LightningRods mid drive kit

My machinist is very interested in making billet 6061 aluminum hubs to our specs. All we have to do is settle on a design and we can have whatever we want.

The other tough thing that Cheekybloke will be up against is that cogs don't have ramps or any other features designed to help them shift. As single speed cogs they're designed to hold onto the chain. I really do hope this is successful. Even if it shifts terribly, as long as it shifts at all and doesn't blow up under power it will be a great option.
 
I was able to shift with the same setup (though only a 16t and 20t sprockets - same sprockets as cheekybloke). It worked but was difficult to maintain so I just scrapped the derailleur for a tensioner and I only shift manually (move the chain by hand) and only do so when having to peddle which is rare gear change.
 
I had an idea for the non shiftingness of it all, which was to use an 1/8th chain and remove the alloy pin on the rear mech cage as it stops the chain going through.(it will be slacker on the cog)
The chain does fit inbetween the cage but i may widen it if it needs it.
Worst case is use cassette cogs or get the dremel out to make some ramps.
Shifting will be done by an old thumb shifter on friction mode as the index spacing is off a bit.
Should be able to try it in the next couple of days and let you know what happens.
Darren
 
I used one of those old style non-indexing shifters too. It worked but you pretty much had to have the perfect thumb-to-peddle action or it would catch or drop. I was using an 8spd derailleur too with the high and low end stoppers set...my troubles could very well have been the high gear derailleur...it was pretty frankensteined.
 
Tried out the 3 speed today and it shifts, a little lumpy but it shifts.
Had to widen rear mech with washers and longer bolts to get the 1/8th single speed chain in there.
Also removed the curved bit of rear mech cage at thee side of the bottom jockey wheel as it rubbed on the chain a bit much.
Darren
 
Hi Michael, Its been a long time since i updated here on my build - since i havnt had time hardly to work on it in the last months due to some personal problems. but now i have it all together and hooked up to test it out... and simply cannot get the motor to run properly :cry: :cry: :cry:
To be more specific' tried all 6 conection combinations of the phase wires - some just "growl" and dont run...one runs maybe 200rpm but pulls only 30w 0.5A, the last one runs ok up to about 3.3V on the throtle (maybe 1500-2000rpm?) then flatens out and wont go faster just fluctuates up and down a bit.
I didnt want to run here and start asking stupid questions so spent the last three weeks trying to read up on the CA3 manual the Lyen controler manual and all the threads here pertaining to the possible solutions.. and found several. but still im stuck.. and need help! Please! :lol:
So the situation is like this:

Small block motor, with 12 fet lyen controler setup for this motor spcificaly, CA3 Prelim 6 (dont have cable to upgrade-will get it)
IMG_3738 (Small).JPG

Currently testing the motor with just 3 x 5S lipos in series. 15S = ~60v for simplicity.
The Hall sensor plug from the motor is conected to the controler plug - as instructed - blue to green green to blue (yes its backwards in the pic.- was just trying the other way to see if it would help, when i took the pic.)
IMG_3737 (Small).JPG

Throttle is hooked up to CA3, all other controls are disconected. (and dissabled in CA3), and as instructed in the CA3 manual - cut the green wire from the CA\DPs plug (coming from CA) and fed it into the controlers throttle signal (green) throtle plug. (befor doing this got no throtle output at all!)
View attachment 1

Followed all the manual instruction for the setup parameters...
Cal Range - Lo
RShunt Value - as writen on controler 1.333 mohm
Batt - RCLipo 15S
50v Cutoff
ThrO - Voltage
SpdLim - 99.9
Plim 99A 9900W
Pasmode - Off
Torque Sense - disabled
Temp Sensor - Disabled
aux - off
Adjusted input and output throttle voltages to get full scaling of throttle signal - now get from 0 to 4.99v with full throttle - and no "flags"...
so where is the problem??
any Ideas?? :shock:
Thanks!
 
Hi!
Yes initialy i mistakenly hooked the throttle cable to the controler instead of the CA - and it behaved much the same... :(
Tim
 
You should be able to just plug in the hall plug, connect the fat phase wires green-blue, blue-green, yellow-yellow, connect a throttle to the controller and run the motor. If you connect the CA, you plug the CA in to the CA plug on the controller, connect the throttle to the CA instead of the controller, and then run the motor. I'm not sure what you were doing with the green throttle wire between the CA and controller. I have never done anything like that.

There was a brief period of time when I was having Edward swap the wires around inside of the controller so that the color coding all matched instead of having to do the blue-green swap. This worked fine until customers started going directly to Edward without telling him that the controller was for my kit. Swapping the blue and green internally created more confusion than it relieved. Try going blue to blue and green to green and see if you have one of those controllers.

I never ship a motor without running it multiple times first. On the rare occasion where the phase wires are out of sequence I make a big point of labeling the motor.
 
Hi Michael, the deal with movng the throttle wire totaly surprised me to...was stuck several days with no ThrOut signal...until i read about it in the manual :
apendix A.JPG
i will try in the morning - as you suggested - to hook up the system without the CA - directly to the controler.
and will report back.
Thanks
Tim
 
Well unfortunately' even with the CA3 totaly dissconected - and the throttle hooked up directly to the controler - i get the exac same results and behavior as before... :( :( :(
...and i know you test the motors before they leave! .. so all i can assume is a mixup with the Hall sensor wires..
so now im using Lyens "cheat sheet" to test out all the possible hall Phase wire combinations.. :? this could take forever...
http://www.lyen.com/Manual/Sensored_Combination_Worksheet_V2.htm
i will update the results.
Tim
 
Konakid, can someone lend you a tester?

...or if you can wait, buy one. Handy to have in the tool box.

Lyen used to sell them but you can get it from multiple places now and with the labels in English.
 
your refering to a hall tester??
didn't know there was such a thing, but makes sense! i dont know of anyone who could lend me one..but is there no way to check the hall wires for correct color coding (maybe i got them crossed when shortening the long cable) with just a multimeter ??
i tried to.. but don't know the process.
what i found checking the hall sensor wires was:
red+ had no continuity to any other wire.
the yellow green blue - had no continuity between them.
the black had about 4.5 Mega ohms to any of the yellow green or blue..
does this sound right?
Tim
 
KONAKID said:
(maybe i got them crossed when shortening the long cable)
Click to expand...

AHA! Thank you for adding that. Not only is it possible that you crossed the color coding, you may have a bad connection where you reconnected the hall wires after shortening them. Hall wires are very fussy about how they are connected.

Everyone, please hook up and run your mid drive before you start modifying things! When you do start modding things, change one thing at a time. That way you'll have a pretty clear indication of what caused the problem.
 
Your right Michael, a point well taken - i admit... its verry good advice to hook up the controler and motor - temporarily to test it out befor any modifications, and then take it one step at a time.. to help isolate any problems.
unfortunately, in my case iv'e been plagued with shipping troubles from Hong Kong... its taken months to get all the parts together and here, specificaly the batteries..
i ordered ten Turnigy 5S 8000mah lipos from HK, took three months to get them and then two were bad... a couple more months to get two replacements out of them...and one of them arived bad!!! still havnt got the full ten! waiting on the last one. just decided to go ahead for now with 20S.. instead of 25S.
So if i had waited for the batteries to get here.. wouldnt have done anything yet! and would still be at the begining of my project.. :cry:
But thats the way it goes..
as far as the Hall wires, I realize their low voltage - less than 5v, so i soldered them verry carefully and double shrink wrapped them to make sure no shorts or loose connections. the Ohm readings i think confirm this - my concern was for swapping colors.. but as iv'e tryed all the combinations.. it doesn't realy matter.
Still verry consistently get the same results - hooked up directly to the controler.
BTW - Im not trying to imply its a motor problem! i know you check them before shipping. just trying to find out if its wiring? or controler configuration problem maybe? dont know.. just trying to get it to work.
any ideas are appriciated.
Thanks
Tim
 
I'm trying to head off the inevitable freak outs from customers who read the words "wiring problem". I'm not lecturing you, Tim. I'm trying to make the point with other customers that they won't have problems unless they create them.

Here is the information that I got back from Edward Lyen on checking the hall sensors:

"To check the hall sensor, turn the controller on and feed the +5v (red
wire) and negative (black wire) to the hall sensor(s) one by one. You
then use a multi-voltage meter and measure the output signal output
(from yellow, green, or blue wires) from your volt meter. When you
turn the motor slowly by hand, you should see volt jump from around 0V
to around 5v."
 
hey guys! Had some free time today and made a short movie with some LR-Kit riding szenes from the last month.
In the first seconds of the movie you can see some szenes from the day i build the "torque-brace"(?) for my DH-Bike... if you searching for more movies with the LR-Kit, check my other videos on youtube...

[youtube]wzB9xJHTHU0[/youtube]


Ou, and thanks again to Mike, packet arrived today, now i can complete the BMX :)




hey Mike, you talked about a 1:8 reduction (from Motor to wheel) for your Fatbike, can you write me how you calculated it? i want to try singlespeed on the BMX first, would be helpful to know.

cheers guys!
 
The problems Konakid has been having I think this is the reason why people have been asking for the controller to come standard in the kit, A controller and Motor may test ok on the bench separately, but one wire wrong may mean they don't work together ! People don't want to go stuffing around testing halls and buy hall testers and spending hours to make it work, it should work out of the box. Also their is a chance you could overheat and blow up the motor/controller with a bad hall sensor combination if you ride it like that and would that be covered under warranty or not since they are not a matched pair its risky? So they should be part of a matched pair and tested together, also since you are selling a kit I don't know any other mid drive kits that are sold without a matching controller ?
 
Great videos Stephan! It always gives me a huge boost to see customers out having fun with my mid drives.

I'm not sure what your exact question about calculating reduction is. You calculate the reduction at each stage by dividing the small tooth count into the large one. You calculate the overall reduction by multiplying the reductions from each stage together. Example: Stage One- 90T divided by 25T is 3.6:1. Stage Two- 64T divided by 18T is 3.55:1. 3.6 x 3.55 = 12.78:1

To calculate your gearing for a particular top speed, multiply your tire diameter by pi to get the circumference. Divide the tire circumference into the number of inches or cm in a mile or kilometer. That is your number of tire rotations per mile or kilometer. Divide that by 60 for the number of rotations per minute per mph or kph. You can now multiply that number by the desired top speed and know the number of wheel revolutions per minute needed to reach that speed. Divide your max motor rpm by this wheel rpm and you will have the reduction that you need to reach that speed with that motor.

29" x 3.142 = 91.12" - 63,360 inches in a mile divided by 91.12" = 695 wheel rotations per mile. 695 rotations per minute equals a mile a minute or 60 mph so 695 divided by 60 equals 11.59 wheel rpm per mph. If our desired top speed is 40 mph we multiply 11.59 by 40 = 464 wheel rpm @ 40 mph. With a 67 kv motor @ 48V we have 3,216 rpm. 3,216 motor rpm divided by 464 wheel rpm @ 40 mph = 6.93:1 reduction.
 
Nathan said:
The problems Konakid has been having I think this is the reason why people have been asking for the controller to come standard in the kit, A controller and Motor may test ok on the bench separately, but one wire wrong may mean they don't work together ! People don't want to go stuffing around testing halls and buy hall testers and spending hours to make it work, it should work out of the box. Also their is a chance you could overheat and blow up the motor/controller with a bad hall sensor combination if you ride it like that and would that be covered under warranty or not since they are not a matched pair its risky? So they should be part of a matched pair and tested together, also since you are selling a kit I don't know any other mid drive kits that are sold without a matching controller ?
Click to expand...

Nathan- I'm not sure if you are a customer or just making guesses here. Customers have the option of ordering controllers from Edward Lyen or from me. The best reason to order from me is if you are overseas and want to save on shipping. However if the customer feels that it will make a difference to have Edward ship the controller to me first and then have me ship it to them we can do it that way. I have had extremely nervous customers who have asked me to connect the wires on the controller to the motor and ship the kit prewired. I've done that for them, purely as a courtesy.

There are a total of eight wires that have to be connected between the controller and motor. Five of them are connected with one plug connector. The remaining three are connected the same way every time. Unless the customer starts modifying the wiring before running the motor and controller together there won't be a problem. This is not difficult.

Konakid is having wiring problems because he modified the wiring. Period.
 
Thanks for the explanation Mike!

We did a lot of testing with different gearing ratios of the smallblock kits with 75volt-packs. I ordered some of the first sold kits from Mike and build them into bikes for friends and for myself.
At the moment, i ride a relatively low gearing ratio (2nd reduction is 15t to 75T) that would end in about 65km/h top speed (or even more..?).
But that would mean i use the 11T or 13T on the casette, and i likely never use them, they dont handle the chain well at that powerlevel.
Here a pic of my Bike, you can see there is a bigger 86T 219 on the Freewheel-crank, this is now replaced with one of the smallest regular 219 Sproket i can get (73T or 75T)


here a picture of a even smaller reduction, i tried on the BMX-style bike, 16T to 65T i guess... didnt work for long because i tried singlespeed use 22t on the rear wheel and broke haevy singlespeedchains.


Also the Bicycle chain is tending to fall when rear suspension is working hard while using the smallest gears.
So i modifyed a chainguide-thing to fit on the Bicycle-chain at the Freewheel-crank - problem solved...


but to the chainguide-thing, only 36 or maybe 40T can fit, bigger Bicycle-Sprockets would be a problem. i think i have a 36T there at the moment, and very happy with this (i dont pedal, so no use of a 48T there)

I found, that thrue this lower reduction, and higher speed on the bicycle-chain, i can run in slowest gear (on casette) up to 30km/h and still have enogh torque for wheeles and hillclimbing. So i use only the 5 or 6 "slowest" gears on the SRAM X9 to reach speeds from 30 to 50km/h.

Im very happy with this setup, i think it goes easyer on the Beltpully, Jackshaft and 219-Sprocket... the wohle 1st and 2nd reduction...Bike chain and Casette (only using the 5 biggest gears) not sure if thats right, just feels more reasonable than the setups i tried with very high reduction (like 12 to 91 on 219 second reduction).
Also less shifting gears from stops and no more broken bicycle chains since i changed. Power and Torque (@75 Volt, 2500w) are still enoug for my purpose.

i use the cheapest Shimano and SRAM 9x casette with the cheapest SRAM 9x bicycle-chains on all the bikes, those work the best for us. If you spend more money in this parts, you end up with having lighter parts who are not stronger imo.


at the freewheelcrank, we had some problems with the ACS, but only when going 2000 W+
So on all the DH bikes i installed the strong freewheels from sickbikeparts, they can handle the power, no more problemo since we changed them.


on one Bike, the Freewheel on the hub (rearwheel) failed, it was not a cheap hub, but one with ratchets like this one:

the Setup in the moment it broke the ratchets was 12T to 92T on the 219, and 40T to 15T on the Bike-chain... i think this extreme (big reduction to highspeed-gear on the rear hub) is what you should avoid, is that right?

Does it make sense that the freewheel on the rear hub and bike-chain gets more "Hate" when Bike-chain is pulling with lower speed and bigger torque, than with higher speed and lower torque (but bigger Sproket on the rearwheel)?
 
Thanks for all of the great information, Stephen. You and your friends are doing it right. This was my hope in selling mostly to Endless-Spherians. I was hoping to see a lot of creative uses and enhancements to my basic kit. I know it can't always be like this but it's fun for me when it happens.

I am having serious doubts about single run on mid drives unless you're happy with a fairly low top speed. The combination of starting out in a high gear and then applying maximum amps/torque puts the entire driveline under huge strain. If you start out in high gear on a conventional bicycle you can feel the strain through the pedals. With a powerful electric motor there is a lot of force being applied against that resistance. With a lower gear for starting out it's easier not only for the motor but the chains, freewheels and axles.

I started out with a single run final drive on my mid drive for the Luna bike just to see if it were possible. I'm starting to think that single run would require overbuilding everything to such a degree that it's not going to be realistic. Unless like I said you can be happy with a 20 mph top speed.
 
Thank you so much for all your sharing of infomation Foppel!

I am very interested in your choice to stick with cheap 9 speed cassettes / hubs, I guess that's one way to go... replace them 5-10 times and you are still ahead of the $ on the top of the range stuff.

Although I bought all my stuff to go single speed at the back, I want to test out my kit with the cassette first. Also looking at how much has been eaten into the alu body you might be interested in this:

use staples...

[youtube]PCIe9fgFDTA[/youtube]

cheers and love your vids 8)
 
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