Qulbix Raptor 140

[Archer]

Thanks Spinning Magnets for posting the Qulbix/Lightning Rods hybrid bike project.I do believe this is going to be a WINNER!

I'm stoked to see what the finished bike will be like.Performance and looks etc.

By the way what is the ES facebook address link?

Tim.

 

[efMX Trials Electric Freeride]

https://www.facebook.com/groups/endless.sphere

 

[Springerpanhead]

Hi Everyone
Just bought a new Raptor 140 which is my first Ebike. Charged it up, all good, went for a ride then recharged and went about 15 miles, then with the battery at 60% I made the mistake of resetting the stats. Damn MaxE then thought 60% was 100% and wouldn't charge, only went to DETECTING CHARGER, rode the bike some more to get the battery down to 86% at the new settings and it still only went to DETECTING CHARGER. Can I disconnect the battery from the controller and make up a set of leads, and connect the battery direct to the charger that came with the bike, or can someone give me step by step instructions on how to reprogram this sucker so it will charge again. I need screen by screen step by step instructions because I am of a generation who when growing up, cutting edge technology was represented by a variable capacitor tuned vacuum tube operated AM radio with push buttons that mechanically moved the capacitor to change the stations. Have been fighting this for several days. Someone mentioned using an EXTERNAL charger. Can the one that came with the bike be used in that capacity, and if not where can I get one that can. THANKS IN ADVANCE TO ANYONE WHO CAN HELP ME WITH THIS. Sure is frustrating to cough up $7000,00 for something that turns into a garage ornament on day 2 because of some software glitch in a Ruskie controller.
Springerpanhead

 

[Allex]

Do you charge you battery with a regular charger that came with the bike(battery)?
How many volts are the battery? How many volts is the charger?
You can charge the battery through the controller but you will need to have a charge coil for that and a regular PSU as well. I will getting in them soon, hopefully.

If you have detecting charger on your screen you are probably stuck in charge mode -which in your case you dont use at all. So you have to exit this mode. Now I cant remember how you do that but it is something like LEFT from the main manu.

 

[Offroader]

I agree it doesn't make sense. IF you are charging properly with coil and DC power supply it doesn't matter what the SOC says. It will charge it to a set voltage you set in the charge settings. Basically the Max-E doesn't care what the SOC says when charging.

I hope you're charging the Max-E with the coil and DC power supply as it is much safer than a bulk charger, plus you get to use a much higher quality power supply.

 

[Offroader]

Update on the Nord Lock washers. These things work and are highly recommended. However they do take some minor care to make sure they work properly and you will still need to do torque checks every so often.
Honestly, you are taking stupid risks by not using them as they are cheap and easy to install.

Here are my findings.

Without Nord Lock washers the following bolts will always come loose eventually no matter how tight you make them. It may take a few rides but will always eventually come loose and when loose you can damage your bike as a few people have.

Axle nuts
clamping drop out bolts
Swing arm bolts (That bolt the swingarm to the bearing to the frame)

Putting nord lock washers on the axle nuts are a must or the clamping drop out pinch bolts will come loose even with nord lock washers. The clamping dropouts steel will bend inward from the clamping pinch bolt torque but having Nord Lock washers on the axle nut seems to prevent this from happening. I think the nord lock washers dig into the steel and prevent the pinch bolts from squeezing the dropouts and prevent bending the steel.

I found only 1 time out of 20+ rides that one side of the swing arm bolts came loose with the Nord Lock washers. That was a long time ago but since then they never budged. This particular side bolt had once became very loose before I used the Nord Lock washers and I drove for a while with it loose and not noticing and when I completely removed the bolt it had lots of metal filings coming out of the hole. I must have damaged this side slightly which caused higher tolerances or something. This shows how important it is to make sure all the bolts are tight or permanent damage will result by riding with loose bolts.

Here are my recommendation on using the Nord Lock washers.

Apply them on the Axle nuts, clamping drop out bolts, and swing arm bolts and lube the bolts and nut before torqueing.

Check bolt toque each ride for the first 100-200 miles and then when they are proven to not move you can reduce the checks. If you loosen any of the bolts for maintenance then you have to redo the checks again for a while, I still recommend checking these bolts every so often even when they have been proven to hold for a long time with the Nord lock washers because the risk of damage is high if any of the bolts come loose.

If you're not using Nord Lock washers you basically have to check the torque each ride. Even though I use Nord Lock washers and none of my bolts have come loose in a long time I still check torque before each long ride because I beat the crap out of my bike. But I may eventually only check torque after every other ride.

It seems once they are tight and have lasted for 50-100 miles they will never come loose.

 

[Rix]

Damn, going to give the Nordlocks a try, those are great results.

 

[Offroader]

Damn, going to give the Nordlocks a try, those are great results.

Yeah they just work, I only learned about them from the forum here. A must for the axle and also for the swingarm. Qulbix should really be adding them to the kit and their complete bikes because most people just don't check the torque often enough.

Even I did damage to my swingarm bolt by it coming loose and when loose the bolt was moving around inside the frame with all the riding causing lots of metal filings.

 

[Rix]

Damn, going to give the Nordlocks a try, those are great results.

Yeah they just work, I only learned about them from the forum here. A must for the axle and also for the swingarm. Qulbix should really be adding them to the kit and their complete bikes because most people just don't check the torque often enough.

Even I did damage to my swingarm bolt by it coming loose and when loose the bolt was moving around inside the frame with all the riding causing lots of metal filings.

I am going to use them on my axles, that's the one problem area I have, if I use regen, which I don't because of the axle nuts loosening.

 

[ziltoid81]

Still not finished, but nearly.

 

[BCTECH]

pretty cool light, did you drill out the frame to install ?

 

[Rix]

Sweet Raptor Ziltoid, I see you running the MAXE and a baby cromotor, very fast combo there.

 

[ziltoid81]

Rix, its a MXUS V2 4t

I glued the led bars to the frame and drilled just 2 holes for the cables.
Got them of DX, 14cm long, 3-4mm in height, 12v, 0.5A.
Unfortunately they are white, i used some red foil to make a red light.

 

[Jonboy]

Still not finished, but nearly.

Looking sweet! What batteries did you go for?

 

[ziltoid81]

20s19p 25r

Cells are here and glued together.

Waiting for the nickelstrips to arrive.

 

[Rix]

Rix, its a MXUS V2 4t

I glued the led bars to the frame and drilled just 2 holes for the cables.
Got them of DX, 14cm long, 3-4mm in height, 12v, 0.5A.
Unfortunately they are white, i used some red foil to make a red light.

Yah, that's what I meant :lol: MXUS 4T, I got one on the way. Holy $h!t, 20s 19p of 25R cells, can you say hundred plus mile range?

 

[ziltoid81]

I just want to lower the stress to the cells for maximum cycles and minimize the voltage drop under load and of course plenty of range.

I guess the new setup will be less efficient than my current setup (BBS01 18A/36V with ~650wh batt), so i wanted "enough" juice.

Initially i wanted to go for a ~300 cell A123 26650 battery, i really love the specs, but this would double or tripple the price AND weight.

I hope the pack will perform for 2-3 years with 50 to 60% of its starting capacity.
Paperspecs are one story, but real life use another.
My konion v3 pack lost around 15% after one year and under 100 full cycles.
But i charge them nearly every work day.

I hope the decision against the A123 wasnt to bad.

 

[Hyena]

Nice work ziltoid, I have the same ones on my latest raptor build. I was originally using the longer 18cm ones as DRLs on the front but they were a tad too long to fit there on the back. You can get get in red and other colours too. They actually match in perfectly on a black and white bike as their frame is black and the emitter surface is white when turned off.

Holy $h!t, 20s 19p of 25R cells, can you say hundred plus mile range?

I like internal controllers so lose a bit of battery space, but if going with an external controller I've found you can actually fit up to 21S28P. No that wasn't a typo!
Using the new 3.5ah samsung or LG cells that's a whopping 98ah, so 7.5kwhr and it will happily spit out 20kw!
Obviously this is crazy heavy and expensive but if you want the nearest thing to a long range e-moto, this is it. Yeah, I win

This is it in 2 14P halves. Though my preferred method build spec lately it using a single14P block and a sabvoton internally. Plenty of power and range as a heavy duty ebike without pushing it totally into e-moto territory in terms of weight and handling.

 

[ziltoid81]

I only found the longer ones in red......maybe im to blind. :wink:

 

[marcn]

Offloader I agree about the Nordlock washers for the swingarm, axle and dropouts. You recommended them a few months back and we adopted them in our build. We also used helicoils in the dropouts and brake adapter, and changed all the bolts over in the dropout and swingarm to add even more strength. Haven't lost ANY torque in 240km so far.

It's obvious when our Nordlocks lose tension, as they make a fairly loud sound as the washers release from being untightened. If these ever came loose while riding, the sound is loud enough to make you think you've broken a spoke.

 

[Rix]

Nice work ziltoid, I have the same ones on my latest raptor build. I was originally using the longer 18cm ones as DRLs on the front but they were a tad too long to fit there on the back. You can get get in red and other colours too. They actually match in perfectly on a black and white bike as their frame is black and the emitter surface is white when turned off.

Holy $h!t, 20s 19p of 25R cells, can you say hundred plus mile range?

I like internal controllers so lose a bit of battery space, but if going with an external controller I've found you can actually fit up to 21S28P. No that wasn't a typo!
Using the new 3.5ah samsung or LG cells that's a whopping 98ah, so 7.5kwhr and it will happily spit out 20kw!
Obviously this is crazy heavy and expensive but if you want the nearest thing to a long range e-moto, this is it. Yeah, I win

This is it in 2 14P halves. Though my preferred method build spec lately it using a single14P block and a sabvoton internally. Plenty of power and range as a heavy duty ebike without pushing it totally into e-moto territory in terms of weight and handling.

Yah, that's a huge amount of energy storage there, 3 times more than I would want on anything that can be pedaled. I think the happy medium is around 2kw of storage. You also bring up a good point, where does the line cross from Ebikes, to Emotorcycels? With the Raptor frame, we could totally go into the realm weight wise with the example you provided above. That's same as some of the Zero Motorcycles. Nice packs BTW, of course I would expect nothing less from HEB

 

[Offroader]

Just for your information, I mentioned some time back that the head tube was too long with the raptor 165 frame and Qulbix said they would take that into account. The raptor 140 frame has exactly the same size head tube at 150mm. If any of you don't know 150mm head tube is ridiculously long and actually so long that it won't properly fit forks unless you cheat, which isn't recommended. Worse case is that you don't even have the room to cheat like when using the popular DNM USD-8 fork you will have tire rub on the lower crown.

This means that there is not enough adjustment in dual crown forks to properly use 26" tires, specifically the DNM USD 8, but also my Marzocchi 888 didn't fit properly.

I mentioned it needed to be at least .5 inches shorter, which isn't much. This would make my Marzocchi 888 fork fit without having to go below the Min marks. But you could cheat a little with the Marzocchi 888 forks and go below it, but not something that is recommended.

Now the problem is the DNM USD-8 fork that everybody now uses is that even with the upper crown to the very top of the fork (Which makes you go above the Max line marks on the fork which isn't manufacturer recommended), there isn't enough room for the full 8" of travel. You need to measure 8" from top of tire to bottom of lower crown, I measure a little under 8" and my tire rubs on bottom out.

Even with the upper crown mounted to the very top of the fork, it still doesn't clear 8", so on a heavy bottom out like a high jump you will hear the tire rubbing the lower crown.

Raptor 165 and Raptor 140 both have exactly 150mm head tubes and won't work properly with the DNM USD 8 forks and 26" tires. Yes they will work for most driving but if you land a high jump with a 26" tire you are going to rub the tire on the lower crown.

Since I bought a raptor 140 frame and want to use a 26" tire without the tire hitting the lower crown on bottom out I will have to consider reducing the size of the head tube. Not an easy job to do properly if I am lucky to have the space to do it. It seems I could remove about .5" from it without issues, hopefully.

I specifically mentioned this as one of the few faults of this frame with the 165, and Qulbix acknowledged that they would take it into consideration but didn't change it with the 140.

 

[Mammalian04]

I'm glad you mentioned this Offroader. It is a good reminder for Qulbix. This won't affect the type of riding I do but it should be addressed nonetheless (shorter head tube in the next version or a short list of recommended forks that don't have this limitation.

 

[Hyena]

Yeah it's not been an issue for me either. Have you tried adding a little more pressure ? It strikes me that if you are bottoming out THAT close to the maximum travel you probably have it set a bit soft. Either that or you're a maniac riding around doing ebike parkour

A revision of the frame would be nice but I can't see it happening any time soon. Out of curiosity are you using internal or external headset cups ?

 

[Offroader]

Yeah it's not been an issue for me either. Have you tried adding a little more pressure ? It strikes me that if you are bottoming out THAT close to the maximum travel you probably have it set a bit soft. Either that or you're a maniac riding around doing ebike parkour

A revision of the frame would be nice but I can't see it happening any time soon. Out of curiosity are you using internal or external headset cups ?

I'm using the shortest headset I could find, which is the cane creek 40 zerostack, has most of the cups internal but has a small amount sticking out of the top.

I increased the pressure of the DNM fork bottom out to 150LBS which I believe is the max bottom out. It does take maybe a 30" jump to flat or maybe higher to bottom out. If I hit something really hard, usually something that comes up unexpected I will bottom out.

It's not a deal killer as the tire rubs slightly with the upper crown all the way at the top, I guess I can live with that. What kind of sucks is that duro should be releasing the razorback 26"x3" tires shortly and the increased tire size over the 2.6" that I'm using could be a problem.

What I intend to do is raise the upper crown above the top of the fork so that maybe 1/3 will not be clamped to anything. This is kind of ridiculous that I have to do this.

I thought it could be the USD 8 fork, but the Marzocchi 888 fork also didn't fit properly.