Questions answered! I love you all!

[ivi_3]

Hi all!

Thank you all for your help in this ongoing process of getting my first bike up and running! My MAC kit arrived earlier this week and I've been holding off on assembling it because of a question not yet answered by EM3ev. Perhaps it's just too obvious or simple a question, but I just want to be 100% sure.

[strike]The motor arrives in a separate container with a package of grease to install on the motor. There's a slight patina of grease already install the motor well. I'm wondering if I should slather up the grease on the outside grey portion of the motor only or also grease up the exposed inner-workings of the motor. You can see my full delivered package (what a terrible way of wording that... oh well): http://i.imgur.com/ju5G0Bf.jpg.[/strike]

Found an answer: https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=44916

My second question concerns choosing lights for front and rear visibility and then wiring them up. I'm totally fine with the ins and outs of soldering the wires together and wiring them in sequence (thank you Micah!!!http://www.ebikeschool.com/how-to-add-12v-lights-to-your-ebike-without-a-dc-dc-converter/)

I've been thinking about these two lights for front and rear headlights: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01EMS9KSI/_encoding=UTF8?coliid=I1CFBUY3OAVTVI&colid=S5FMT2YNXMVK
To get them closer to 48v, I would wire them in sequence with one run of these lights for general side visibility: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JMEQOUK/_encoding=UTF8?coliid=IRIES8VEB05VV&colid=S5FMT2YNXMVK

I'm concerned about connecting that sequence of lights to the switch and to the battery. I'll come back with pictures of all of that, but that's a concern for a different day.

 

[Triketech]

The grease is there if you think you need it for assembly. It looks like a standard white lithium, and can't hurt to add, I usually do directly to the gears before assembly.

Lights, well, your on your own. I use a DC-DC converter and a China Cheapie CREE XLM LED headlight and an AA powered tail light.

 

[bnoooogers]

The flood lights you linked would be good for off-road use, but not so much for street riding. Flood lights have a wide beam and will blind and annoy all the drivers/riders in front of you.

The LED strings are good but you have to wire them correctly. They come as a roll of 100 parallel strings of 3 LEDs + resistor in series. You have to cut 4 (48V battery divided by 12V per strip) sections (of any number of parallel groups you want, as long as they are the same length) then connect the (-) of one to the (+) of the next so they are in series instead of in parallel. If you have any doubts about frying your lights with the battery, just add extra strings in series and try that first. The LEDs won't turn on until you have a low enough voltage requirement for your battery. Take off one series string at a time until they work. Then make sure that setup also works at the bottom end of your battery voltage as well (3.3V per cell for 18650s), or you'll be limping home in the dark.

Finally, if you want to put high-power flood lights in series with low power LED strings, you'll be disappointed. In a series circuit, each part sees the same current. An 18W 12V flood light draws 1.5A. The whole roll of LEDs draws 25W, or 2.1A. Only one of those can be true, so either the flood lights will run over-current and burn out quickly or the strings will be dim. You can cut the string down to a matching current, but that is gonna be 1.5/2.1 * 5m = 3.6 meters of LEDs. I hope you ride a long tandem bike!

 

[Ozzzz]

I just put that grease in now, after 3000 miles :lol:
Just went through rethinking the lighting set up. I just had a 12v DC convertor, it is another device in the string, but i had a few other implements to run from a 12v socket (and usb adaptor). Considered series and usb wiring but have enough wires.. and wired lighting itself adds that other 'device in the string'.

I went for this : https://www.ebay.ca/sch/i.html?_sacat=0&_nkw=niterider+mako+150&_frs=1

Either charge the batteries at home or from the 12v buck, they allow a lot of riding time. Bike lights are at least properly shielded, cheap and designed for the purpose..
(may need some of that silicon though..)

 

[dogman dan]

Personally, I found it much easier to just get a rubber mount on ebay, which allows using most any led flashlight on the bars. Flashies for the rear are easy to find.

But I don't ride night daily, so for me, being able to use the lights in a camp, or around the house is a plus. When I bought the stuff, I was doing some touring.

This way the light has a nice focused beam, so I can aim it to be less blinding to others, yet see what I'm about to roll through really good. But its not dim, two 200 lumen lights is brighter than car headlights used to be.

Yeah, the hassle of separate batteries. The rear flashy ones last about a year though, and in front, a NiCad set still gets you many hours use. Not like the incandescent bulb days.

 

[Alan B]

Flashlights and a lot of bike lights are not well designed for night road riding. Depending on whether you need to see where you are going from your light, or whether there is enough street lighting, you may want to choose a quality light that has a road legal pattern, or just provides some white light forward. It is a different requirement. Good road lighting is more like vehicle low beams, with no light above a cutoff line and varying amounts of light at different distances to compensate for the differing path distances at different angles.

 

[tomjasz]

The ebikes.ca CA linking lights are quite nice. Great road patterns and StVZO Compliant Optics. Previous from Alan.... https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=1221597&display_history=true#p1221597

 

[ivi_3]

@bnooooogers, thanks so much for the feedback! I didn't realize that series connections will all default to the same DC level (i know i'm janking up my nomenclature here...) That makes complete sense though! I wish some pre-cut 12v strips were available on amazon similar to the ones linked in: http://www.ebikeschool.com/how-to-add-12v-lights-to-your-ebike-without-a-dc-dc-converter/. Am i correct in thinking that I can link two 12v headlamps with two 12v led strips as long as the voltage is the same?

I have some lights already for commuting, so I'll just use those for the time being and put the light installation off a bit.

Next big question....

I thik EM3ev installed my washers improperly on the disc brake side. See this photo pretty please: http://i.imgur.com/HKlwdyB.jpg.

As you can see the axle washer is outside of the torque washer. It's going to be a hefty soldering job to cut the pre-made em3ev connection hub off to get the cap and washers off. Because I ahve a grintech torque arm on the other side, will I be ok without the axle washer hugging the inside of the dropout?

 

[ivi_3]

The ebikes.ca CA linking lights are quite nice. Great road patterns and StVZO Compliant Optics. Previous from Alan.... https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=1221597&display_history=true#p1221597

Those do look very nice... might have to have my Vancouver relatives pick those up for me over Christmas

 

[ivi_3]

Em3ev got back to me on the washer placement and all of my questions regarding washer placement!! Ty