Dave's 80:1 RC mid drive kit build log

klaus79856 said:

Visited the tangentmotors Webpage.
Can I still buy a drive kit from them ?

Sent a message to Dave but no reply.

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Nope, if you really want a drive like this you either look for used or go with the CYC X1.

Only thing close is a m1 bike . Guess 15k

Money to burn or make your own...
You pick good luck

I built a drive for myself. In two days I will by flying with my set-up to Japan. I designed it for steep mountain roads and speed up to 50 kph, (surface road speed limit on island of Shikoku) reliability and efficiency. I'm confident that I will cover 1000 miles in two weeks time. I will be visiting 88+ Buddhist temples. Once I'm back I will build something for more speed and power. No BS.

Fix my Tangent and it holds up the abuses over 2 weeks now. Made a new piece out of steel, and I also made a cover for the gearing. I have made this with a vacuumforming machine out of a clear sheet 3 mm Polycarbonate. This realy keeps the chain clean. And it is more safe. Can make a few more if there is somebody who like it.

a picture say's more. Bike is a Kona Entourage DL tangent drive is inside the triangel

Ecyclist said:

I built a drive for myself. In two days I will by flying with my set-up to Japan.

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How are you going to get that bike on the airplane?

PaulD said:

Ecyclist said:

I built a drive for myself. In two days I will by flying with my set-up to Japan.

Click to expand...

How are you going to get that bike on the airplane?

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Check in Ogio 9800. No extra charge. First class on Dreamliner. It's the only way to fly.

So they are letting you fly with lithium batteries in a bike? I realise you can take bikes as checked luggage, but an ebike? didn't think so. Some more information would be awesome I think there are plenty of people who want to travel with their ebikes.

Andy

Animalector said:

So they are letting you fly with lithium batteries in a bike? I realise you can take bikes as checked luggage, but an ebike? didn't think so. Some more information would be awesome I think there are plenty of people who want to travel with their ebikes.

Andy

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The regulations are not very clear. Theoretically there is no limit on how many 18650 cells you can take on board, but I can bet my ass that I couldn't get through TSA. I could ship them by sea or buy them in Japan. I chose option number two. They are already waiting for me in my friend's house. I just stuff them in a specially designed case and I will be on my way. After I finish with my trip I will send them by sea back to the US. It will take one to three mouths. I'm OK with that.
Les

So basically you will build your pack on arrival.. you're not shipping a pre-built lithium pack. That makes more sense.

I think I just fried my tangent kit's cycle analyst(or maybe esc) but I heard can't get in touch with Dave.
symptom : When I connect battery, no arming sound at esc and cycle analyst backlight is blink once, and no text and no response.
How should I test which module is dead?

sephespid said:

I think I just fried my tangent kit's cycle analyst(or maybe esc) but I heard can't get in touch with Dave.
symptom : When I connect battery, no arming sound at esc and cycle analyst backlight is blink once, and no text and no response.
How should I test which module is dead?

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I'd guess that your ESC is dead (they are pretty sensitive to water as they come shipped from Dave - I've killed a few), it's way harder to kill a CA.

You could try to carefully feeding the cycle analyst current through its connector directly, look at the specification and double check to see which pins (V+ and Gnd). It should boot up and show the normal functions if it works.

Hi everyone.

Having huge problems with my tangent ascent 6kw.

Shortly after buying it Dave completely stopped replying to emails

The (quick) rundown.

Pretty much from the first time I used it I have had very weak surging power.

Like looking at the BMS I was drawing less than 10% of the desired power.

Looking around with an scope I found that any time the motor was turning over I was getting nasty noise on the CA output signal.

I could replace the CA throttle output with an servo tester (into the ESC) and had it running fine but the CA was still freaking it out.

Weird thing is even with the CA unplugged from the ESC I am still getting the spikes of signal.

Can't work out how as non of the CA inputs seem to have any noise on them.

Then Boom it blew the esc (castle are great and they replaced it no questions)

So I put a ton of protection on the input. Diodes to stop negative spikes capacitors for the +spikes and zener to hold it down if it spiked above what the cap could take.

worked great till I got the bike up to %50 throttle then pop.

Now I have replaced the ESC with a YEP 12a 14s.

Replaced its heatsink with one much larger and fitted it in place.

This ESC has an opto isolator which might be the ticket.

I am getting zero noise on the CA PWM output now.

Ideal for me would be to replace the castle creations ESC and get the CA to stop making these nasty voltage spikes on its throttle output

But if this YEP ESC doesn't blow up it would be enough for me.

If you want I have screen captures of the scope outputs in several situations.

I would love any advice as I have found no one writing up a similar problem.

Thanks

Nick.

nlealand said:

Hi everyone.

Having huge problems with my tangent ascent 6kw.
Looking around with an scope I found that any time the motor was turning over I was getting nasty noise on the CA output signal.

Click to expand...

The good news is that you probably got the latest, most iterated version of the Tangent. The bad news is that there is no support, I think the project is abandoned by now. Dave was a real champ answering emails quickly and sending (free!) replacement parts and even partial units over the years.

I have blown quite a few CCs over the years, mainly due to two reasons. Most common by far is water/salt damage. Second is having poor connections to the phase wires and pushing huge power through that. The motor will stagger and sound bad and the ESC fireballs soon after that (quite spectacular)... I've never seen the problems you describe tho, and never modified the ESC setup (besides from waterproofing it myself).

Could there be some kind of short circuit with a phase wire and the casing? That could go in to the CC through the mounting and cause all sorts of craziness I guess. I know Dave did have a few problems with mounting and phase shorts during manufacturing, delivery of my unit was delayed because of this. Hopefully it's not the issue here, because then you're basically out of luck fixing it.

I really hope Dave returns some day with a new project (and a sweet discount for old customers.. I'd support him again any day).

That's an odd issue. I'm guessing you have one of the units with the stator built into the housing of the tangent? Must be a short/issue there. Not sure what could be done as I assume the stator was glued into place by Dave.

Daves support was great while he was around, alas he had to get back to the working world. Perhaps one day he will be back to the tangents. For now we all have to get creative in our problem solving.

Thanks for the suggestion.

Do you know any way I could test to see if the stator is behaving correctly?

And yep its fully assembled unit.

Paid an arm and two legs for it and have not had a single run on the track.

This morning I blew up the YEP 120A too.

I was not getting any noise on the signal line just running nicely and did a couple of laps of the workshop and pop.

The YEP speed controller is looking like a short circuit now.

So crushed.

I bought the kit with the insurance money from having my motorcycle stolen and looking like its all just a scrap metal at this point.

Nick.

Oh also I just measured the 3 phases of the motor and all are consistently .1ohm between each other and not even a Meg ohm to the case or the thermo couple.

measure between the phase wires and the case... should be open.. **edit** oops didn't see you'd already tested shorts to the case.

Hi Knurf.

So we are in lock down here so I am tempted to focus on the bike for a while.

( Need something to take my mind off the stress of being a small business owner right now. )

You mentioned that it could be some kind of short from the phase wire and the casing.

I couldn't measure anything when it was stationary but it did look like an intermittent problem so perhaps its only during rotation that it shorts.

Perhaps even the vibration causes it.

Makes me wonder if its worth pulling the motor apart to look for an internal fault.

Have you done this before?

I don't have a lot of information on the tear down process which is a bit of a block.

Thanks for your reply though.

Peace, n.

knurf said:

nlealand said:

Hi everyone.

Having huge problems with my tangent ascent 6kw.
Looking around with an scope I found that any time the motor was turning over I was getting nasty noise on the CA output signal.

Click to expand...

The good news is that you probably got the latest, most iterated version of the Tangent. The bad news is that there is no support, I think the project is abandoned by now. Dave was a real champ answering emails quickly and sending (free!) replacement parts and even partial units over the years.

I have blown quite a few CCs over the years, mainly due to two reasons. Most common by far is water/salt damage. Second is having poor connections to the phase wires and pushing huge power through that. The motor will stagger and sound bad and the ESC fireballs soon after that (quite spectacular)... I've never seen the problems you describe tho, and never modified the ESC setup (besides from waterproofing it myself).

Could there be some kind of short circuit with a phase wire and the casing? That could go in to the CC through the mounting and cause all sorts of craziness I guess. I know Dave did have a few problems with mounting and phase shorts during manufacturing, delivery of my unit was delayed because of this. Hopefully it's not the issue here, because then you're basically out of luck fixing it.

I really hope Dave returns some day with a new project (and a sweet discount for old customers.. I'd support him again any day).

Click to expand...

Do you have a oscilloscope?

There are some really nice cheap units around.

I have a Pokit which is handy. The probes are really prone to falling off though.

The other easy option is grabing a $5 serve tester and hooking that up to the ESC.

If that doesn't wake it up your likely looking at a cooked unit.

Also I understand its pretty hard to kill the CA so that feels unlikely to me.

What exactly was happening when it went?

sephespid said:

I think I just fried my tangent kit's cycle analyst(or maybe esc) but I heard can't get in touch with Dave.
symptom : When I connect battery, no arming sound at esc and cycle analyst backlight is blink once, and no text and no response.
How should I test which module is dead?

Click to expand...

nlealand said:

Hi Knurf.

So we are in lock down here so I am tempted to focus on the bike for a while.

( Need something to take my mind off the stress of being a small business owner right now. )

You mentioned that it could be some kind of short from the phase wire and the casing.

I couldn't measure anything when it was stationary but it did look like an intermittent problem so perhaps its only during rotation that it shorts.

Perhaps even the vibration causes it.

Makes me wonder if its worth pulling the motor apart to look for an internal fault.

Have you done this before?

I don't have a lot of information on the tear down process which is a bit of a block.

Thanks for your reply though.

Peace, n.

Click to expand...

I hear, have a similar situation here..

You definitely can open it some, pulling out gears and bearings, but I can't think of any non-destructive way to fully disassemble it. The stator and stuff that goes with it is epoxied to the casing, it won't be going anywhere. It's not definitive that this is the problem either, but it sounds like something that could happen when the unit has heated up and enough vibration gone through it. That could also be the reason Dave might have missed it during his testing (I assume).

One alternative I can think of could be selling the parts of the kit. It wouldn't make up for the cost but better than throwing it away (of course you shouldn't!). There's going to be wear on the gearbox, the freewheel and the piece that the freewheel is mounted on. These will give in on other sold units and chances are your parts could make someone else's kit run get a thousand miles or even more.

I might be interested in the guts of your kit, if you're looking to sell it. Im running a kit with a fractured freewheel, like fully cracked over the bearing. These freewheels do not come off the kit after it has been run for a while (even when cracked, apparently), so my options once this breaks is to manufacture my own mount for a new freewheel somehow, or cut the freewheel off with angle grinder (tried that on another unit) and then rig a new one to the output shaft... or purchase someone else's output.

It doesn't work with servo tester so I changed ESC and works good.
But I disappointed with battery consumption(and thermal. this transmission waste lots of power) I removed this kit from my bike and considering buy new bike like Frey CC.
Thank you.

nlealand said:

Do you have a oscilloscope?

There are some really nice cheap units around.

I have a Pokit which is handy. The probes are really prone to falling off though.

The other easy option is grabing a $5 serve tester and hooking that up to the ESC.

If that doesn't wake it up your likely looking at a cooked unit.

Also I understand its pretty hard to kill the CA so that feels unlikely to me.

What exactly was happening when it went?

sephespid said:

I think I just fried my tangent kit's cycle analyst(or maybe esc) but I heard can't get in touch with Dave.
symptom : When I connect battery, no arming sound at esc and cycle analyst backlight is blink once, and no text and no response.
How should I test which module is dead?

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Does anyone know the correct bearing for the internals of the gen 1 box? carrier bearings and cam bearings?

Thanks

Ham said:

Does anyone know the correct bearing for the internals of the gen 1 box? carrier bearings and cam bearings?

Thanks

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You will find all that info on bearings unless you don't have a kit.

Sorted now, thanks anyway