Yes, you read that right...Yingling / Unite Motor finally woke up and made a brushless motor in the MY1016/1018 class, 6.4 lbs. 36V, 500W nominal. It's on Ali Express, along with the motor cradle:
9th MY1018Z 350W 500W 36V brushless gear motor brushless Hall with gear Electric bicycle modification motor $61 USD plus shipping
Ebike motor MY1016Z MY1016Z2 MY1016Z3The Iron Holder Mounting Install Bracket for Electric Mountain Bike Middle Drive Motor Kit $11 plus shipping
First time shopping on Ali BTW, the orders went fine. When I first started up the motor with the singlespeed chain attached, I swore it must have nylon gears because it's shockingly smooth and quiet for a supposedly straight-cut metal geared, dual-chain drive wired to a KT 22A square wave controller. It's not quite as hushed as a geared hub drive, and the sound is different, more of a constant hum than a whir. But compared with an older-model Yalu / Dome / L-Faster 450W 48V mid-drive, this thing is whisper quiet. That other motor's 50cc noise turned many, many heads across the street. This one will not. It's about as buttery smooth and quiet as you could possibly imagine for the setup.
The MY1018Z is a mix of MY1018 brushless relatively high nominal wattage (for this genre) mixed with an MY1016Z motor shell. So the "Z" is the motor shell, and the 1018 denotes an intermediate level of power. The 1016 versions are all brushed (no bueno for mountain biking) and 250/350W 24/36V. The 1018 versions up until now were also brushed and pretty much the same power as 1016, the difference being that there are M5 bolt holes on both side of the 1018 and not the 1016. Fortunately the 1016Z has the 4-bolt motor cradle, although it's only for 68mm bottom bracket shell widths; 73mm or wider will require additional bracing in front of the bb. But that's not nearly as awful as it sounds, see below. MY1020 also has a brushless variant and higher power of 750-2000+ watts, but the output shafts are unfortunately not compatible with a freewheel and the 9-11T sprockets do not perform well with coasting or human pedaling. So it's MY1018Z by default.
Starting torque is about 1.6 nm before the internal 9.85:1 reduction. Output shaft around 15 nm. Typical 2nd stage gearing is a 40-53T combined with a 16, 18, or 20T freewheel. So the average external reduction before the 2nd chainring and cassette ranges from around 2.2 to 3.6x. A modest but decent 35-55 nm between the 2nd stage reduction freewheel/chainring and the cassette/2nd chainring. That's for nominal 500W. Since brushless peak torque typically is 2-3x nominal, the peak torque could easily go over 100nm for this little motor; with the right gearing it could be 150-200nm. That's BSSHD / TSD Z16 territory. Not that you'd actually want 200nm on a cheap build but that's what the motor can do on paper. It's the real deal.
Before you think this is too good to be true, there are several engineering bottlenecks below you need to be aware of before ordering. This is just the motor, it doesn't come with a kit or bottom bracket mounts.
1. No PAS, fixed pedals, throttle only. Recommend L-Faster's SM throttle, the gain is minimal, the delivery is linear and smooth.
2. Motor comes with SM 3-phase separate wires and 5-pin white harness hall wires. This is a motor meant for left-side rear brake mounting, so there are two issues right off the bat. First, you need to order a left-hand freewheel and adapter (again L-Faster, Amazon). Reversing the blue/green wires didn't work. 2nd, the electrical wizards out there could strip the motor wires and adapt to a higher capacity waterproof brushless controller at KT level or above. But by far the easiest solution is to simply by a $50 22-30A KT square wave controller. These are remarkably smooth for square wave so don't worry about that part.
3. The motor cradle's bolt holes are offset about 10mm to the left side of the frame. That means the freewheel is further inboard than a normal dual chain motor. And because the cassette-driving chainring MUST be the inner chainring (or the chainline will become unusable in lower gears), the inner chainring will be pushed in even further and the max is probably 42T. I'm running 40T.
will finish up the post in the next 24 hours
9th MY1018Z 350W 500W 36V brushless gear motor brushless Hall with gear Electric bicycle modification motor $61 USD plus shipping
Ebike motor MY1016Z MY1016Z2 MY1016Z3The Iron Holder Mounting Install Bracket for Electric Mountain Bike Middle Drive Motor Kit $11 plus shipping
First time shopping on Ali BTW, the orders went fine. When I first started up the motor with the singlespeed chain attached, I swore it must have nylon gears because it's shockingly smooth and quiet for a supposedly straight-cut metal geared, dual-chain drive wired to a KT 22A square wave controller. It's not quite as hushed as a geared hub drive, and the sound is different, more of a constant hum than a whir. But compared with an older-model Yalu / Dome / L-Faster 450W 48V mid-drive, this thing is whisper quiet. That other motor's 50cc noise turned many, many heads across the street. This one will not. It's about as buttery smooth and quiet as you could possibly imagine for the setup.
The MY1018Z is a mix of MY1018 brushless relatively high nominal wattage (for this genre) mixed with an MY1016Z motor shell. So the "Z" is the motor shell, and the 1018 denotes an intermediate level of power. The 1016 versions are all brushed (no bueno for mountain biking) and 250/350W 24/36V. The 1018 versions up until now were also brushed and pretty much the same power as 1016, the difference being that there are M5 bolt holes on both side of the 1018 and not the 1016. Fortunately the 1016Z has the 4-bolt motor cradle, although it's only for 68mm bottom bracket shell widths; 73mm or wider will require additional bracing in front of the bb. But that's not nearly as awful as it sounds, see below. MY1020 also has a brushless variant and higher power of 750-2000+ watts, but the output shafts are unfortunately not compatible with a freewheel and the 9-11T sprockets do not perform well with coasting or human pedaling. So it's MY1018Z by default.
Starting torque is about 1.6 nm before the internal 9.85:1 reduction. Output shaft around 15 nm. Typical 2nd stage gearing is a 40-53T combined with a 16, 18, or 20T freewheel. So the average external reduction before the 2nd chainring and cassette ranges from around 2.2 to 3.6x. A modest but decent 35-55 nm between the 2nd stage reduction freewheel/chainring and the cassette/2nd chainring. That's for nominal 500W. Since brushless peak torque typically is 2-3x nominal, the peak torque could easily go over 100nm for this little motor; with the right gearing it could be 150-200nm. That's BSSHD / TSD Z16 territory. Not that you'd actually want 200nm on a cheap build but that's what the motor can do on paper. It's the real deal.
Before you think this is too good to be true, there are several engineering bottlenecks below you need to be aware of before ordering. This is just the motor, it doesn't come with a kit or bottom bracket mounts.
1. No PAS, fixed pedals, throttle only. Recommend L-Faster's SM throttle, the gain is minimal, the delivery is linear and smooth.
2. Motor comes with SM 3-phase separate wires and 5-pin white harness hall wires. This is a motor meant for left-side rear brake mounting, so there are two issues right off the bat. First, you need to order a left-hand freewheel and adapter (again L-Faster, Amazon). Reversing the blue/green wires didn't work. 2nd, the electrical wizards out there could strip the motor wires and adapt to a higher capacity waterproof brushless controller at KT level or above. But by far the easiest solution is to simply by a $50 22-30A KT square wave controller. These are remarkably smooth for square wave so don't worry about that part.
3. The motor cradle's bolt holes are offset about 10mm to the left side of the frame. That means the freewheel is further inboard than a normal dual chain motor. And because the cassette-driving chainring MUST be the inner chainring (or the chainline will become unusable in lower gears), the inner chainring will be pushed in even further and the max is probably 42T. I'm running 40T.
will finish up the post in the next 24 hours
