Qulbix Raptor ebike + frame kit

[Offroader]

I'm sorry to hear of your troubles Offroader! It sounds like I need to get my butt exercising on a treadmill to make up for some battery weight. Luckily for my weight loss plan, ordering individual parts is a huge P.I.T.A. and seems to be taking forever........

I went for a ride today and actually the extra batteries had no effect on the handling. It seems that I needed to relearn the bike and sleep on it, then after that the bike feels back to normal. I hit the same areas that I did yesterday with trouble, and they felt as easy to do as before I added the batteries. It is amazing how your adapts and learns.

I am thinking it is worth to fill the bike up with the batteries as this give you so much driving time, with little impact on bike handling.

The issues I am having now is the cromotor heats up to very high temps. I am not sure just how hot I should run it but I had it up to like 160 Celsius or 320 F. At these high temps the motor started to really make rubbing and grinding noises.

I am going to have to look into drilling holes in the side of the motor to help keep the temps lower.

 

[Dark Knight]

I'm sorry to hear of your troubles Offroader! It sounds like I need to get my butt exercising on a treadmill to make up for some battery weight. Luckily for my weight loss plan, ordering individual parts is a huge P.I.T.A. and seems to be taking forever........

I went for a ride today and actually the extra batteries had no effect on the handling. It seems that I needed to relearn the bike and sleep on it, then after that the bike feels back to normal. I hit the same areas that I did yesterday with trouble, and they felt as easy to do as before I added the batteries. It is amazing how your adapts and learns.

I am thinking it is worth to fill the bike up with the batteries as this give you so much driving time, with little impact on bike handling.

The issues I am having now is the cromotor heats up to very high temps. I am not sure just how hot I should run it but I had it up to like 160 Celsius or 320 F. At these high temps the motor started to really make rubbing and grinding noises.

I am going to have to look into drilling holes in the side of the motor to help keep the temps lower.

Water cooling could be the go...?
I still haven't sourced my motor as yet, and the 4Motus crew seem to get the same motors as the Cro but mod it for off the shelf water cooling (modified axel and stator it would appear). I've just posted on their thread (http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=44852&start=50) to establish of they offer this motor to the public, not just as one of their bike builds... My thoughts are it's better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it. I know this doesn't help you now but maybe they will sell the water cooling parts alone...?
A couple of people have indicated heating issues - I'm putting this down to the fact these new frames (and in some cases controllers) are allowing a lot more volts/amps (i.e. total watts) for longer periods of time into the motor itself...the batteries and/or controllers are no longer the 'limiting' parts. It's not that lipos haven't always been able to supply a lot of juice, just now it can be done for a longer period of time...
God luck getting it all sorted mate and as always, keep us posted.

 

[marcn]

I'm sorry to hear of your troubles Offroader! It sounds like I need to get my butt exercising on a treadmill to make up for some battery weight. Luckily for my weight loss plan, ordering individual parts is a huge P.I.T.A. and seems to be taking forever........

I went for a ride today and actually the extra batteries had no effect on the handling. It seems that I needed to relearn the bike and sleep on it, then after that the bike feels back to normal. I hit the same areas that I did yesterday with trouble, and they felt as easy to do as before I added the batteries. It is amazing how your adapts and learns.

I am thinking it is worth to fill the bike up with the batteries as this give you so much driving time, with little impact on bike handling.

The issues I am having now is the cromotor heats up to very high temps. I am not sure just how hot I should run it but I had it up to like 160 Celsius or 320 F. At these high temps the motor started to really make rubbing and grinding noises.

I am going to have to look into drilling holes in the side of the motor to help keep the temps lower.

Those temps are way to high. The guys at Cromotor have the alarm warning at 90C, and automatic shut off at 120C. I previously asked them what their limits were, and that's what they said. If you're pushing 120C+ I'd be interested to see what your windings look like!

 

[marcn]

How would using a 3 switch off the controller and 3 switch off the CAv3 work? Presumably the controllers switches govern so if you have it in switch 1 20% power and then switch 1 on the CAv3 for 50% power, what happens?

I have the a 3 speed switch to the controller and another through the CA for power or amp limiter. Works nice on a high powered setup and not afraid to give it strangers to test ride.

Thanks Snell,

So you've got the controller limiting the speed through the 3 speed switch and the CA limiting amps through it's own 3 speed switch?

It's probably an easier move for me than adjusting the ramp up values when incorporating pedal assist. As it was mentioned, you can still flip the bike even with a set speed of 20km/hr, and with PAS being like an on/off switch, you really want to tame those amps till you're moving.

 

[Offroader]

Those temps are way to high. The guys at Cromotor have the alarm warning at 90C, and automatic shut off at 120C. I previously asked them what their limits were, and that's what they said. If you're pushing 120C+ I'd be interested to see what your windings look like!

I just hooked up my temp sensor today, I didn't know how hot I was getting the motor. In the summer, 120c is very easily hit. 90c will be hit just full throttling it up a hill, especially after the motor has warmed up. 160c was hit climbing stairs after pushing the motor for a long time, the motor really heats up doing that. But I have climbed these stairs in the cooler weather without any issues.

That all said I should have been monitoring my temps all along. I got away with pushing this motor hard during the winter, but the summer it is not the case.

I am going to open up the motor soon and take a peak inside, I am honestly scared to what I will find.

I'm going to look into a water cooled cromotor like dark knight recommended. Actually the creator of that water cooled cromotor said that he burnt a regular cromotor in 10 minutes with 7Kw continuous, 10Kw peak. I am only pushing 4KW, but I have a ridiculous amount of battery capacity now and that will eventually cause the temps to rise. Plus I am very hard on the throttle, pushing 50 watt hour miles.

I am also very tired of dealing with heat issues on hub motors. I thought the cromotor would take the heat of the way I drive, but it doesn't in its stock form. My old bike had a 1000 watt hubmotor and I would toast that thing every ride, surprised it never broke on me. I think water cooling is the way to go if you want to push the motor.

 

[Scott]

I have hit 130C a few times with my cromotor. I will be opening mine up soon and will take a picture of the windings.
Mine also heats up too fast and I have looked at a few different ways to cool it. Here is what I have found so far.

Oil cooling is what I would like to do the most because I don’t want dirt getting into my motor. The thing you have to be careful about is the magnets should not get hotter than 90C if even that hot. The oil will very easily heat up the magnets so that is the down side to oil cooling.
I found a good video of before and after oil cooling.
[youtube]5TIAJqYbAWk[/youtube]
It from this video it looks like oil cooling cuts the temp in half with compared to no cooling. Comparing gravitydreaming’s power usage in this video to what power I am running, with a larger motor at 14kw my motor heats up about as fast as his does. I would assume that with oil cooling my motor I would see similar temperatures that gravitydreaming is seeing on his bike. I have actually not seen where this video was posted from on endless sphere I just happened to see it on youtube.

With Venting a hub motor sounds like just drilling holes in the side covers does not do that much. Special holes should be drilled to create air force air inside and let heat escape the motor.
http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=9791&start=575

Water cooling would be nice but it looks like attempts here on endless sphere have been abandoned.
http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=51853
http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=43142

 

[marcn]

I'm still very surprised by those temps with the type of power you're pumping through the Cro? Snell runs much more than ~75V and 60A. He's up around 85+ amps, and rides a long time to and from work, and his temps are always around ambient.

The guys over at Zelena Vozila have said the same thing, that unless you're pumping 60A or more continuous, and climbing steep grades, you really shouldn't be pushing 100+C much. What controller are you running?

 

[E-Fuel]

Hi guys,

just bought a magura throttle, comes with three wires a black, brown and Blue. For the Lyen controller that has red, green and black someone can tell me which cables connect to which cables?

thank you in advance

JCA

 

[ridethelightning]

Hi guys,

just bought a magura throttle, comes with three wires a black, brown and Blue. For the Lyen controller that has red, green and black someone can tell me which cables connect to which cables?

thank you in advance

JCA

cant quite remember the details, but youll have +5v, 0vgnd and the signal wire. test on the controller output with a meter should give you a clue which is which.
id put my bets, black =0vgnd, red=+5v, green =signal wiper(for controller)

then the magura throttle from memory is black =gnd, brown= +5v, blue=wiper/signal. if in doubt, try different combos till it works, wont harm anything, but remember also, the magura may not be calibrated from factory. i had to open mine up and fix it....oh what fun.

 

[ecruz]

Hey guys, someone sent me an article that made me tickle, for those of you not aware of the SLS Mercedes Electric version look it up on Youtube. I has 750HP and it uses 864 batteries. So I am putting over a third of that on my raptor LOL looks like the final count is 308 VTC5 22s14p is the new max squeezed amount. I just have a grin on my face as to what that will feel like.

 

[Dark Knight]

Hey guys, someone sent me an article that made me tickle, for those of you not aware of the SLS Mercedes Electric version look it up on Youtube. I has 750HP and it uses 864 batteries. So I am putting over a third of that on my raptor LOL looks like the final count is 308 VTC5 22s14p is the new max squeezed amount. I just have a grin on my face as to what that will feel like.

I'm gonna be fascinated to see how you manage to tuck 308 of those cells in the Raptor frame. If you succeed my good man, I'll be emulating you... Where are you posting up most of your battery discussion? Is it on the thread kicked off by circuit? 22s14p would be awesome - you'd have buckets loads of amps on tap. Will help for the whole pack to run cooler for increased longevity no matter what you throw at it... Good luck you little trail blazer you...

 

[marcn]

Hey guys, someone sent me an article that made me tickle, for those of you not aware of the SLS Mercedes Electric version look it up on Youtube. I has 750HP and it uses 864 batteries. So I am putting over a third of that on my raptor LOL looks like the final count is 308 VTC5 22s14p is the new max squeezed amount. I just have a grin on my face as to what that will feel like.

With that many in parallel I'm surprised you choose those cells since a lot of those amps just can't be utilised using a Max-E. You could've gotten away with a denser cell with slightly less discharge, and because you have 14p, it wouldn't of mattered. Unless you abandon the Max-E and go with a Kelly controller running 250 battery amps and some insanely modified BMS (or no BMS).

 

[Mammalian04]

I get the feeling we need to start a Raptor battery wiki... Or maybe even a Raptor wiki with multiple topics (component lists and specs with pro/cons of compatible parts). Anyone know if the site supports a wiki feature?

 

[Offroader]

I think you guys wanting a lot of amps and batteries will soon enough realize that the weak link is the motor. I have to baby the cromotor or it will heat up to ridiculous temps.

Even woods trail riding where I am going really slow and pedaling to assist the motor will easily go up to 110c.

Normally I would just push it to 130+ temps but I start to get noises from the motor and then a grinding noise. I will have to open it up to take a look.

Once the motor gets heated up and the heat spreads throughout, it doesn't take much to push the temps to 110c+, if you're offroading the bike you will push 140c+ fairly easily.

Supposedly there is no warranty on the cromotor, which I find odd.

 

[Hyena]

The guys who are baking cromotors are really expecting too much. You're not riding bicycles any more, you're riding electric dirt bikes. That's fine of course, and if you look at some of my videos you'll see I ride the piss out of my bikes, but at the same time you have to be realistic about how you ride / treat the bike and also how you go about setting it up.

It's well publicised that I've done alot of testing and riding with crystalyte gear, and prior to things like the raptor coming along they were one of the only options to fit the majority of mtbs for conversion (ie cromotors dont fit 135mm dropouts) Even with these thinner statored, lighter, less thermally efficient motors I've still never baked one and I really dont know how you guys are smoking these bigger motors. With my new 21S lipo pack and 100A current limit on the TC80 the acceleration is rapid and borderline brutal if you're not real gentle on the throttle. The cros are fatter again obviously are more powerful and efficient.

I think the issue lies in running windings that are too fast in offroad conditions and compensating to give the desired performance by throwing bulk current at it. Its stupid having a motor that does 100km/hr on single track doing 30km/hr. For proper offroading the ridability, performance and efficiency you get from a motor that tops out around 70 is ideal IMO. Much lower and they run out of legs too quick, much higher and they're stupidly inefficient and just bake themselves. And again have some mechanical sympathy. As I'm sure I've posted multiple times before, flog it but do it in moderation. If you rev the engine in your car to redline briefly while roaring around it'll be fine, but go for a 15 minute drive in 1st gear bouncing off the rev limiter all the way and chances are you'll have a long walk home. When it comes to bicycle sized rolling diametres, with high current limits and high voltage comes high inefficiency. If you shove 10,000w into your cromotor under hard acceleration for a brief period 5000w of that is dumped straight into the windings. Think about how much heat a 2400w heater (the max you can run off AC power, in Australia anyway) outs out. Now double it and that's approximating what you're doing inside the motor.

That said I shoved bulk current through my 'batshit' motor which is similar in construction to the old V1 style cromotor with stamped stator (ie not as good at shedding heat). I got it baking hot torture testing it, did multiple 100km/hr fly tests and hugely inefficient power bursts on single track to the point where it melted the solder off the bullets (causing them to drop off!) and yet the windings were still pristine when I popped it open. So yeah, I dunno what these guys are doing to be smoking motors. Either they weigh a tonne or are just being noobs and riding these things into the ground with no regard for how these things actually work or what their limits are.

If you don't want to bake your motor fit a thermostat to it. I've been doing it for years and I've never had to replace a motor as a result. Or better still, with the arrival of the CAV3 with thermal monitoring and current rollback you've got virtually no excuse for baking a motor.

 

[marcn]

I think you guys wanting a lot of amps and batteries will soon enough realize that the weak link is the motor. I have to baby the cromotor or it will heat up to ridiculous temps.

Even woods trail riding where I am going really slow and pedaling to assist the motor will easily go up to 110c.

Normally I would just push it to 130+ temps but I start to get noises from the motor and then a grinding noise. I will have to open it up to take a look.

Once the motor gets heated up and the heat spreads throughout, it doesn't take much to push the temps to 110c+, if you're offroading the bike you will push 140c+ fairly easily.

Supposedly there is no warranty on the cromotor, which I find odd.

Offloader I'm still very surprised from your temps running max 60A . Maybe Snell can jump in, but when we spoke and I asked him about his temps pushing 80+ battery amps and he mentioned his temps not getting hot, and the motor being not hot at all, even to touch. It helps that the V3 I got comes with the 10K NTC thermistor as standard now.

 

[Mammalian04]

I have been playing around in Visio with fitting some premade batteries from EM3EV. Here are a few configurations I arranged. I oversized the dimensions 5mm since EM3EV says +-5mm. So, while these look tight, I think they will fit. The biggest limiting factor is shoehorning the second (or third) big pack in through the smaller opening.

I also attached the Visio file in case anyone wants to improve the dimension accuracy or mess around with other configurations.

Disclaimer: I haven't seen the frame in person yet. Also, the bike dimensions I am using are probably outside dimensions, not inside.... (i.e. don't take my word that those packs will fit...)

EDIT: Well, it appears I can't post Visio files. PM me if you want it.

 

[Mammalian04]

For proper offroading the ridability, performance and efficiency you get from a motor that tops out around 70 is ideal IMO.

Hyena, what motor do you suggest as the better offroading slower speed alternative to the Cromotor?

 

[ecruz]

Hey guys, someone sent me an article that made me tickle, for those of you not aware of the SLS Mercedes Electric version look it up on Youtube. I has 750HP and it uses 864 batteries. So I am putting over a third of that on my raptor LOL looks like the final count is 308 VTC5 22s14p is the new max squeezed amount. I just have a grin on my face as to what that will feel like.

With that many in parallel I'm surprised you choose those cells since a lot of those amps just can't be utilized using a Max-E. You could've gotten away with a denser cell with slightly less discharge, and because you have 14p, it wouldn't of mattered. Unless you abandon the Max-E and go with a Kelly controller running 250 battery amps and some insanely modified BMS (or no BMS).

I didn't think they would fit but then, I had the brilliant idea to break it up into just 2x7 rows of parallel and then connect the series via cables this allows to use every inch of the case. Since the frame is 160mm wide and the cells in 2 rows totaling 140mm the rest for cabling it fits with even room for fuses, throttle tame and light voltage transformers up under the charging port hole. I wont be using those amps but I can drive this thing for miles

 

[Offroader]

I think you guys wanting a lot of amps and batteries will soon enough realize that the weak link is the motor. I have to baby the cromotor or it will heat up to ridiculous temps.

Even woods trail riding where I am going really slow and pedaling to assist the motor will easily go up to 110c.

Normally I would just push it to 130+ temps but I start to get noises from the motor and then a grinding noise. I will have to open it up to take a look.

Once the motor gets heated up and the heat spreads throughout, it doesn't take much to push the temps to 110c+, if you're offroading the bike you will push 140c+ fairly easily.

Supposedly there is no warranty on the cromotor, which I find odd.

Offloader I'm still very surprised from your temps running max 60A . Maybe Snell can jump in, but when we spoke and I asked him about his temps pushing 80+ battery amps and he mentioned his temps not getting hot, and the motor being not hot at all, even to touch. It helps that the V3 I got comes with the 10K NTC thermistor as standard now.

I wonder also. I know that my problems started to happen when it got really hot outside from the summer 90F and the added batteries for extra long run times.

Looking over snellemin posts his battery pack is very small, 780WH. I have a battery pack 3.4x the size of his at 2664 WH. That is hugely difference, my cromotor also wouldn't break a sweat with only 780WH. The problems start to happen when you drive long enough that the entire motor becomes saturated with heat, then any load on the motor will really push those temps up higher.

Also, when you have a low battery capacity, you may also just not push the bike for as hard and as long because you have to conserve that low battery capacity. But the reason is more that you just don't have the capacity to heat up a large motor like a cromotor.

Hyena does have a point to what he says in that you have to be careful how you drive these motors, but remember Hyena has a fighter that supposedly comes with only 1000WH of battery capacity, compare that to 2664WH of capacity that I have. He may have modified his battery, but I doubt he has close to 2664, he simply doesn't have the space. If he had 2664 WH of battery capacity, which is a ridiculously large amount of capacity, he would be looking at much different conditions.

The motors take a while to heat up, but once they get heated up completely inside, they can't release the heat fast enough and the motor can't push the heat to other areas of the motor inside that take longer to heat up. The motor becomes basically fully saturated with heat. I have been stopping and letting it cool off, but once it hits that point of fully saturated it doesn't take much to drive that motor to high temps.

When you take a fully cooled motor, you can really push that for a long time and the temps will stay low. You will probably need over 1000WH of battery capacity before you fully saturate that motor with heat. Then you really need to let the motor cool off for hours to bring it back under control.

Dark Knight also posted before and he realizes the problem about the large battery capacities.

Granted, you can drive a cromotor for a long time with a large battery capacity like Hyena points out, but you will have to be really careful. At the point the motor gets fully heated you will have to really limit your wattage to no more than 2000 Watts and basically drive very conservative until you allow at least an hour for cooldown in the summer heat.

 

[ecruz]

On the motor heating issue, I am planning the following hoping it will work, I am using fluorinert liquid to transfer the heat from the motor Stanton to the outside case, then using heat syncs on both sides total of 8 and between the spoke holes total of 15 to cool the case as it spins. I don't know how effective it will be, but in theory, it should be better than everything I have seen thus far except liquid cooling as in a PC Doc has a discussion on a liquid cool motor called Doc's Watercooled Hub motor project ( 5403). At the end no radiator or pump was needed the actual liquid cooling to outer case was sufficient. I will also have a fill port/gas expansion port towards the center of the case. See attached picture. If anyone else is interested in doing this let me know I can give you the item links and I am looking for a group buy on the Fluorinet as its expensive and minimum quantity is much higher than I will ever use.

 

[Offroader]

Ecruz, good to know that you're going to try and get on top of the heat issue, especially since you live in Miami. The more I think about it is just plain ridiculous to have a motor without any sort of cooling. But you have nothing to lose really by trying to cool it and everything to gain, worse case scenario the fluid drips out and you have an uncooled cromotor like I have.
I am going to make it a point and try and cool my motor as I honestly can't deal with having to baby the throttle for most of my riding. I pretty much consider my motor trashed at this point anyway.

Could you post the link of the heat sinks you are going to use.

How many watt hours is your battery pack going to be?

How do you intend to seal the motor so that this liquid does not flow out?

Wouldn't you need a lot of that fluid to fill the motor?

 

[E-Fuel]

Thank you ridethelightning!

Hi guys,

just bought a magura throttle, comes with three wires a black, brown and Blue. For the Lyen controller that has red, green and black someone can tell me which cables connect to which cables?

thank you in advance

JCA

cant quite remember the details, but youll have +5v, 0vgnd and the signal wire. test on the controller output with a meter should give you a clue which is which.
id put my bets, black =0vgnd, red=+5v, green =signal wiper(for controller)

then the magura throttle from memory is black =gnd, brown= +5v, blue=wiper/signal. if in doubt, try different combos till it works, wont harm anything, but remember also, the magura may not be calibrated from factory. i had to open mine up and fix it....oh what fun.

 

[ecruz]

Ecruz, good to know that you're going to try and get on top of the heat issue, especially since you live in Miami. The more I think about it is just plain ridiculous to have a motor without any sort of cooling. But you have nothing to lose really by trying to cool it and everything to gain, worse case scenario the fluid drips out and you have an uncooled cromotor like I have.
I am going to make it a point and try and cool my motor as I honestly can't deal with having to baby the throttle for most of my riding. I pretty much consider my motor trashed at this point anyway.

Could you post the link of the heat sinks you are going to use.

How many watt hours is your battery pack going to be?

How do you intend to seal the motor so that this liquid does not flow out?

Wouldn't you need a lot of that fluid to fill the motor?

I am going to use Artic silver thermal paste as that stuff dries into a solid caked bond after heated. Aside from all the bolts applying seal it should be no problem. The liquid just needs to be about 1-1.5 inches high from the bottom of the motor all it does is collect the heat and transfers it to the housing. Here are the Heat syncs I am using the square ones are 40x40x11mm 4 or more per side. The between the spokes are 8x30x8mm See pics attached. I will fit as many of those as I can as long as spoke holes do not get covered. To attach the heat syncs I am using thermal Adhesive this stuff dries on a flat smooth surface and chisel and hammer needed to remove lol

 

[ecruz]

How many watt hours is your battery pack going to be?

I am using Sony VTC5 18650 cells which are rated at 2600mah/30amp continues and I am using them in 22sx14p. But limiting it with the Addapto Max-E Which is fine as if I went with the Panasonic 3400mah even at 14p the amps are not enough. If I go with Samsung same price with my vendor, which is $7 per battery. So 100mah more why not.