LightningRods mid drive kit

LightningRods said:
I'm going to contact everyone on the production list and see if spending another $50 for the upgrade to the W-I HD freewheel is unanimous.

You know me Mike, if you think the WI HD freewheel is worth it, $50 bucks extra is no big deal.
 
There are two freewheels in the Luna drive. One is human power only and the 16T ACS will last a very long time in that location. The other freewheel is right at the highest stress point where other parts have been breaking and requiring repeated upgrades. The ACS at that location on the lower jackshaft has never broken but I think it will wear out quickly. For $50 I'm definitely upgrading to the W-I on my own Luna.

eMTBHunter, the big block is going to change your life. Your application is one of those where it is absolutely perfect. It will be much cooler and happier pulling a load up hills than the small block would be.

I think that the Timberline type gear cluster that I have would be ideal for your bike. Several really low gears with fairly close spacing will be perfect for climbing hills with a load. As long as you can get traction you'll get up the hill.
 
eMTBHunter said:
Has anyone had any problem with stock rear axles/skewers?
Hmmm, I just swapped out my rear tire and noticed my rear QR has gotten pretty loose. Going down to LBS to get new QRs on Monday actually...

Not sure if it's from the motor torque or just from the Km's racked up...I never had problems on my GnG but I've already put more Km on my LR than I had in the GnG and my GnG bike base was brand spanking new...my current bike is an 01 with stock (couple times rebuilt) wheel hubs.
 
I just partially pulled apart my hub body and it's pretty much collapsed inside. It's to the LBS because all those bits and pieces look way to complex for me... splines on body, rachet shapes, pawls and axle all look fine touch wood. Some kind small bearing inside has totally been destroyed dropping the locking area and that end piece and they've just eaten into each other.... This is a second hand bike so will give it ago rebuilt before I lay blame totally on the enormous power it has recently experienced.

eek
 
Green Machine said:
LightningRods said:
You could order up one of these gear sets from Timberline right now. They also do complete wheel builds. I'll be working on the custom mid drive for this bike for some time but I will try to throw a standard kit on it to see how the gears do.

This setup sadly won't work on the Luna with the 4" tires. Eric wanted to stay with a standard 135mm rear hub. The final drive chain will hit the tire before accessing the lower gears. The point of the 170mm or 190mm hubs on most fat bikes is to move the sprockets out so that there is a clean shot from the BB chainwheel to the inside sprocket. On my own Luna I'm thinking about going to 2.25" Schwalbe Big Ben road tires. I'll be going fast on pavement and fat bike tires are not the hot ticket for that anyway. With 2.25" tires and narrower rims this gear set would work.

Its right i chose to go with 135mm because i wanted my bike to be compatible with all the igh on the market (back then fat bike was not popular yet)

If you want to run fat tires you have to go with an igh like a nexus 3 speed and for my bike i would recommend with roller brake (about 130 dollars on ebay) or a nexus 8 or even a rohloff. i have run nuvincis before and they also work although not my favorite (heavy and shifter is like a toy)

Thanks for these replies,

to start with for the luna I have a nuvinci 171b with a 2.4 inch holy roller tire I want to use for the rear wheel, I'll stick with this size tire if I need to go to gears later, sounds like it might work.
 
I had planned to run a Rohloff on my Luna with 2.25" tires. I'm starting to consider a heavy duty derailleur setup since I'm swapping the tires out anyway. It's mostly a matter of money. I love the Rohloff but there are always so many places to spend the same $1500.

When this first run of Lunas is sold out I hope that Eric will make more. Because of the increase in popularity in fat bikes there are now a lot of 170mm rear hubs available including a 170mm Rohloff for fat bikes. One of the only changes I'd make in the overall brilliant Luna design would be to open the rear dropout width to 170mm.
 
I'm applying similar logic, Mike. I'm going try the timberline setup first (Mike V at timberline has been very helpful) and see how that goes. Hopefully in a year or two there will be a lot better sense of the Rohloff's reliability at high power levels, which ought to coincide with the approximate time that my wife will begin to forget how much money I've poured into this toy and I can remind her all over again with a $1500 IGH.
 
Mike V is a great resource. Very smart, very helpful, and like I said open minded.He's calling me every other day now. I think I've got him hooked on ebikes. :D

No matter how strong the six speed is or how well it works, it won't have the huge ratio spread of the Rohloff. That doesn't matter so much for someone like you who doesn't want to go 50 mph. With a top speed of 25 or so you should have plenty of ratio spread with the 6 speed.
 
To John Bozi- I have 48volt 20ah Panasonic cells bought from Lunacycle. I have used the bicycle before and everything was running fine. I started reading on the CA and tried to get to the other settings to complete the whole setup and I think I must have adjusted it the wrong way.

The controller is from Lyen and it was ordered for LR small block.

Here is another video

https://youtu.be/V3ZauBiAU18
[youtube]V3ZauBiAU18[/youtube]

I don't understand when I connect the battery it turns on full throttle on its own and the CA reads 72 volts. Then when I press the left button on the CA it reads leaving setup and then the motor stops running. The throttle symbol on the CA is working when I press twist it.

[moderator edit to fix link]
 
I don't know about the high voltage reading. Try unplugging the throttle from the CA3 before connecting the battery. I see a lot of throttles come through the shop. Every once in a while I see one with the wires in the wrong pin holes on the connector. You can get a full throttle signal because the wires are out of sequence. I can't explain the throttle icon moving on the CA display. Maybe the icon is reading the signal wire and the pos and neg wires are reversed? Start there anyway.

The motor stops running on setup mode because that's the way Grin set up the CA. Once you cycle back to run mode the unit starts getting the throttle signal again.
 
Disclaimer: At this point in my build I have my CA-3 set up to just provide the basics, I did that some time ago and I don’t have docs handy.

That being said, to me it looks like you have the CA-3 set to go WOT at 0.86 Volts, which should be throttle low, which would explain the motor being floored with no throttle.

You might try setting the CA-3 to ‘Throttle Pass-Thru’ and see if that tames the beast. If so then go back to the CA ’Throttle active’ mode and set the throttle output voltages close to what the CA reports the throttle input voltages to be. And then salt and pepper to taste.

The high voltage being reported by the CA? Dunno...
 

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This sounds like a CA settings issue.

It is very common for a bike to go full wot the first time someone connects up the CA to a new kit. It has happened to me while the wheels were on the ground and yes my bike flew across the garage and smashed into a pole, lucky nobody was hurt.

It's all about the CA settings. you need to read the CA manual to get things working how you want. It is worth it. These settings won't be to everyones liking but they work as well as possible for me.

for throttle type I use the current (battery amps) method.

Easy to remember 555

Uprate 5v/sec
fast rate 5v/sec
fast thrash 5a

Amp limiting
30a
100 gain

Edited because my info was about retrofitting
 
go into your battery setup and check how many cells you have in series is correct. Is panasonic Limg or Lipo etc.

The only thing I don't understand is why you are getting that high voltage, Highly doubt this is related to the controller or LR kit.

I did see you OHMs setting was "1" you also need to copy the OHM reading from the controller case into that point.

Finally, I recommend an email to Justin, he is an awesome guy and responds very quickly especially when something is related to his kit.

The other thing you could do is post the issue in CA thread, those guys should be able to work it out too.

The only issue you have is the high voltage reading. The rest is totally normal operation where you need to read the manual to get the settings you want.

EDIT the mod was for older controllers
 
Mike: I tried disconnecting the throttle from the CA3. I went to my MacPro and put in the settings according to the Egrin website. Same problem. That jump to 72 volts is confusing. All I do is press the setup button for 5 seconds and it resets and stops the motor. But, it also goes back to the 48volts.

John Bozi: I will try your suggestions. After that I will be selling this setup and buying the Bafang BBHD. I bought the BBSO2 for my hybrid and the plug and play of the setup was surprisingly easy.
 
Mate, there is no need to sell up just because of some CA settings that you need to configure.

Let me ask a stupid question:

Have you tried unplugging the cycleanalyst and not using it? Just plug in your throttle to the controller? Then you will most probably see that the wheel will spin when you use the throttle only.

The rest is Ca settings.
 
Parts for the Luna Drives are arriving from everywhere. My machinist just brought over the jackshaft axles including the new 15mm diameter lower axles. The photos below show the difference between the previous 12mm version and the new 15mm lower axle. That is a lot of hardened chrome moly. Has the Big Block met it's match?

12vs15mm-1.jpg


12vs15mm-2.jpg


The laser cut parts were supposed to be finished today but are now promised for tomorrow. The White Industries freewheels should also be here tomorrow. It's all coming together.
 
Machined porn.

Raptor kit almost ready to go? I have 2 days off next week and it's be great to get the Raptor converted to big block or the Motobecane Fatbike big block going.
 
that looks great Mike, my Luna frame will be arriving soon too, shaping up to be a good start to the new year.

Todd


Mike will you put one of the new larger shafts on your bike that your testing in your spare time?
 
Mammalian04 said:
Machined porn.

Raptor kit almost ready to go? I have 2 days off next week and it's be great to get the Raptor converted to big block or the Motobecane Fatbike big block going.

The Raptor kit is ready to go. I just have to get more big blocks which I can't currently. I have four big motors slated for the beginning of the Luna build queue. I'm going to get ten more big blocks in the shop as soon as the Alipay payment gateway is back up. They thought Christmas would be a great time to take it off line to rework everything.

I'll get your Motobecane mid drive set up for you. I have all of the parts for that in the shop.
 
Marin said:
that looks great Mike, my Luna frame will be arriving soon too, shaping up to be a good start to the new year.

Mike will you put one of the new larger shafts on your bike that your testing in your spare time?

Yes I will be putting the larger shaft on my own bike once I have everyone else taken care of.
 
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