Nine Continent Motor Cover retro fit for disc brake

masserin

1 mW
Joined
Aug 20, 2009
Messages
18
I purchased a 9C cover from ebikes.ca to retro fit a disc brake on a 20" 9C ebikekit.com front motor I have. When any moutain bikers would ride my e-chopper the main gripe they had was that the bike did not have a front brake. The only way to get one on this particular bike was to either machine my own coverter-too much trouble, or to try one of these next generation 9C covers from ebikes.ca.

I machined the bearing recess so that it was 0.740" deep from the bearing cup edge on a lathe. You can see in the photos that gets down into the casting where there are voids. After I installed the cover back on the rotor something was rubbing which left the black/grey marks on the inside of the cover after a couple of days of riding. It looked to me like it was the threads on one of the tie downs for the windings, but it was obvious that trouble was brewing, so I took the motor apart again and machined a 0.500" wide recess 0.020" deep to try and eliminate the rubbing on a mill with a rotary table. This didn't work so I installed the original cover back on the bike and rode it that way for a week. After all the effort, money, and time I put into trying to make this work I decided to create a larger groove to give the internal components more clearance. I put the cover back in the rotary table and machined a 1.000" groove 0.035" deep. It works just fine now but the cover is only about 0.070" thick where the recess is (the cover is about 0.105" thick).

My take on the situation is that if you need a motor with a disk brake, and do not have a mill and a lathe at your disposal (you'll never mill the 1.000" groove in a lathe since the cover will start to chatter unless you make a dampening device), it is probably not worth the effort and money. You'll be well into 50% of the cost of just buying a new motor already setup to accept a disc brake.IMAG0033.jpg
 

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I just bolted a disc to the side of my smaller 9C motor. I used spacers to place the disc in the right position. I had to machine the middle of the disc away, and add new mounting holes.
 
I considered using the spacer approach, but decided against it. My concern was that the motor would not be sealed very well. Time will tell if using washers between the flange of the cover and the hub motor causes an issue due to road dirt.
 
The holes I drilled through the side cover were tapped (M5).

With M5 bolts through the holes, then lock nuts on the inside, there was no water ingress at all.
 
My issue was not with the disc rotor position. Wires were rubbing inside of the hub motor on the cover as shown and annotated in the pictures. Eventually this rubbing would have worn through the wire insulation and caused a failure, which is why I machined a groove to create the necessary clearance for the wires.
 
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