Grin's rear all axle motor!

[neptronix]

Oh boy, was i late on reporting back!

Here's my thoughts so far.

The power is pretty decent on a 24" x 2.4" tire on 52v/35a with a phaserunner, i can hit a top speed of 34mph w/o flux weakening at top charge, acceleration to that speed is not thrilling, but good enough to hit and maintain the top speed.

I weigh 260lbs, and have much heavier than usual tires ( 2.25lbs each ). Power for non-Clydesdale riders running regular tires would be much better.
In 10 minutes of abuse at 1.6kw-2kw, i was able to get the motor somewhere between warm and hot.
Considering this is a 1kw rated motor, that's no surprise.

Torque wise, at the maximum power a phaserunner will output, this motor would be adequate in a 26"-29", fun on 24"-22", and thrilling in a 20".

My setup is not optimal:
- The phaserunner is at it's maximum power and some reduced efficiency should be expected, maybe 1-2% loss
- The Cusmade connector pins on the L10 are 45A rated, we're pushing 90a here, another 1-3% loss
- I'm losing ~15% of my battery energy to sag since i have a high energy density pack ( 52v 19.2ah Samsung 50E ) and this is limiting my torque.
- As the motor heats up, i lose efficiency at the copper level because i'm not using ferrofluid to help remove heat.

So i'm losing ~20% of the power before it even gets into the motor. I could be making more power.

Running higher voltage (+ 4S lipo booster pack ) and limiting the throttle would be the ticket for getting the continuous battery amperage down at cruising, while still being able to burst to 35mph:



So in general i think that with some tuning of things ( or even smaller wheels ), this motor can punch above it's weight. I think i would be pretty happy with an optimized version of this setup.

Thanks to the low weight, wheel feel on the road is really good, i think the 32 spokes and light weight of the hub have something to do with it. It almost feels like a MAC. I really like this about the motor.

The ease of removing and installing the hub is fantastic and once you experience it, you'll wish all hub motors were built this way. This greatly improves your ability to chuck the bike into a car. It's no longer a fight to get the wheel off/on!

Newer phaserunner controllers are still unavailable and i have an old phaserunner v2 here so i cannot test the torque sensor and comment on that.

For my application ( 28mph with random bursts to 35mph ), i really wish this had the 28mm or 30mm stator. I'm back on the weight loss track though so i think i'll be really happy with it once i'm -80lbs.

I would give this motor a 9.5 on a 1-10 scale. An extra 1-3mm of stator would make it a perfect 10.

 

[maiz]

Oh boy, was i late on reporting back!

Here's my thoughts so far.

The power is pretty decent on a 24" x 2.4" tire on 52v/35a with a phaserunner, i can hit a top speed of 34mph w/o flux weakening at top charge, acceleration to that speed is not thrilling, but good enough to hit and maintain the top speed.

I weigh 260lbs, and have much heavier than usual tires ( 2.25lbs each ). Power for non-Clydesdale riders running regular tires would be much better.
In 10 minutes of abuse at 1.6kw-2kw, i was able to get the motor somewhere between warm and hot.
Considering this is a 1kw rated motor, that's no surprise.

Torque wise, at the maximum power a phaserunner will output, this motor would be adequate in a 26"-29", fun on 24"-22", and thrilling in a 20".

My setup is not optimal:
- The phaserunner is at it's maximum power and some reduced efficiency should be expected, maybe 1-2% loss
- The Cusmade connector pins on the L10 are 45A rated, we're pushing 90a here, another 1-3% loss
- I'm losing ~15% of my battery energy to sag since i have a high energy density pack ( 52v 19.2ah Samsung 50E ) and this is limiting my torque.
- As the motor heats up, i lose efficiency at the copper level because i'm not using ferrofluid to help remove heat.

So i'm losing ~20% of the power before it even gets into the motor. I could be making more power.

Running higher voltage (+ 4S lipo booster pack ) and limiting the throttle would be the ticket for getting the continuous battery amperage down at cruising, while still being able to burst to 35mph:

View attachment 353579

So in general i think that with some tuning of things ( or even smaller wheels ), this motor can punch above it's weight. I think i would be pretty happy with an optimized version of this setup.

Thanks to the low weight, wheel feel on the road is really good, i think the 32 spokes and light weight of the hub have something to do with it. It almost feels like a MAC. I really like this about the motor.

The ease of removing and installing the hub is fantastic and once you experience it, you'll wish all hub motors were built this way. This greatly improves your ability to chuck the bike into a car. It's no longer a fight to get the wheel off/on!

Newer phaserunner controllers are still unavailable and i have an old phaserunner v2 here so i cannot test the torque sensor and comment on that.

For my application ( 28mph with random bursts to 35mph ), i really wish this had the 28mm or 30mm stator. I'm back on the weight loss track though so i think i'll be really happy with it once i'm -80lbs.

I would give this motor a 9.5 on a 1-10 scale. An extra 1-3mm of stator would make it a perfect 10.

Do you know of any cooling fin solutions for the all axle 3?

 

[neptronix]

No, but i know the hubsink is not compatible.

 

[maiz]

No, but i know the hubsink is not compatible.

(I don't know how this formatting happened)

Is it a curvature thing? Or a heat transfer thing?

 

[offGridDownUnder]

once i'm -80lbs

!?

 

[neptronix]

maiz, it's a curvature thing. See grin's page on the hubsinks for more info

offgrid, i'm back on a strict keto/carnivore diet and losing about 10lbs a month average, targeting an 80lbs weight loss.

 

[smitty2k1]

Oh boy, was i late on reporting back!

Here's my thoughts so far.

The power is pretty decent on a 24" x 2.4" tire on 52v/35a with a phaserunner, i can hit a top speed of 34mph w/o flux weakening at top charge, acceleration to that speed is not thrilling, but good enough to hit and maintain the top speed.

I weigh 260lbs, and have much heavier than usual tires ( 2.25lbs each ). Power for non-Clydesdale riders running regular tires would be much better.
In 10 minutes of abuse at 1.6kw-2kw, i was able to get the motor somewhere between warm and hot.
Considering this is a 1kw rated motor, that's no surprise.

Torque wise, at the maximum power a phaserunner will output, this motor would be adequate in a 26"-29", fun on 24"-22", and thrilling in a 20".

My setup is not optimal:
- The phaserunner is at it's maximum power and some reduced efficiency should be expected, maybe 1-2% loss
- The Cusmade connector pins on the L10 are 45A rated, we're pushing 90a here, another 1-3% loss
- I'm losing ~15% of my battery energy to sag since i have a high energy density pack ( 52v 19.2ah Samsung 50E ) and this is limiting my torque.
- As the motor heats up, i lose efficiency at the copper level because i'm not using ferrofluid to help remove heat.

So i'm losing ~20% of the power before it even gets into the motor. I could be making more power.

Running higher voltage (+ 4S lipo booster pack ) and limiting the throttle would be the ticket for getting the continuous battery amperage down at cruising, while still being able to burst to 35mph:

View attachment 353579

So in general i think that with some tuning of things ( or even smaller wheels ), this motor can punch above it's weight. I think i would be pretty happy with an optimized version of this setup.

Thanks to the low weight, wheel feel on the road is really good, i think the 32 spokes and light weight of the hub have something to do with it. It almost feels like a MAC. I really like this about the motor.

The ease of removing and installing the hub is fantastic and once you experience it, you'll wish all hub motors were built this way. This greatly improves your ability to chuck the bike into a car. It's no longer a fight to get the wheel off/on!

Newer phaserunner controllers are still unavailable and i have an old phaserunner v2 here so i cannot test the torque sensor and comment on that.

For my application ( 28mph with random bursts to 35mph ), i really wish this had the 28mm or 30mm stator. I'm back on the weight loss track though so i think i'll be really happy with it once i'm -80lbs.

I would give this motor a 9.5 on a 1-10 scale. An extra 1-3mm of stator would make it a perfect 10.

I'm running the V3 rear in a 20" wheel with a baserunner on my longtail cargo bike. Plenty of power for me but the torque sensor keeps cutting out on hills and I'm stuck using throttle

 

[maiz]

I'm running the V3 rear in a 20" wheel with a baserunner on my longtail cargo bike. Plenty of power for me but the torque sensor keeps cutting out on hills and I'm stuck using throttle

Has grin offered any solutions?

 

[chuyskywalker]

Do you know of any cooling fin solutions for the all axle 3?

I doubt you'll see one -- at least, not from Grin. The motors are pretty well tuned to handle just about any scenario you can throw at them with just statorade and one of grins controllers. You'd only really need the extra cooling once you venture outside their ecosystem for more power. And, while I love Grin, they put a heavy focus on mid-tier "legal"(ish) ebikes that are bikes first -- (this is why the CA is still, hands down the best user experience on a bike). They really don't venture too much into the high power ebike world -- only briefly touching their toes in it here and there.

 

[neptronix]

Justin has some tests with this motor floating around with ferrofluid and hubsinks.

Ferrofluid performed a lot better, and the hubsinks improved with ferrofluid, but hubsinks alone were pretty unimpressive.

 

[maiz]

Justin has some tests with this motor floating around with ferrofluid and hubsinks.

Ferrofluid performed a lot better, and the hubsinks improved with ferrofluid, but hubsinks alone were pretty unimpressive.

I was thinking of fins as a way of supplementing ferrofluid for hilly terrain.

 

[neptronix]

Ah so!

Possible that you could achieve what you're looking for with aluminum shims ( cut a dozen cans into strips ).

 

[chuyskywalker]

Justin has some tests with this motor floating around with ferrofluid and hubsinks.

Ferrofluid performed a lot better, and the hubsinks improved with ferrofluid, but hubsinks alone were pretty unimpressive.

Oh, absolutely. I simply mean that Grin's controllers will have a hard time pushing these all axle motors to such an extreme that they would benefit from the hubsinks too much.

Now, if you run something like a fardriver ND72360; that's gonna be a different story ;D

This is going to be even more true with the 45mm all axle -- grin even specifically calls it out:

If you are using a 3rd party motor controller, be aware that at some point the bottleneck in motor power will be the L1019 connector itself. This plug is rated for 45 amps continuous and in our experience risks melting when you reularly push 55-60A of phase current. For high power systems using other controllers, especially with the faster motor winding, we would recommend cutting this plug off and replacing it with individual gold plated bullet connectors.

 

[maiz]

Oh, absolutely. I simply mean that Grin's controllers will have a hard time pushing these all axle motors to such an extreme that they would benefit from the hubsinks too much.

Now, if you run something like a fardriver ND72360; that's gonna be a different story ;D

This is going to be even more true with the 45mm all axle -- grin even specifically calls it out:

This is referring to the connectors from the controller to the motor, correct? Not to the connectors from the battery to the controller?

 

[chuyskywalker]

This is referring to the connectors from the controller to the motor, correct? Not to the connectors from the battery to the controller?

Yes, the L1019 is the connector the between the controller and motor; if you are going to use a higher amp controller, you should remove the L1019 and use a different connector -- though, realistically, if you are using a higher power connector, you are likely doing that anyway.

 

[neptronix]

Someone at Grin told me the motor is a lot of fun on a Sabvoton 7248. So yeah, that confirms that i'm far from maxing it out.

 

[Cowardlyduck]

Curious which version of the Phaserunner you have Nep. I think mine is a V2 with the stainless shell, and it can hit 60A+ battery at 52V (14S) all day. I have it heat-sinked through some thermal padding to the frame of my BikeE to keep it cool and it almost never overheats.

Cheers

 

[neptronix]

Mine's a V2. Has maybe 15 miles on it, never ran above 90A phase 35A batt.
No use until now. Sat in a box indoors for 7 years, then sat in a shed outdoors for 3.
Performed suggested modification to add an ebrake lever.

Baserunners and phaserunners are all out of stock still.

Looks like i can't get a 30A-35A controller with the appropriate matching throttle/ebrake/etc from a USA seller at all, even ebay doesn't have some garbage non-programmable one. I looked for hours. So getting a replacement controller involves ordering from China and waiting some weeks and hacking up my grin motor's cables to get back on the road.

Guess the evaluation is shelved until further notice!

 

[smitty2k1]

Has grin offered any solutions?

Not really this is what they told me:

"[It] is the result of electrical noise from the motor interfering with the communications on these displays which is just a 0-5V single ended UART and not very noise immune. You'll see the "ERR30" message show up briefly and then it will clear itself once the noise levels are low enough. We're actively trying to see if there are any ways of reducing the display's susceptibility in this through external chokes or similar, but you can be assured that the throttle works fine in the meantime (since it doesn't involve any display communications)."

 

[neptronix]

Admittedly there is a crapton of EMF right in the middle of a motor.

On the other hand, companies have figured out how to shield controllers adequately in that crazy environment. So it's real disappointing that that TQ sensor isn't working for you. I wonder if i'll have different results and yours was built on a friday.


I got my bike riding again but it's hit or miss with the throttle, i found that alternating frequently between braking and throttling kept the throttle work and hte problem does not change when wires are jiggled.

I wonder if this modification that allows me to run an ebrake on the phaserunner v2 is cursed.

I'm going to hook mine up to an ancient Infineon clone from 2012 and give it some real power. Hoping that controller is still alive

 

[chuyskywalker]

Just got the shipping notification for my rear fat all axle.

 

[neptronix]

Sweet, i'd love to see what kinda abuse it takes. I think it's a 3kw rated motor in reality.

As for my motor, i found out the hall wiring is bad by swapping it to a few controllers and finally trying sensorless.
This may be my fault because the cable is bent at an extreme angle in 2 spots and i may have damaged the harness.

Too busy to open my all axle RN, i decided to run it sensorless on a VESC and so far at 40A batt / 100A phase, acceleration is quote good and i'm surprised how little heat it produces while being ran at ~2.2kw peak, ~1000w continuous. It can take more!

 

[vladrov]

I am playing with the motor simulator and found that the All Axle with standard winding with ferrofluid on 96V delivers high efficiency results. It can also be pushed to very high power for short periods of 1 to 5 minutes.

My thoughts are whether this is practical if I want to build a bike with average speeds of 30-40 km/h (19-25 mph) that can also deliver very good acceleration to the desired speed, climb steep hills, and reach high speeds, of course, for short periods.

Has anyone tried to push the motor to its limits and discovered its real-life limitations?

neptronix , you mentioned that the All Axle has a fraction of the power of the Leaf, but do you think it can handle this? I'm reconsidering if the advantages of the All Axle, like its weight, might be more beneficial for me most of the time, while still offering the fun that the Leaf can deliver if I'm not aiming for continuous high speeds and power levels.

 

[neptronix]

It really likes volts and also likes being in as small of a wheel as possible.

I run my standard winding model in the lower 30mph range continually and it has good acceleration at 52v/40A in a 24" wheel; watch the heat if you're in a super hilly place like me at power levels like that though (1-1.5kw continuous )

Once i ran it at 60A and it was a hoot but that's too much heat considering all the hills i have about..

I also weigh 250lbs currently ( 113kg ), so if you are more stick shaped than me you'll probably find the power levels to be pretty nice. I find them to be slightly better than good enough but not a thrill.

It's a fraction of the motor as the leaf as in, if i put 6kW into it, it'll melt quite fast, but the leaf 1.5kw will beg for more.
That extra 8mm of stator width makes a massive difference.

 

[neptronix]

Here's the entrance to the 'danger zone', heat wise, of the all axle...


..it can take more, but for how long..

Pretty generous power achievable for such a light motor though!