

Hopefully they last at least another 200 cycles before I'm forced to ditch them for good.

Apart from that, the speedo was moved over from another regular bike which I barely use. The grips were spares I bought ages ago, but never used, and the pedals were the originals that came on my recumbent.
The only new parts I've bought for the bike were the Bottom bracket axle/cups to repair those issues, and the crank set that came with a larger chain ring to allow pedalling at higher speeds.

So all up, this bike is doing pretty well for such minimal investment. I'm pretty happy with it.

The only thing that's not working so well at the moment is the rear drum brake. If I tighten it up so it works well when the lever is pulled, it starts rubbing serverly. At the moment it's only tensioned very loosely so that it doesn't rub, but the braking force is pathetic and pulling the lever all the way in barely slows me.
Part of the problem seems to be aligning it. If the bolt holding the cover arm on is not spaced out perfectly from the rear chain stay, it starts rubbing badly. I lost the original bolt, so I'm using a smaller diameter, longer allen head bolt currently with a bunch of nuts and washers to space it out.

Any suggestions for improving the rear drum brake performance?

Cheers

Cowardlyduck said:

So a bit of an update on this bike.

The bottom bracket cup fell out on me again the other day. I was going to epoxy it back in, but in the end I just went nuts at it with a hammer and jammed it in as best I could. The threads were already destroyed, so it really makes no difference. If it comes out again, I will just slap a bafang BBSHD unit in there because its easy, doesn't require BB threads and because it will be awesome.....

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Ahh I see I see. Fixed. :lol:

I can't help but think the use of the dodgy bolt is probably causing the drum brake issues.... not much to volunteer other than that, probably need some photos of it before commenting further.

p.s. I really, really like the recycling concept, its awesome.

Lurkin said:

Cowardlyduck said:

So a bit of an update on this bike.

The bottom bracket cup fell out on me again the other day. I was going to epoxy it back in, but in the end I just went nuts at it with a hammer and jammed it in as best I could. The threads were already destroyed, so it really makes no difference. If it comes out again, I will just slap a bafang BBSHD unit in there because its easy, doesn't require BB threads and because it will be awesome.....but that would be silly cause it would require a complete overhaul of the drive train and cost $$$ defeating the purpose of bringing this bike back to life, so I won't really do that unless absolutely necessary

Click to expand...

Ahh I see I see. Fixed. :lol:

I can't help but think the use of the dodgy bolt is probably causing the drum brake issues.... not much to volunteer other than that, probably need some photos of it before commenting further.

p.s. I really, really like the recycling concept, its awesome.

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Thanks Lurkin. Two can play at that game
In all seriousness though, I have to admit I've never touched a mid drive, so a little wary of them based purely on comparing them to the simplicity of hubs on paper. I may well give it a go if it would save the BB and save this bike from . Would a BBSHD axle stretch to the crazy width of this BB shell though?

I'll try and get a shot of the dodgy bolt/ drum brake at some stage, but I guess apart from the dodgy bolt, I was wondering if there's any tips/tricks to drum brakes in general. I've never dealt with one before, and kind fumbled my way through putting it all back together to make it work when reassembling the hub.

Cheers

Nice job! I like your trailer - I got one 5 years ago for luggage not kids but it's put up and held together by interconnecting bars- I don't think it's as good as a kiddie carrier would have been- even the base isn't solid . They are a lot cheaper on ebay now too.
The problem I have is that the wheel spindle isn't long enough to fit the towing bracket properly- the wheel nut threads don't fully engage with the spindle. My bike is front wheel drive so it's just a standard rear wheel so I'll eventually start looking for a new wheel with a longer spindle- it'll probably be cheaper than just a spindle too, but I'll look at spindles too. But maybe the lower prices on ebay will mean that a new better built trailer will be the best option- Nothing is ever simple.

Gen 1 BBS units - No. Gen 2 BBS units - BBS02 and BBSHD supposedly go from 68mm to 120mm. Its likely theres a standard bike size (68mm- 73mm) and a fat bike size (100 - 120mm), the later of which should work. This is still being ironed out currently.

But it would defeat the cheap bike/recycle/ not spend $$ on this one theme, I was really only joking :lol: what have I done!!

Is there any bike co-op or community style places you can go and recut the BB threads? I recently did this with the Q76R threads. It cost a total of.... zero. 8) No more faffing about with dodgy BBs or bike shop 'experts', they are really become a time consuming pita.

I never really had problems with drums, I think I had a bmx hub with one back in the day - ultra reliable, never actually had any problems?

alsmith said:

Nice job! I like your trailer

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Thanks!
In the spirit of this build, the trailer was a freebie hand me down from some friends.
The only issue I have with it is the mounting hitch clamp thingy. The clamp doesn't hold very tight cause the bolt runs out of threads too soon, and the clamp rotates down during use. This isn't a problem as it doesn't let go, but I would prefer if it were tighter TBH. I've searched and it seems this type of clamp isn't used any-more as it's not a great design.
The problem is, the replacement design relies on a rear wheel axle mounted hanger, similar to a rear derailleur hanger, but upside-down. I can't use one of those for several reasons being; the axle on that side is nearly stripped, and the amount of axle available for threading a nut onto is very minimal...the reason why it's nearly stripped.
I've searched and did manage to find a matching replacement clamp for a reasonable price, but they want over $60 for postage to Australia.
I might just get a new bolt with more threads and see how that goes first.

Lurkin said:

Gen 1 BBS units - No. Gen 2 BBS units - BBS02 and BBSHD supposedly go from 68mm to 120mm. Its likely theres a standard bike size (68mm- 73mm) and a fat bike size (100 - 120mm), the later of which should work. This is still being ironed out currently.

But it would defeat the cheap bike/recycle/ not spend $$ on this one theme, I was really only joking :lol: what have I done!!

Is there any bike co-op or community style places you can go and recut the BB threads? I recently did this with the Q76R threads. It cost a total of.... zero. 8) No more faffing about with dodgy BBs or bike shop 'experts', they are really become a time consuming pita.

I never really had problems with drums, I think I had a bmx hub with one back in the day - ultra reliable, never actually had any problems?

Click to expand...

120mm might just fit...I would make sure before buying if it came to that.

Re-threading the BB isn't really high on the priority list. If I can make it work with a hammer and/or epoxy I'm fine with that.

Here's some shots of my dodgy bolt setup for the rear drum brake:



I realise it looks like a mess of washers and bolts, and it kind of is, but I settled on this after stuffing around for ages trying to get it to work without rubbing and did not want to bother changing it now that it 'works'. In order from the inside of the photo above it's;
2 x Black Nylon washers
1 x Spring washer
1 x Nut that's too big for the threads
1 x Nylock nut that fits the threads

It also occurred to me that some oil from inside the hub could have leaked into the drum. I'll spray some degreaser or brake cleaner in there at some stage to see if it helps things at all.

Cheers

Cowardlyduck said:

The only thing that's not working so well at the moment is the rear drum brake. If I tighten it up so it works well when the lever is pulled, it starts rubbing serverly. At the moment it's only tensioned very loosely so that it doesn't rub, but the braking force is pathetic and pulling the lever all the way in barely slows me.
<snip>
Any suggestions for improving the rear drum brake performance?

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If the lever isn't the one that came with that drum, it might be the wrong kind, and be unable to provide the leverage needed. See the pages on brakes on the Sheldon Brown bike site for info on that.

Thanks AW. It's the original lever.
The only thing that's definitely changed is the bolt. Apart from that, I'm not 100% sure I re-assembled the hub motor exactly how it was prior. There were a bunch of different washers I didn't really keep track of and had to guess when putting them all back in. :? :|

Cheers

So it looks like I cooked the motor on this bike yesterday.

I attached 4 sinks to the motor the other month. It worked great and allowed me to run up to 750w reliably for the last few months, and heat retention was noticeable lower. The other day I removed the rear wheel to troubleshoot a hall issue. Once fixed I re-assembled using a different, shorter bolt for the rear brake. It did improve things and braking performance was slightly better. On the way home yesterday I heard it start rubbing a little, but didn't think too much of it, then when going up the last big hill before home, the motor stopped working, initially with a hall sensor type cut-out, then stopped all together.



Well I'm yet to verify, but I'm pretty sure it's completely cooked. After pedalling the last 1km home and letting it sit for 5min the covers were still showing 80C. Touching the heat-sinks nearly burned me so they were definitely trying they're hardest to dissipate heat, and I'm pretty sure the covers would have reached at least 90C when the motor died.
Ironically, I don't think it was heat from running the motor at 750w, but heat from it's rubbing, misaligned drum brake attached to the side of the hub motor.

Anyway, I've had a bit of a look around for a drop in replacement stator, but it looks like this model/size geared hub motor with a drum brake isn't made any more.
I'm thinking about getting a '1000W' Leaf or 9C motor and just using regen braking as the only rear brake, but at about $400 AUD it's hard to justify spending that much on this bike.

Anyone have any thoughts on what I should do?

Cheers

Open it up first--I would venture that like a Fusin geared hub I also heated to that point, you may have only either damaged the hall sensors, or desoldered parts on the hall PCB (the latter is what happened to mine).

Somewhere in the last pages of the DayGlo Avenger thread is the pics and info on that. Your interior pics up above look almost exactly like the Fusin core.

https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=15570&hilit=dayglo+avenger&start=300#p567908

Thanks AW. You give me hope.
It won't be the PCB though as this motor doesn't have one, but I hope it's the Halls like you say.

That being said I've experienced at least 10 hall failures over the years and the way this stopped makes me think that's not likely to be the case. Still fingers crossed.

Cheers

Cowardlyduck said:

...I'm thinking about getting a '1000W' Leaf or 9C motor and just using regen braking as the only rear brake, but at about $400 AUD it's hard to justify spending that much on this bike.

Anyone have any thoughts on what I should do?

Cheers

Click to expand...

I've had a 1500w 5t Leaf sitting on my shelf for some time... likely to go unused....

So I finally got around to opening up my motor to see what went wrong.

Turns out my suspicions were correct and this motor is toast:



A lot of the oil was black, so it must have gotten pretty hot inside there!

Not sure what I'll do yet exactly, but in the spirit of recycling stuff to keep this bike running, I'm thinking of putting my old HS4080 on it (again). This time I'll throw some decent torque arms on it to prevent it destroying the dropouts (again). :lol:
The great thing about using the old HS4080 is that it's been brought back to life so many times now. It's had it's axle replaced, hall sensors replaced (twice), a fan cooling job, and more recently, the threads on the (replaced) 1/2" axle were stripped so I had to cut them down to M12 to keep it usable.

I think it might mean only having regen braking on the rear however. Alternatively, does anyone know of any disc brakes or adapters that can mount to the single short mount on this bike:

Failing that, I might try using this mount anyway together with a hose clamp or something to secure the brake calipers. I have an old front Gator brake that might reach and work ok.

Cheers

I really admire the tenacity of this build and the I just use more or less what is on hand to fix it style. Why don't you use the BikeE anymore? This all looks like a more trouble than its worth but comes good in the end kind of affair.

I have a couple of those gears low power hubs that I intend to improve on and I like the heat sticker idea. Anyway inspirational to see you keep hacking away with this.

btw that kids buggy. I picked one up myself for my dog when it was a pup. She's too big now. I was inspired by Ypedal's one for his last dog. Didn't have a hitch for it so made one using car heater hose, a wooden turned truncated cone, a short piece of 32mm metal tube and lots of cable ties. Works surprisingly well.

Anyway keep up the posting, was a good read.

Thanks Whereswally.

This bike is just a backup more than anything, and I just want to keep it running as such, as I have needed to rely on it quite a few times and it always proves useful.

I do use the BikeE...almost daily. It's been far more reliable lately and I haven't done much with it which is why there's been fewer posts on my other thread. I can see why that might make it seem like I'm not using it much any more, but I am...lots. It's actually approaching 10000km ridden soon.

The kids trailers great and I use it at least once a month. The hitch for it has seen better days, but I bought a better bolt for it with threads all the way down that allows me to do the hitch it up much tighter.

Hopefully I'll get the HS4080 mounted to it soon and get the thing back in operation. Will post up some pics when I do.

Cheers

So I got the HS4080 mounted the other day. Took me most of the day and night, in-between taking care of other things I had to do.

I had to remove the controller as the on/off wires got pulled and I had to resolder them to fix. Since I no longer use the stock battery, I moved it to that location as it helps the motor cables reach easier and lowers the centre of gravity slightly.


After the last failure using this motor on this bike (where the drop-outs spread open and the axle spun) I thought I would be sensible and use proper torque arms, one on each side.


That seemed to work fine at the existing 750W limit I had programmed the controller with, but there was no way I would be leaving it at that power level when this thing is so much more capable. So I reprogrammed it to 50A battery, 150A phase for about 2.2Kw peak. Still way under what the controller, battery and motor are really capable of, but conservative enough for this bike frame...or so I thought!

I hit WOT right after reprogramming to test it out and the axle spun....AGAIN!!!



Needless to say, that pissed me right off. I'm yet to take them off, but it looks like the torque arms were just too weak and the axle tore right through the flats and made them round. I guess it's also a function of the axles only being 12mm. They used to be 1/2", and I think they needed to be made as 14mm as a minimum.

Anyway, the motor is not working any more. It's either a broken hall or phase wire, but not a shorted phase from the symptoms. Typical of a spun axle. So the good news is I should be able to save this motor...again...for the 5th or 6th time now.
The bad news is I obviously can't use that much power on this bike. I might be able to get away with 1.5Kw if I buy some new, stronger torque arms, and although that's probably what I'll do, I'm a little unsure if that's the best route to take with this bike. I kinda feel like just giving up on it for a while now.
Here's to hoping I find the motivation to get this thing running again soon.

Cheers

Hey wow, been a while.

I burnt out the original geared motor from this bike back in September 2016.
I then tried to get it running again with some way oversized spare HS35 and HS40xx motor's I had, but that just nearly destroyed the dropouts and was never going to work.

So very slowly over the last year or so I bought a cheap '350W' geared MXUS motor, unlaced the original hub from it's rim, and re-laced it to the new motor.
The new motor doesn't have a drum brake like the old, so I bought a bolt on rear brake mount and modified it to work with a 203mm disc.

I'm still using the 18Fet controller I was using before which has intermittent hall sensor issues, but this hardly happens at low power. I have no display connected to it, so just keeping an eye on battery state by other means.

I've reused the original battery case and put about 6AH 12S LiPo in it. It's not much, but it fits nicely and this bike won't see much use moving forward. It's more of a backup option for getting to work or cruising around town and I just hate leaving things non-functional so just wanted to get it running again.



Hopefully I don't have to spend any more time on this thing to keep it running. It's already taken way more time than it's really worth, but as I said above, I hate waste and like to keep even the crappy things I own like this functional.

Cheers