Sick of Chinese junk

[auraslip]

I don't think I can rely on ebikes for transportation or seriously pursue this hobby anymore. It's too reliant on cheap chinese junk. In the past week alone I've had:

A) Batteries fail well before they should
B) An icharger fail (this is what really screws me. My bike building project is basically stopped until I can replace or fix it.)
C) My crystalyte hs3540 motor has developed a mechanical knocking sound.

Not to mention the dozens of other stuff I've got from china that has either failed or been so poorly made that it is practically useless. I'm talking throttles failing. Chargers failing. Motors needing new bearings straight from the factory. Caps popping off and rattling around inside controllers. Battery balancers that don't balance accurately enough to be useful. BMS that blow up instead of current limiting. Batteries puffing with out abuse and failing at 100 cycles. Name an ebike component and I've got a story about it breaking. Name a tool used in this hobby and I've got a story about it failing.

The thing is, I really want this whole ebike thing to take off. But I just can't see it happening. I built my brother in a law a nice kit from cell-man for $2k. What's going to happen when some CHINA brand shit breaks. And then something else breaks. And something else breaks. What's he going to think? How many times is cell-man going to keep sending replacement parts? Is he going to want to rip apart his bike every time it happens, or is he going to wait until next time I'm in california to fix it for him?

And the thing that really gets me is that in theory, this stuff should be stupid reliable. You buy it once and it works forever. Instead I find myself having to buy an item multiple times and it ends up costing me more than it would cost to buy a quality product (if they existed)

So I guess what I'm saying is. WANTED: EBIKE COMPONENTS MADE SOMEWHERE NOT CHINA.

 

[RLT]

That would be nice.

But expect them to cost 5 or more times as much

 

[auraslip]

That's totally fine for some things. Cheap chinese throttles are $10. Magura is $50. Totally worth (if it was actually a hall throttle.)

 

[chvidgov.bc.ca]

I relate. Someday someone like Justin will build a quality throttle that DOESN'T SUCKtm. Sort of like the Mac of throttles. Someone who cares about them. And it won't be 5 times as much - it will just be 2 times as much because it won't suck. I personally wish more inventors and investors were making products for ebikes that don't suck. Who will carry the torch on this one?

 

[Lebowski]

build your own, well, everything. I make my own motors, controllers and throttles, no problems. The only thing I bought was
hobbykind lipo's and small cell protection beepers. I'm at 6000 miles now without any problems.

I think the ebike market for the western world is ruined by cheap chinese crap. People are just not willing to pay
for quality components as they have gotten used to low chinese prices. Most people build a bike using a cheap kit,
get lots of problems and abandon. Not many people, after lots of frustrations with the chinese stuff, decide they
want to have another try with more expensive quality parts. I would have given up too and would have bought a
Bosch middrive commercial bike. There is just no market for quality DIY ebike parts. And I think there never will
be either. Soon enough governments will get wise and forbid all homemade electric bikes as there is just no way
for them to control / restric things like speed and power on homemade bikes. Once bikes zipping around through the
city at 30+ mph start to get noticed there will be a crackdown.

 

[John in CR]

Don't buy junk, buy the good stuff. I've been trying to tell you guys Xlyte was junk, and the high price isn't meaningless. It's larcenous. Unless you get spendy on battery packs from a good vendor, then the best route is to assemble your own battery pack, and I don't mean just connect a bunch of RC lipo together and call that assembling a pack. For long life get a bigger pack, so you go easy on it.

 

[Tench]

It would be nice if there were reasonably priced quality components available, but manufacturers would be very lucky to survive with everybody opting for cheap instead. But the cheap components can work, if you going to push your motors beyond their design performance rebuild it with quality bearings before you use it, if you want more power use a larger controller rather than running a small one at 120%, hot glue your caps, and stay well within its capability. I would imagine a lot of failures occur from parts being over stressed or simply used in an environment they were never designed to be in.

You can add reliability to some cheap parts, there will always be failures, but you can do a lot to increase reliability of some components.

 

[cal3thousand]

Don't buy junk, buy the good stuff. I've been trying to tell you guys Xlyte was junk, and the high price isn't meaningless. It's larcenous. Unless you get spendy on battery packs from a good vendor, then the best route is to assemble your own battery pack, and I don't mean just connect a bunch of RC lipo together and call that assembling a pack. For long life get a bigger pack, so you go easy on it.

^ That is the ticket right there.

OP:

You are buying the cheaper items and expecting them to be as reliable as all the best. Buy from someone like Grin and you'll have less troubles. I bet the Satiator will out last 5 of those Kingpan chargers back to back. It's also rare to hear about a Cycle Analyst failing either.

And truth is, Xlyte quality is pretty crappy. I got one for $100, but have put in something like $400+ in upgrades to make it what I would feel is a decently capable motor.

We all want the cheap prices from the Chinese goods, but we should not expect high quality in that case. You are also buying "hobbyist" parts and kits and expecting to build a "consumer" bike for your brother. Some of this stuff is VERY reliable, especially the "consumer" minded bikes. They are just more expensive. Look at the new Bosch middrives for example


Question about your iCharger: Are you using it as your primary method of charging? or do you bulk charge as well? I ask because I really feel that these RC balance chargers should not be asked to charge large packs on a regular basis, especially at their highest current ratings.

 

[Ykick]

6 eBikes all built from various "Chinese junk" have logged 10k's miles over several years. Ride every day over rough roads, shit weather and insane traffic that would make most cringe. Not one failure yet as a result of manufacturing defect(s).

Only failures have been tire punctures and one controller because (my fault) it hit the tire when suspension bottomed out and got wet. Being a somewhat "protected" Lyen controller, 'dried out and works fine to this day.

Now, that doesn't mean I just throw shit together and think it's ready to run. Always looking for ways to correct and improve some shortcuts taken during manufacturing. Example - installed a cheap-ass LED light yesterday, missing a grommet for wire entering the housing and it really needed a sleeve over the pinch bolt to clamp properly. Corrected that and it's now a solid light with built-in dc-dc for $5 shipped.

I don't hot-rod much so maybe that helps with reliability? I get OP frustration but I don't share the same experiences.

 

[auraslip]

Buy from someone like Grin and you'll have less troubles. I bet the Satiator will out last 5 of those Kingpan chargers back to back. It's also rare to hear about a Cycle Analyst failing either.

I wish I could buy everything from someone like Justin, but there are limits to the amounts of stuff he can produce.

Question about your iCharger: Are you using it as your primary method of charging? or do you bulk charge as well? I ask because I really feel that these RC balance chargers should not be asked to charge large packs on a regular basis, especially at their highest current ratings.

I use it only for balancing, and right now testing cells and packs before I put them on the bike. I created a thread in the battery section trying to get help diagnosing it.

 

[TheBeastie]

I don't think I can rely on ebikes for transportation or seriously pursue this hobby anymore. It's too reliant on cheap chinese junk.

The thing is, I really want this whole ebike thing to take off. But I just can't see it happening. I built my brother in a law a nice kit from cell-man for $2k. What's going to happen when some CHINA brand shit breaks. And then something else breaks. And something else breaks.
So I guess what I'm saying is. WANTED: EBIKE COMPONENTS MADE SOMEWHERE NOT CHINA.

I often look at feedback on ebay stuff and see the item was $1 from China and the buyer gave negative rating saying "Cheap junk".
But for $1 how could you expect anything else? Its just not possible.
And I think to my self, the seller should say to the buyer, "well your cheap, I wouldn't buy this crap for my self but YOU DID".

I think I am cheap, full stop. Everytime I buy something that was a "low price" and its crappy I am not thinking about the "item" being cheap I am thinking about the hard reality that I am cheap.
Sometimes when I have bought stuff from ebay and it was stupid cheap and I had to wait ages for it to come in the mail I have found my self doing the very same thing, I start typing in my ebay feed-back saying "Cheap crap" and I realize I have become the very same cheap-dumbass I was having a small laugh at before on ebay (also at the same time thinking about how much I am turning into a yankee).

Good stuff exists for every market, just natural to want to spend the least amount of money as possible.
Cheap China stuff should really be called "grey market" since most stuff is made in China and the trusted stuff has a proper brand, Giant bikes are made in "Asia" as they say, with some in Taiwan etc, Trek make bikes in Taiwan and only make there ultra expensive frames in the USA just for the claim/show I bet while the majority of it is pumped out of Asia.

The king of quality Apple makes all there gear in China and resale value of Apple products have always had a very high premium because everyone knows the stuff lasts. This while Apple works the chinese workers to death
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1382396/Workers-Chinese-Apple-factories-forced-sign-pledges-commit-suicide.html
All the Apple-Chinese workers have been popular news over the last 5 years.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2103798/Revealed-Inside-Apples-Chinese-sweatshop-factory-workers-paid-just-1-12-hour.html

How can the king of quality Apple stuff all be made in China? The human brain has evolved in intelligence by simplifying things by grouping/boxing things together to make solving problems more easy, but the problem is not all things can be grouped together and the logic can fail terribly, but our brain keeps trying to do it anyway. Thats why racism still exists.
Computers do the exact same thing, it all gets broken down to 'ones' and 'zeros', thats why when Cyberdyne's Skynet becomes self aware it will decide in a microsecond all humans must be eliminated not just those on the other side, again its just natural to box everything into the same group.

When Tesla announced they were going to start building cars in China the stock jumped, everyone knows instantly its not grey-market/made-in-china stuff its USA Tesla controlled quality.
It is technically unfair to link China to poor quality when its technically grey-market stuff designed for cheap consumers, just like me.

 

[dogman dan]

Funny thing is, didn't I buy an old ebike kit front hub from you? Its still alive and kicking.

What you need, my friend, is to pounce on the next 5304 clyte you see for sale. Then run it on only 2000w. It will last you forever, with a few bearing swaps. It will never get very hot. Well, you could shear a cover, but likely not. Have a set of halls around of course.

Or, get one of those scooter motors, if John still has them.

And of course, never just one charger. Have something you can use in a pinch around.

Speaking of spares, my cargo bike runs a 5305, but I have a very good 5304 in the barn. It's not for sale. same thing with controllers, have spares. Budget to rotate some of it every year or so.

 

[auraslip]

Funny thing is, didn't I buy an old ebike kit front hub from you? Its still alive and kicking.

lmao yeah, an ebikekit.com hub. I put 10k miles on it. Sold it for cash. Replaced it a few months later with what must of been a first gen hub motor with wrecked wiring from Methods for $50, and have now put 20k miles on that with no problems.

Funny thing is, my other ebikekit.com hub needed new bearings and new halls after 5k miles.

 

[dogman dan]

Seriously though, get an oversize motor, then run it on half the watts it could take. That should solve nearly all motor issues.

Everything else, have two for sure.

 

[BYqSXt8Z]

Funny thing is, my other ebikekit.com hub needed new bearings and new halls after 5k miles.

Alright, I know this question is going to scream noob, and sorry for detracting from the OP's topic, but I keep seeing "hall" everywhere, and I know you guys aren't talking about this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAL_9000 ... so can someone please tell me what hall is?

Thanks!

 

[Lebowski]

Funny thing is, my other ebikekit.com hub needed new bearings and new halls after 5k miles.

Alright, I know this question is going to scream noob, and sorry for detracting from the OP's topic, but I keep seeing "hall" everywhere, and I know you guys aren't talking about this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAL_9000 ... so can someone please tell me what hall is?

Thanks!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hall_sensor

 

[BYqSXt8Z]

... well now I feel silly.

Thanks!

 

[Dauntless]

Don't feel bad. When I first encountered it, I just thought they were trying to monitor the Hall Effect, as they would voltage. Now WHY would they be doing THAT? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hall_effect

 

[spinningmagnets]

If you get a motor hot, the windings may survive repeated abuse, but...sometimes one or more of the three hall sensors will die. They are cheap to replace, but it is a real PITA to take the motor apart, and wait for a $2 hall to arrive in the mail, etc...

 

[auraslip]

and wait for a $2 hall to arrive in the mail, etc...

ahaha living in DFW is awesome. It's like amazon prime for mouser. Whatever I order before noon gets to me the next day.

 

[davec]

"Sick of Chinese junk"
that's what im talking about- i even had a thread about this. i've experienced all your frustrations and i understand you. you want something reliable and this is all the BS you have to deal with- most folks just run their ebikes around their backyard as a hobby/toy and perhaps its fine for that but when you push it to its limits its a different matter
but even if you dont push its limits,,, it was not built to last more than a season or two,,sometimes it will last more other times it will just fall apart,,,thats why you have to upgrade everything
and this chinese junk aint even cheap anymore- chinese wages are doubling all the time- heck what does xlyte even cost over 400us dollars? i can manage to build something decent for that price-i think it's time to take back manufacturing and put stuff into our own hands
yet vendors will find ways to profit from re-selling this stuff...because theres still $ to be made from this model...you can always ignore those vendors and go for better ones like heinzman for instance.... or
start making local quality stuff....you have 2 choices, take this cheap chinese stuff and upgrade it & live with the defects because it was cheap.... or do what im planning on doing and work with local machinists to make your own stuff.. it really is not that hard to cnc these parts

 

[Ch00paKabrA]

I keep seeing people write about, pushing things to their limits and then complaining about breakage. Let's use the common ICE automobile as an example. I had a Toyota Avalon. Once (only once) I was out on I10 in the middle of Texas with no one around so I floored it and at 110 mph it was still smooth but I chickened out. The lesson is that the car is capable of doing 110 miles per hour (at least) but it is usually operating around 40 or so mph. I would venture that if I drove the car at 110 all the time, it would not last as long.

I think the problem is less about quality and more about pushing limits. I have a $100 geared motor, a $25 controller and a $9 throttle on one of my bikes and they are now almost 2 years old and have over 5000 miles and they are doing fine. I have run the motor on 72 volts 500w for a short time and it got hot so I bought another $25 72v 350 watt controller and it seems to be OK. It gets warm but not hot. This is on a 36v 250 watt motor. The point is that the motor ran fine for as long as I operated it within it's designed parameters. If I blow it up now, it is on me and I can't blame the manufacturer.

The OP is using LIPO and I know that they are generally used on more of a performance type of bike. So the question is, are things failing because of poor quality, or is it an I-D-ten-T error?

 

[auraslip]

I think the problem is less about quality and more about pushing limits.

Obviously things fail quicker when pushed.

I honestly feel fine pushing motors to their limits. A motor failing from overheating is completely predictable and easy to deal with if you have a temp sensor. Just don't push more heat into then the windings can take. Cheap bearings, poor machining, and hall sensors that fail well below their rated heat limit are things in a motor that I'm worried about. Because I can't predict those things.

 

[Sunder]

I'm not saying Chinese stuff is quality by any measure, but the only problems I've ever had with any of my eBike gear was user error.

I destroyed one Q100 (208 RPM) through putting too much load too long on it and burnt the windings.
I destroyed one genuine B6 charger when a battery shorted itself against the case. (I was changing the plugs and was too noobish to tape off the bare wires).
I destroyed one 14S battery by leaving it plugged in with no BMS for two weeks.

Since then, I've had a 328rpm last me about 9 months. I thought it died and replaced it, but it turns out that my hall connections were loose. I've still got a 260rpm Q100H going strong.

I've got a 12S 10AH Lipo that is still good for 9.2Ah 3 years later, and only sags in very cold weather.

I've got a throttle that's been through the heaviest rainstorm Sydney, Australia had in like 30 years, totally unprotected. (I'm talking 20mm in 10 minutes)

My controller has survived getting wet several times, bouncing around loose when the double sided tape I used to mount it came unstuck, and hell, it even survived when the bolt holding my rear rack on sheared, and the whole assembly dragged on the road for about 50-60m.

Speaking of which, the roads around my area aren't exactly German Autobahns. Potholes, cracks and bumps everywhere, and my system is 100% non-suspended, running on 85psi tyres.

These things are electrical parts, with the lowest number of moving parts possible. (especially if they're DD) If they're sealed correctly, they should have a very long service life - and that's been my experience. Maybe I'm extraordinarily lucky. Maybe you're extraordinarily unlucky. But it seems if you're losing parts too frequently, maybe wonder what you're pushing too hard. Always charging at the maximum rate? Why not limit a 200W charger to 150W? Capacitors rated for 60V? Maybe charge to 4.1v (57.4v) instead of 4.2v (58.8v)

That said, I do keep a spare of everything now, because it's my primary and sole form of transport. Two chargers, two batteries, two motors already laced and ready to go, two controllers, all with matching plugs so that a fix is 5-10 minutes tops. I probably wouldn't be late for work if I discovered tomorrow morning that something had broken.

Alternatively, you could do a "Six Sigma" analysis on your bike, determine the critical failure paths, and eliminate them one by one, using either improvement, redundancy, circumvention, etc.

 

[veloman]

It's not just us DIYer's who have this problem. Many expensive store ebikes have issues they shouldn't. Customers keep saying how they wish the bikes weren't so finicky, and more reliable. You would think spending $2700 on an ebike, you'd get good quality. It's still mostly all Chinese.


Personally, I have had good luck it seems. I'm at about 16k miles and nothing too troublesome. I have a cellman a123 pack that is still doing great after 3 years and 8k+ miles. Mac motor hasn't failed me. An older mac needed a new side cover, but that's it. 9c motors have been fine. Clyte has been good after 4k miles. Controllers haven't failed me, just one slight problem with one that has seemed to go away. Only broke one throttle. Had a couple chargers die for no reason.