9lives mid-drive

Getting to the pointy end now and can now ride it around with peddle power. Still waiting on the Revolt to arrive and rapidly running out of tasks so it better arrive soon or I may be temped to install the bight block I have.

Some images of battery build in progress 18s10P Samsung 25R's. Those stickers are insulators for the positive side of the battery. For those new to 18650 batteries the entire case is negative so it is very easy to short the positive. The insulators are a pain to stick on but are very cheap insurance when you a spot welding. Ribba, your spot welder is a great bit of kit!
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Son helping out as part of his winter project (He did some glueing and shrunk the heat shrink but too dangerous to do anything else on battery build)
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Almost done, just have to join the balance plug.
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Images of frame. In the first image you can just see the doublers inside the engine case for strength.
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Pictures don't quite capture how lean the frame looks first hand. Will have to take a photo of it next to the Flux for comparison.
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Surprising amount of hard work in design and build to get this chain to line up.
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Width of frame at widest point so little chance of knees hitting frame.
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The plans of mice and men... With the deadline for my sons winter project looming and the Revolt still not having turned up I had to go to plan b. The frame was always designed to accommodate the big block as a low power version and since I had a big block on the shelf in it went. It was painful to set the jigsaw to the frame but such is life and this is just the excuse I needed to build another if/when the Revolt turns up building on lessons learnt from this one (son has claimed).

Anyway, the bike is essentially finished with the exception of some chain covers and a guide. To be honest I had low expectations for the little big block so I installed an adaptto mini from my wifes bike and an old 20s2p lip pack to get the bike finished. Done about 15km on it today taking turns with my son and the frame handles very well. Light and on the tight tracks you really feel the balance of the bike compared to a heavy hub. The first couple of rides was really impressed with low end torque but it run out of puff at 40km which was too slow for me. Lifts the front end at will at low speed and accelerated hard but was missing that top end buz. Was just about resigned to this being the kids bike when I double checked the power settings and discovered the top speed was limited to 40km in boost. Changed to 70 km and now the beast has been released. Yes, everyone gets excited about their new bike but I cannot believe the power this little thing puts out. It's only peaking at 5.6kw on the display but in terms of performance its now far off my upgraded mxus 11kw+ phasor. Eats it for breakfast up hills at low speed and only loses out to top end acceleration. To my surprise the little adaptto is yet to see any heating issues and seems to be happy in the vented part of the frame. Only negative is the chain noise but most of this is coming from the crank but I hope some of this will be fixed with an pully.

Anyway, some photos.

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Beautiful work.
 
Yes, this is quite an awesome job.
cannot believe the power this little thing puts out. It's only peaking at 5.6kw on the display but in terms of performance its now far off my upgraded mxus 11kw+ phasor
We need more inrunners like this to choose from imo, and to get into water cooling for >7kw and >40mph top speeds. . . it's nice to hear confirmation of how capable these are right from stock though!!!

9lives, I don't have much experience with much more than my first build, so I don't know how hot is really normal. Please keep us posted on what this motor can do! Mine gets 'pretty hot' when I really beat it on the low rpms with 6kw geared for 40mph, but it cools right back down if you go run 30mph on the flat. GVW (gross vehicle weight) 230-240lbs w/ 20s2p.

Again, really awesome job with the complete build. . . . are you still as serious with an open design rv160 for the next one now? They do claim higher power, but for applications behind a prop, and they weigh about the same as the bht I believe. If that's the case, possibly water cooling a sealed bht (or similar) would be a better avenue? :wink: Video please?!?!
 
Hi all,

The bike has clocked up some k's with the Big Block and have been very happy with it. Only issue is that it lacks that top end punch and speed of my mxus powered phaser. So after some 16 weeks of waiting (sea freight to Australia) my Revolt 160 short finally turned up. Out of the box it screams quality compared to the cheap big block so I couldn't help myself.

Out with the Big Block noting I made the frame so I could use either motor.
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Mounting plate
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Ready to go with an adaptto max mounted in the fresh air.
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Now I had high expectations for the Revolt but tempered by the fact that the stator width is a lot less than the Big Block. To be honest first impressions where not good and I almost pulled it out then an there. I couldn't get more than 6KW out of it, no low down acceleration, kept cutting out and it reached 120 deg C in short order. I played with all the adaptto settings via usually manual tuning process with no joy so in desperation resorted to manually tuning the hall wires and phases. This involved ensuring the hall sequencing was linear on the adaptto (1,2,3,4,5,6) and the hall offset was zero after changing phases (120,240,0).

Initially not much of an improvement but after manually tuning the settings I have reached the point where it no longer overheats and will tolerate 9Kw. Outstanding issue is that it keeps cutting out under strong acceleration with 'Protect' briefly flashing on screen. Will run fine up to about 100 amps but any more and it cuts out. After some experimenting, I have reduced the cut outs by going from a 12 tooth front sprocket (60 great) to 11 tooth. Problem persists albeit reduced so I have ordered a 65 tooth rear to see how that goes.

Now impressions noting I don't think I have solved all issues yet. As it currently stands, the big block absolutely kills the Revolt for low speed acceleration noting I was running the big block on an adaptto mini (maxed amp and phase). Think bike that will mono versus rolling down hill acceleration. The revolt will still climb steep hills without any issues or overheating but it reminds me of and old two stroke motorbike in that down low it is underwhelming. Once going however, it out accelerates the big block at speed and goes at warp speed despite the Revolt supposably being a 35kv version (same as big block). Regen also works a treat with the Revolt with rear brake largely redundant. The Revolt also displaces a lot of air as it spins (like a fan on your leg) and cools down rapidly as long as it continues to spin so it has potential if I can eliminate the cutoff which always seems to happen just at the point it starts to show stints to impressive torque.

I can't find anything on what PROTECT means so I can only gather it relates to the motor stalling. So unless anyone else has ideas I'll work on the premise the KV is higher than ordered and that it wants a lower gearing. Big block run great on 12-60 (5:1) so will see how the 65 tooth (5.9:1) goes in terms of bottom end and if it eliminates the PROTECT cutoff.

Will keep the forum posted as there is not a lot of info on the Revolt running. Happy to hear any ideas on solving PROTECT cutoff if I am going wrong way.
 
With OVS disabled in the Adaptto settings, what sort of no-load speed are you getting? That should tell you if the motor KV is not what you were expecting.

The other thing that seems to make quite a big difference at higher phase amps is ensuring you don't have any coupling occurring between the hall sensors leads and the phase leads. Ensure that these don't run together in parallel/close proximity. Ideally replace with some shielded multi pair wire.

What are the rest of your adaptto settings? Phase amps?
 
Love your work 9lives. I'll have to come visit some time to check it out in person. :)

I had the same problem with PROTECT on my unlocked Mini-E. It was happening when I set my phase amps too high. I think it's protecting the FETs from over temps, or over maybe over voltage. The fact that it was still happening for me even after applying unlocked firmware might give a clue, but I'm not sure what.

I blew my Mini-E so have a spare screen now. Let me know if that's of any use to you.

Cheers
 
Lash, how goes your travel around Oz?

Dual chain works well but you have to contend with the cogging effort of the motor as it remains direct drive. Once your moving it is surprisingly easy for both the big block and revolt. Would love a freewheel which could accept a 35pitch chain but am yet to come across one.

Re the revolt issue not much progress. I tried another adaptto controller and same issue. I dropped Oleg at Adaptto a line and he suggested the revolts low induction was the cause. He offered to lower the protection triggering limit on the controller but this carries risk of blowing up controller so still pondering the issue. I have a lyen 18 fet that I may give a try as max amp to see if it works. Frustrating in that the revolt shows brief hints of its true potential before triggering protect mode but I guess if this was an easy hobby we would be doing something else.
 
Sweet build 9lives! Impressive indeed. Did you get a final weight with either the big block or the revolt fitted ?
How are the side covers held on ? Presumably they're not structural and are just held on with magnets or glue from the inside ?
Bummer about the controller and motor issues.
I haven't actually seen a revolt in person - I dont suppose you have a photo of it and the big block side by side ?
Do you pedal much ? Or are they they're more for legal cosmetics ?
 
Been a while so time for an update.

After having no end of issues trying to get the revolt to run properly with the adaptto I ended up switching to a lyen 18 fet I had laying around. It worked much better than the adaptto which kept suffering from protection interruptions but while top end speed was great the bottom end was disappointing. I experimented with various gearing but even geared low had the same issues and for some reason it kept throwing off the chain as the motor was not running smoothly. After a fair bit of riding I decided to put the big block back in with the same Lyen controller noting I had previously run it very successfully with an adaptto mini. End result was a top end of around low 50kmh (a little slow) but with low end that was almost uncontrollable. I spent hours trying to sort throttle response with a CAV3 but while the best I ended up with blew the doors off my phaser in a drag race (at least to about 30 kmh), throttle remained more like a switch which was interesting to ride at high power settings (my son refused to ride it at high power setting).

Anyway the bike has gotten a fair bit of use in the new configuation with most people choosing to run it on lower power settings to keep the front wheel on the ground and just cruse through the bush. Despite this everyone seems to like the narrow frame and low weight with it being more bike like than the phasor or FUTR Alpha. Was all going well until my motorbike riding brother in law visited and I jumped the bike into a creak bed going too fast and cracked the top shock mount. To be fair the drop was over a metre at speed and still managed to ride home with the assistance of a strategically placed stick (got to love gum trees).

I have commenced repairs on the bike but my hard drive on my CNC plasma cutter decided to pack it in so now have few things to do before its back on the track. Future plan is to fix the rear hub (I stripped the thread on the LHS drive freewheel so am currently limited to ghost peddling), get an adaptto midi to go with the big block and maybe a freewheel spocket on the motor for more stealth like riding. Ive also been following larsby's rewinding of the revolt 120 with significant interest as the revolt just looks so cool in the bike..

In belated response to Hyena's questions. the side panels are not load bearing and are just fake carbon covered bits of plastic that slide into the frame. To be honest they work surprisingly well. In terms of weight difference between big block and revolt I would guess that the big block is maybe 1KG heavier. Size wise they are almost the same (they fit interchangeably in the frame) with the biggest difference being the width of the windings. The revolt's winding area is much narrower than the big block due to the outrunner design.

Anyway here is a couple of picks of the bike having conquered the dithering heights of Mt Jerrabomberra.

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Interesting to hear your throttle woes. Did you try a different throttle to make sure it wasn't the hall itself being a bit digital ?
The old infineon style controllers were snappier with their throttle curve and there's only so much you can dull that down with the CA settings. On DD hubs running fairly high power I actually missed that extra wheel popping poke that you get from infineons after switching to the softer throttle curved adaptto, though it's certainly more noob friendly. Did you play with the block time ? Turning that down may help with this sort of low throttle sensitivity.

9lives said:
I jumped the bike into a creak bed going too fast and cracked the top shock mount. To be fair the drop was over a metre at speed and still managed to ride home with the assistance of a strategically placed stick (got to love gum trees).
haha bush mechanics 4TW!
I've used bits of branch as tyres levers before when getting caught out in the bush with none.

Pity the bike is off the road, I'll be down in Canberra in 2 weeks and would love to have checked it out. If you managed to get the shock mount fixed would it be rideable other than the pedal drive train ?
Making a beta with a similar drive is high on my wish list and I'd be keen to compare the noise and torque levels vs other options.
 
With Hyena in town there are no excuses for broken bikes.

Got some unscheduled repair time in today (son was sick so had to leave work early) so suspension should be sorted this weekend. Ended up moving the rear mounting position a bit to experiment with suspension geometry. Doubtful I will get to fixing the freewheel thread but when has human power ever stopped an ebike. You can still peddle it just doesn't contribute much to forward motion.

If your in town Sunday week and your keen let me know and we will tee up a ride. The bush is across the road from my place so no shortage of places for a ride just depends on time and what sort of ride you want. CD sounds keen for a ride as well.

Jason
 
Cool, I'll be in the CBD and have a pretty tight schedule but can duck out late in the afternoon if you guys aren't too far from town ?
I'll be there from lunch time on Friday until Tuesday afternoon.
Worst case if we can't align the planets for a bush ride we could always have a brief somewhat sensible ride around the lake or similar ?

It's become a ritual that I catch up with other ES guys every year when interstate for this conference but this time I can bring my own wheels :)
 
Hyena said:
Cool, I'll be in the CBD and have a pretty tight schedule but can duck out late in the afternoon if you guys aren't too far from town ?
I'll be there from lunch time on Friday until Tuesday afternoon.
Worst case if we can't align the planets for a bush ride we could always have a brief somewhat sensible ride around the lake or similar ?

It's become a ritual that I catch up with other ES guys every year when interstate for this conference but this time I can bring my own wheels :)

Sounds like an awesome plan so count me in.

Managed to knock this up in between looking after my son this afternoon so just have to weld to frame and done. Even managed to find some time to order some additional sprockets so I can try some more ratios. Was running 5:1 (12T,60T) but am keen to see if I can get some more top end without killing the bottom end or letting the expensive smoke escape.
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Cool. I've created a thread here so we don't spam 9lives thread any more

https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=87006
 
Hi 9lives,
Hows the bike working for you? What configuration are you running it now, and what (if any) changes would you make if you were to build it again.
 
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