onespeed said:
Cant find specs on the motor online.
Looking for torque and max watts/volts I can push through this.
A link to the page you bought the kit from may help us help you.
The pic says "52v 2000w", but without more details can't give you lots of info. 2000w might be the whole kit's peak power, or it might mean the motor can handle that continuously (in which case it's probably a fairly large motor, for an ebike). It might just mean that the controller is rated for a 14s (52v) pack, and has a battery current limit (peak or continuous, dunno which) of 2000 / 52 = 38a (often called a "40A" controller).
If it's a geared hub (most likely, since it says BMC on there, and they're known for their geared hubs), then peak you can probably do 500-1000w safely, and possibly 1500w for pretty short periods, but sustaining that might cause overheating, with potential to damage gears (melting plastic), hall sensors, windings. It depends on exactly what the motor is like inside, and how well you can get it to transfer the heat from the core thru the first airgap layer to the next layer then thru the second airgap layer and then to the exterior casing and then to the air flowing past it.
It also depends on what speed you push that kind of power at, vs what the motor spins at for no-load RPM at the same throttle setting, etc. The http://ebikes.ca/tools/simulator.html can help show you how these can be problematic using things like the MAC and BMC and Ezee hubs they have modelled in the simulator for overheating time and temperatures. You can setup your bike's basics in there along with your weight and cargo weight and bike weight and expected motor/battery/etc weight.
The volts you can push are not really limited (well, it's high enough to not worry about on an ebike
). But the more volts, the faster the same motor wheel spins. It may not be very efficient if you have a max speed capability that is way faster than you will be using; the simulator can help show you how that works.
How much torque the motor has will depend on the phase current flowing thru it at the time, but it's unlikely you can determine phase current with a typical "generic" controller. You may be able to guesstimate based on battery current multiplied by some guesstimate value (say, 1.5x). But the actual torque produced is dependent on motor design (and wheelsize it's in vs what it was specified for, if different). Without knowing the torque it was supposed to produce under it's original system/conditions, and what those were, it's not really possible to calculate the torque it would have under your new conditions and system.
If it's a DD (direct drive) hub, then it can shed heat easier, but it may have less torque than the geared hub starting from zero speed and while at low speed, like from startup from stops, and potentialy going up hills if there isn't enough systme power to keep the speed up.
There are modifications to motors that can help with shedding heat, but it depends on what the motor itself is like inside as to which ones will work.
The controller is rated for 60v - I am running 48v14ah-16ah batteries.
Do you know the complete specs for those batteries? Meaning, what sustained and peak amps they are rated for, how old they are, etc? This may help us help you determine if they can provide the power for a bigger motor than you are already using, to get you up the hills without problems, or pushing them so hard they age faster than they should (or overheat, etc).
Knowing what *amps* the controller is rated for is important for this, too. If it's rated for more amps than your battery can handle, it's going to be hard on the battery (or actually damage it, usually by overheating the BMS fets and/or the cells) if it pulls those kinds of amps a lot (which will happen on hills, and potentially during starts from a stop).
For instance, if it is indeed as speculated previously above, a 52v 40A controller, then it may need a 14s (52v) battery, rather than your 48v (13s) batteries. With the lower voltage battery, the system may turn off before you have used all of the battery capacity, so you might only get, say, 10Ah out of a 14Ah battery, at a guess. It may cut out more from voltage sag because of the 52v controller's higher LVC (vs a 48v controller), when a high load is placed on the battery (hills, startups from stops).
If it's a 40A controller, then it would be putting almost a 3C (40A / 14Ah = 2.86) load on the battery, which cheaper batteries may not like much (more sag, more heat). Paralleling batteries of the same voltage (doesn't matter about capacity) may help a lot with that; depends on the batteries and the actual loads.
Similarly, if it's rated for more than the motor itself can handle, then motor overheating may occur on the hills, or after quickly- repeated starts from a stop.
But if this is the same controller that's running your smaller motor...it won't make the newer motor run much, if any, different than the smaller motor, because it will be the new bottleneck.
No display is included, so I am wondering how universal monitors are as well. How do you determine what will work.
If you only want to monitor speed, power, etc., then the Cycle Analyst is universal, using an external shunt and speedometer (won't matter what wires the controller has available). The cheaper v2.x will work fine if you only want monitoring; if you want advanced system control (like PAS, temperature monitoring, etc etc) then you can use the v3.x.
If you don't need to monitor speed, just volts, watts, amps, then you can get one of the fairly cheap basic wattmeters, some of which use an external shunt (which will be better for wiring than the ones whose main unit has to be wired in series with the battery to controller, as it's tough to mount those up on hte handlebars if you want to see it while riding). There's a lot of different kinds, so knowing exactly what you want it to display may help us help you find one that does that.
If you are looking for a "display" that has buttons on it that let you directly monitor and configure the ocntroller itself...those are specific to each controller brand and model, so it's a lot easier to get one working as expected if you get it *with* the controller as a kit. But if you post exactly which controller you've already got we might be able to tell if it *could* be compatible with some display. (no guarantee that it *is*, however, until you try it and it works).
I have some long hills with customers at the top that I regularly hit daily on my shifts.
Don't they eventually get upset about that?
