Where to buy a 1000w - 1500w hub motors with aluminium silver finish?

[ZNC]

Does anyone know if you are able to buy 1000w - 1500w hub motors with a buffed-out aluminium finish instead of the usual painted black ones? I have seen them on old e-bike blogs / threads from 2000s - 2010s. Here are some photos of what I'm talking about:View attachment 9C_280X_Black_productshot3.webp

 

[Apartunis]

Fashion is a bitch. Capitalist bitches push whatever fashion gets them the largest margin. That is why everything is black now, sorry.

 

[offGridDownUnder]

Does anyone know if you are able to buy 1000w - 1500w hub motors with a buffed-out aluminium finish instead of the usual painted black ones? I have seen them on old e-bike blogs / threads from 2000s - 2010s. Here are some photos of what I'm talking about:View attachment 386639View attachment 386640

Grin supplies their front V2 All-Axle in anodized silver as well as black. It's not buffed.

 

[OlderGiantFan]

You can buff it yourself, start with 100 wet-n-dry and work your way down to 2000, then go to work with the autosol. To seal it afterwards use Wattle Incralac.

 

[OlderGiantFan]

Here's some work I did on a bike a ways back, the wheels were all black, as were the forks and the rear brake drag link was just dull alloy. You can go insane on aluminium pushbikes too, I've done a little of that. Imagine polished seat stays etc





I did the outer carb faces in-situ

 

[ZNC]

Grin supplies their front V2 All-Axle in anodized silver as well as black. It's not buffed.

I have seen those they are nice but not what I want for the look of my build.

 

[ZNC]

You can buff it yourself, start with 100 wet-n-dry and work your way down to 2000, then go to work with the autosol. To seal it afterwards use Wattle Incralac.

I have actually done that with my current motor but I have some major issues with it meaning I MIGHT have to replace it, thus leading me here to ask if anyone knows where I can get one of those sweet unpainted hubs instead because it is a pain to sand and doesn't look as perfect as if were done by the manufacturer unless you take your time which I probably can't

 

[scianiac]

I wonder what is the finish under the paint, as in will using a paint stripper to remove the paint instead of sanding and then going to fine sanding/buffing be easier than sanding the paint off. As in if the metal under the paint is fairly smooth and the paint isn't hiding too many imperfections. Although most unpainted motors you get will probably have that exact finish anyway.

 

[ZNC]

I wonder what is the finish under the paint, as in will using a paint stripper to remove the paint instead of sanding and then going to fine sanding/buffing be easier than sanding the paint off. As in if the metal under the paint is fairly smooth and the paint isn't hiding too many imperfections. Although most unpainted motors you get will probably have that exact finish anyway.

That is a pretty good idea I didn't think of.

 

[OlderGiantFan]

Polishing up stuff is a labor of love and it's not in everyone's heart.

 

[scianiac]

The paint stripper will only work on some paints, but it doesn't seem like these hub motors are painted with anything fancy based on the paint quality.

I feel like polishing stuff is heavily based on your intended results and the tools available. If you want an absolutely perfect finish it can be a lot of work and you have to be very careful. If you want it to be nice and shiny from a foot or two away and you have a power buffer it goes pretty fast. You still have to be careful, just in a different way to make sure the buffer doesn't injure you, safe tools they are not depending on the part geometry.

 

[Apartunis]

Shiny things attract attention and envy. I want my bikes to repel those things.

 

[E-HP]

I have actually done that with my current motor but I have some major issues with it meaning I MIGHT have to replace it, thus leading me here to ask if anyone knows where I can get one of those sweet unpainted hubs instead because it is a pain to sand and doesn't look as perfect as if were done by the manufacturer unless you take your time which I probably can't

Maybe you could use the motor for a lot of the sanding. Take off the freewheel, mount the motor in the frame, turn it upside down, hit the throttle while applying the wet dry sandpaper?

 

[offGridDownUnder]

Maybe you could use the motor for a lot of the sanding. Take off the freewheel, mount the motor in the frame, turn it upside down, hit the throttle while applying the wet dry sandpaper?

Dangerous. I'd think about how to brace myself so I can avoid unexpectedly putting my hand into the spokes - or having it pulled in by whatever I'm sanding with when that catches in the spokes.

But it may be doable. I'd fasten the frame to something quite secure so I could eliminate movement from the frame/motor and I'd want something to brace my arms against as well.

I watched an experienced wood worker try to gauge a cut by just barely putting a piece of wood back into the running saw to nick the wood - on the third try the saw pulled his hand back through the blade and took his fingers off.

With that firmly in mind, I would try this set up, and I'd be willing to not proceed as well.

Keep in mind, you also would need to remove the spokes to sand the flanges. If you need to do that anyway, that would remove much of the possible ways to catch and pull your fingers.

I'd also think in terms of holding a wire brush with a long handle instead of sand paper.

 

[OlderGiantFan]

There are plenty of powered tools that can be used if you don't want to do it by hand. Once I was doing the inside of a set of hubs on a ride-on mower and I used a drill with a sanding wheel on a long bit. Once I used a bench grinder wire wheel to strip paint and corroded aluminium off. At the end though polishing with autosol is best done by hand.

On the matter of paint stripper, there is more than one. Fundamentally there are two, ones for acrylic and ones for enamel. I have used them on occasion but 80 or 100 w&d under running water will take most paint off quickly enough. I used to go, 100, 400, 800, 1200 or 1500, and finally 2000. If you get it right you get a mirror finish like chrome in the end but the incralac coats must be very thin or the metal will look a little dull. Heating the metal with a heat blower is recommended unless you are spraying under sunlight and the metal is warm. Warm and very clean.

There are no doubt specific forums on the subject with better knowledge than me. Once I had to rebuilt a timber poptop for an old 70's campervan and I ended up on a canoe building forum learning how to stitch plywood with copper wire and fiberglass over internal and external corners for a poster called "Fiberglass Jack."

 

[marty]

Propane torch and wire brush will remove paint.

 

[marty]

If it fits. Put painted metal parts in a pot of boiling water. Boil till paint comes off. Gloves are good to hold hot metal things. Attack warm paint with tools. Wash pot real good before cooking food if you stupid. Might be better to stop using that pot for eating?

 

[Apartunis]

Your budget Bernzomatic is capable of upwards 2000F... Heating an aluminum housing that goes liquidus around 1200F - good luck... I suspect you'll need it.

Heat treated structural aluminums permanently lose strength progressively starting at roughly 300F. It is doubtful that cast and machined hub shells are heat treated after casting, but my inclination would be to avoid heating more than necessary.

 

[OlderGiantFan]

Heat should be your last resort, I'll use it to get tricky steel bolts out, and that's about it.

 

[ZNC]

Thanks for the help every one, I wish I could have used this information I cant since the bike I was going to do this to died yesterday after a 20 mile ride with a life of 3000 miles (the bike) and has been converted back into a non electric bike because the axle of the hub motor is destroyed and the dropouts have had enough. I have had the dropouts welded over 3 times so no point of trying to fix it anymore, and I'm sick of it in general even though it was nice in some aspects (I loved the Sinewave KT Controller)





I'm fed up with hub motors so Im going to sell what i can of the bike and instead build a middrive e-bike on a full suspension bike I brought a few months ago:



maybe using a 3kw GNG middrive possibly paired with a KT sinewave controller or some sinewave controller or a bbshd or maybe a tsdz16 or eccride middrive

 

[lnanek]

Pretty easy to slap a pair of torque arms on there and completely ignore the drop outs. Whoever kept fixing them for you without telling you that was pretty much just taking your wallet for a ride.

 

[Apartunis]

Pretty easy to slap a pair of torque arms on there and completely ignore the drop outs. Whoever kept fixing them for you without telling you that was pretty much just taking your wallet for a ride.

It is an aluminum frame so the repaired area is reduced to a fraction of its original strength by welding heat. My experience with repaired aluminum frames is that the repair rarely holds. If the frame was damaged in a low stress area then sometimes it can work, but frames do not usually get damaged in low stress areas.

 

[ZNC]

Pretty easy to slap a pair of torque arms on there and completely ignore the drop outs. Whoever kept fixing them for you without telling you that was pretty much just taking your wallet for a ride.

It was a family friend who has a welding company and they were doing it for free there welds were perfect, I had torque arms but they were those Chinese grin technologies knockoffs that I hadn't installed properly (common noob mistake) so I had it coming, if I was more experienced at the time of making it (which I wasn't since it was my first e-bike project) I would have brought some directly from grin technologies or made some custom bracket to hold the axel spin free. Also inanek The threads were gone to a point where it was not biting I could fix it if I wanted to but I'm not wasting any more money on a cheap hub motor or the cheap $600 trek marlin hardtail

 

[tonewavestudio]

I have spray painted a black hub motor using aluminum spray paint.

 

[ZNC]

I have spray painted a black hub motor using aluminum spray paint.

Thank you for the reply, but look at #16