Beachcruzer
100 W
Hey everybody, it's been years since I posted here but I've been lurking all along. Finally I have a question for the forum.
Last week I saw an add on Craigslist: a zebra-striped DD hub, oldschool CA and 12-fet Lyen controller for $100. I didn't need any of those things, but I'm partial to Lyen's controllers and as best I could tell the motor is a 1,000-watt Yescom, which get good reviews on this forum. For $100, I figured how can I go wrong. I already have a stack of 4s lipo hard cases and an old Walmart mountain bike my neighbor gave me.
I was about to be the low-budget Wesnewel!
So I went straight up there and paid the man. When I got home and took a close look, it was kind of amusing. The wiring was the jankiest mess I have ever seen on an eBike. The place where the ignition switch was wired in felt like a lead golf ball wrapped in gooey electrical tape. The Hall wires were just snipped off. One of the cheap white connectors (kinda brown now with age) crumbled when I pulled it apart. A mess, but whatever--I'm going to redo the wiring anyway, and it didn't look like the controller or motor had never been opened.
The guy basically said he knew nothing about eBikes, but the motor has some mods that make me think otherwise--mainly 10-gauge phases connected right out of the axle with massive drippy globs of solder. I know that's a bread-and-butter mod around here (albeit with clean solder joints). And the Lyen controller, a 12-fet sensored "Extreme Modder" is straight out of this forum. That's why I was so stoked when I picked this up. I have the sensorless version of that same controller, and have run it at 47 mph on the old Aotema front hub in my avatar. I have it on another bike now, running 40 amps and up to 82 volts all day, for years, never a problem.
In short, this was just the sort of setup I'm used to running . . . a classic over-volted DD hub, state of the art circa 2012 . . . just add lipo and hold on to your ass. I figured I scored. But now that I've wired it up for a test ride, I'm beginning to think I may have gotten screwed.
I cut off the janky solders and rigged it up in testbed mode on the WalMart bike. Connected phases and Halls color-to-color. Plugged in 16s lipo. The version 2.3 CA lights up, 65 volts. I turn the throttle and she starts spinning. There's lots of noise, growling at low throttle and loud hum at "speed." Speed is in quotes because the CA is showing 24 mph at 65 volts. This is no load--the bike is upside down, wheel in the air. Curiously, the CA is reading ~1300 watts.
I went for a short ride. Under load, it does maybe 20 mph at more than 2,000 watts (forget the exact reading). It came with a 3-speed switch, so I plugged that in thinking maybe it was stuck on the low setting. Nope. Now it's going 12 mph! Unplugged that. Also went into the CA settings and reset the amp limit to 45 amps. It's getting plenty of juice, so that's not the problem.
So yeah, maybe I got screwed. But more likely, I'm just doing something wrong. Do you guys have any idea what that might be?
Last week I saw an add on Craigslist: a zebra-striped DD hub, oldschool CA and 12-fet Lyen controller for $100. I didn't need any of those things, but I'm partial to Lyen's controllers and as best I could tell the motor is a 1,000-watt Yescom, which get good reviews on this forum. For $100, I figured how can I go wrong. I already have a stack of 4s lipo hard cases and an old Walmart mountain bike my neighbor gave me.
I was about to be the low-budget Wesnewel!
So I went straight up there and paid the man. When I got home and took a close look, it was kind of amusing. The wiring was the jankiest mess I have ever seen on an eBike. The place where the ignition switch was wired in felt like a lead golf ball wrapped in gooey electrical tape. The Hall wires were just snipped off. One of the cheap white connectors (kinda brown now with age) crumbled when I pulled it apart. A mess, but whatever--I'm going to redo the wiring anyway, and it didn't look like the controller or motor had never been opened.
The guy basically said he knew nothing about eBikes, but the motor has some mods that make me think otherwise--mainly 10-gauge phases connected right out of the axle with massive drippy globs of solder. I know that's a bread-and-butter mod around here (albeit with clean solder joints). And the Lyen controller, a 12-fet sensored "Extreme Modder" is straight out of this forum. That's why I was so stoked when I picked this up. I have the sensorless version of that same controller, and have run it at 47 mph on the old Aotema front hub in my avatar. I have it on another bike now, running 40 amps and up to 82 volts all day, for years, never a problem.
In short, this was just the sort of setup I'm used to running . . . a classic over-volted DD hub, state of the art circa 2012 . . . just add lipo and hold on to your ass. I figured I scored. But now that I've wired it up for a test ride, I'm beginning to think I may have gotten screwed.
I cut off the janky solders and rigged it up in testbed mode on the WalMart bike. Connected phases and Halls color-to-color. Plugged in 16s lipo. The version 2.3 CA lights up, 65 volts. I turn the throttle and she starts spinning. There's lots of noise, growling at low throttle and loud hum at "speed." Speed is in quotes because the CA is showing 24 mph at 65 volts. This is no load--the bike is upside down, wheel in the air. Curiously, the CA is reading ~1300 watts.
I went for a short ride. Under load, it does maybe 20 mph at more than 2,000 watts (forget the exact reading). It came with a 3-speed switch, so I plugged that in thinking maybe it was stuck on the low setting. Nope. Now it's going 12 mph! Unplugged that. Also went into the CA settings and reset the amp limit to 45 amps. It's getting plenty of juice, so that's not the problem.
So yeah, maybe I got screwed. But more likely, I'm just doing something wrong. Do you guys have any idea what that might be?
