LightingRod kit standard 09/2014 edition

[emaayan]

The diameter of the ear is only 12mm so an 11mm hole isn't going to work. Fastenal sells the tap for their M8 inserts as an M8 insert tap. It may be as large as 10 or 11mm. I haven't needed to buy one.

There is some room on that front ear. I'd take a hex head bolt and grind the head down until it completely cleared the pulley. The nut should go on the inside. You only need to leave enough bolt head to get a wrench on. Whatever is left of the original threads will help hold the bolt in place.

It's important to be careful tightening these M8 bolts that hold the left upper sheet on. If you strip out the rear one where there is no clearance it means a new motor side case and a complete teardown of the motor.

i'm not touching the rear one, it's already in, i'd only touch it when i'll replace the upper sheet. i'm not exactly sure what's the difference between the grounded hex bolt which i'll be strip if the hex wrench won't be able t ground on it and button head one.

what's a complete teardown of the motor, replace winding? or just open the motor and replace this part?

 

[LightningRods]

If the button head fits, use that.

In order to replace the output side case that has the mounting ears on it you have to: remove the small driver pulley, remove the thin case on the right side, press the motor shaft out of the armature and output side case, and then remove the output side case. If you have access to a shop press it's not too difficult. The tricky part is that you have to support the raised aluminum flange around the output side bearing or it will probably snap off of the case when you try to press the motor shaft out. You also have to allow room for the bearing to come out with the motor shaft. There is a circlip behind the bearing to keep the motor shaft from walking out of the motor while running. We use a large socket that is exactly the right diameter to support the bearing flange and still allow the bearing to come out.

 

[emaayan]

well does the shoe fit?? (please , i need a win)

 

[LightningRods]

WINNAH!

Looks good to me.

 

[emaayan]

WINNAH!

Looks good to me.

wahoo, approved by the master of threads. i'll replace the hex with a nylock, chain is usually loose a noodle but i'm slowly working up the courage to drill a hole in the plate (how much for an extra plate btw?)

 

[jdevo2004]

Just be sure you have the kit set up exactly right before you make any permanent changes to the kit by making a hole. Make sure your gearing combination is the one you want to keep. You only want to do this once. I dont want to hear you complaining that you had to make 15 holes on each side before you got it all sorted out and blame jdevo2004 for all your problems haha.

 

[emaayan]

Just be sure you have the kit set up exactly right before you make any permanent changes to the kit by making a hole. Make sure your gearing combination is the one you want to keep. You only want to do this once. I dont want to hear you complaining that you had to make 15 holes on each side before you got it all sorted out and blame jdevo2004 for all your problems haha.

you misunderstood, that's exactly why i DON'T want to make any holes on the sides, in intend to take THAT bolt resting infront of you and place it through the round black circle to be a hole
i'll place a hex right at the begining of the plate to stop it from moving back, and maybe a hex in at the end to have a more stable footstand on the silver allen bolt housing.

 

[LightningRods]

I don't see the locknut for the adjuster bolt. If you're not tightening the locknut that would be enough to cause your chronic problems. If you can't reach the locknut having it on top of the adjuster plate, you can have it on this side. Adjust the tension with the bolt and then tighten the locknut against the bracket. If your side plates are tight that should hold everything in place. The motor can't move if the adjuster bolt doesn't rotate and get shorter.

 

[emaayan]

that's because i ate the locknut... just kidding, see here it is, picking , say hello mr locknut..

the locknut was always tight, it will stop the motor from going back, but it won't stop it from SWINGING , right now that bolt is acting like the axis on a kid's swing (the one where 2 kids use to lift each other , don't know the english name) so because the side sliding bolts are so weak no matter how hard you tight them it will always retract back on chain side if enough force applied to it, as i said before there are several occasions where if i try to push the throttle from mid gear or even less gear at starting the belt slides across pulley with a horrible cranckling sound like your grinding gears on a car (at least i think it's the belt) i'm assuming it never happened to you.

but if you add a friend now (naturally i missed the housing so now the bolt is resting directly on the motor, but i assume i get another plastic housing it will be sorted) it will stop and push back the motor.
btw after i installed this bolt while tightening back everything i managed to snap the special bolt the mil man made me instead of the carriage bolt that i... snapped. this time i said screw it and had a test ride, i made a few heavy loads but the chain didn't got loose all the way, not like it did before, tommorow ,i'll try to get another hex bolt , were' over the holidays so i'm hoping i could a "normal" one, without it being made for me.

 

[LightningRods]

The children's toy is called a "teeter-totter" in the US. "Teetering" means to balance precariously, usually on a single spot.

So you think the solution would be as simple as having two bolts as I now do on the 100mm kits?

 

[emaayan]

precisely, i believe i've started thinking about it a little before your 2 bolts presentation, it just re-inforced my idea more. i mean the slider bolt alone MIGHT be sufficient in some applications, (people who like to pedal for some reason, as an example) but you can't compare the force of pushing something, against trying to squeeze it with both hands. as i said one of the slider bolts is now broken, so even though the rest of them are tight (i can't even reached properly the ones directly under plate, because i have a double kickstand in the way, so it would be nice if you could some shorten cover plate a bit) , i went out for a ride, and the chain should have gotten loose almost right away judging from previous occasions. it didn't. it's a little loose.

another possibility is to place an additional "pipe" like this thing (the upper part where the bolt sticks from, only yours would span across the width of the upper and lower plates, you could have it connected with slider slots as well with bolts both sides to lock it down, the m8 adjuster bolt would be driven all the though it but not stick out the other side . you would have one plastic part from side to side on the motor sliver bolt housing , with a little round insert to have that pipe pushed against it.
think of it like it's a big giant shovel in a tractor pushing sands.

right now i can't even remove the secondary bolt if i wanted to , it's gotten itself deadlocked with the bolt i placed instead of the carriage bolt. so i'm kind of stuck in jdevo's place

so i'd really appreciate it if could sort it out with bigger bolts AND 2 adjuster bolts, i mean you can place them the same way i did, and give the user option to add it only if they encounter issues like i did. but just using bigger m8 bolts, might prevent from my kind to snap them, but i don't think it would prevent it from sliding back.

the second biggest issue is the twisted jack shaft in the upper sheets, because of the teeter-totter in the upper plate i can't adjust the jack shaft equally , so now the pulley is positioned in the way you saw that forces me to use spacers, however since the belt tends to slip outside a little it may still rub against the mud guard.

oh btw about the guards. the right upper sheet adjust bolt have gotten pretty good at catching my pants when i try to start pedaling.

 

[emaayan]

i'm seriously thinking of going back to 2 spacers on the BB, and this time because of the chain line. i mean this is AFTER the acs crossfire and placing a thing spacer on the crank arm. the rattling noise of chain is driving me insane.

 

[jdevo2004]

Are you talking about the chain hitting the pant guard? I wonder if turning that 12t sprocket around will straighten out the chain to prevent that. I was looking at my bike and it seems that there MIGHT be enough clearance to do that as long as you have your chain on the little sprocket before you tighten it up since you wont be able to take the chain on or off the little sprocket once it is in place.. No harm checking it out.
Oh yeah, is that racing chain nicely oiled up? It gets noisy when it dries out.

 

[emaayan]

Are you talking about the chain hitting the pant guard? I wonder if turning that 12t sprocket around will straighten out the chain to prevent that. I was looking at my bike and it seems that there MIGHT be enough clearance to do that as long as you have your chain on the little sprocket before you tighten it up since you wont be able to take the chain on or off the little sprocket once it is in place.. No harm checking it out.
Oh yeah, is that racing chain nicely oiled up? It gets noisy when it dries out.

that's a 15T sprocket, i think that's part of the problem , as it's deeper, and so comes out. turning it around would just get the chain collide with the outer ring.


as an alternative, i could try replacing the 15T with a 12T and use 63T driven to preserve the current reduction i have. but i'm not sure if the both chain will collide or if there will be enough tension.

and i remember some folks were laughing at me or ordering so many driver/driven sprockets 8)

 

[LightningRods]

The 15T is a tiny bit wider because of the 3/4" adapter in the center of it. These 219 sprockets come stock with a 3/4" bore. On my standard 12T I ordered 100 custom made sprockets with a 12mm bore as part of the sprocket. On all other tooth counts I buy the off the shelf kart sprockets and insert the bore adapter. The adapter is held in with two allen 'grub' screws which can be loosened to move the sprocket. There are two dimples on the adapter bore which will have a tendency to pull the grub screws back into place. You can rotate the sprocket 180 degrees on the hub and make new dimples to relocate the sprocket.

Unfortunately I don't think the sprocket offset is your problem:

 

[emaayan]

oh you noticed that did you?
this brings me back to [youtube]n1swvUNOHIc[/youtube] when i first assembled it.

i'm assuming that's why the belt pulley was touching it's mud guard in the first place , there's nothing i can do about that anymore i'm assuming it's because i can't tighten the jackshaft equally on the same sides for the teeter-totting plate (this seems to be a re-occuring theme here) , i don't think it's a result of the lower sheet stuff. so i was trying to find the next solution.

it might also be possible that the upper sheets themselves are being bent towards the chain because of the force applied.

 

[LightningRods]

The two issues are completely unrelated. You've probably twisted the upper sheets to cause the chain problem.

This is an excerpt from the first e-mail I received from you:

"As you can see i'm using a ecospeed kit, the brackets themselves are really robust, and their advisability has allowed me to playaround with the chain line, when i placed a thun trouque sensor. Since i like to experiment in my usage i've managed to fry it's controller,burn motor hall sensors (and install new ones), COMPLETELY wear out the roller chainring, break a couple it's heavy duty 25 roller chains,damage the lashout planetary gear, lose parts of the chain tensioner,brake the white industries free wheel bearings, bent it's mud guard, so as you can see the most important thing for me is availability of spare parts due to wear and tear."

Ecospeed should send me a paycheck.

 

[emaayan]

The two issues are completely unrelated. You've probably twisted the upper sheets to cause the chain problem.

This is an excerpt from the first e-mail I received from you:

"As you can see i'm using a ecospeed kit, the brackets themselves are really robust, and their advisability has allowed me to playaround with the chain line, when i placed a thun trouque sensor. Since i like to experiment in my usage i've managed to fry it's controller,burn motor hall sensors (and install new ones), COMPLETELY wear out the roller chainring, break a couple it's heavy duty 25 roller chains,damage the lashout planetary gear, lose parts of the chain tensioner,brake the white industries free wheel bearings, bent it's mud guard, so as you can see the most important thing for me is availability of spare parts due to wear and tear."

Ecospeed should send me a paycheck.

actually if you'll notice, i've burned out all the MOVING parts in their kits, but the brackets themselves remained unflinched , the mudguard was the exception, as it's thin as paper and once my pants cufflings got caught in the chain it was crumpled like ... paper (in this case yours actually is the thicker and stronger one) . as i mentioned before the brackets they use are twice as thick.

how do i untwist it?

 

[LightningRods]

Every system has different exploitable vulnerabilities.

I'm not sure that you have twisted the upper sheets. That's just the most likely cause of what I can see in the photo. Sight down the plane of the main side plates and see if they look flat. The plates won't bend front to back. They're too rigid in that dimension. They would have to develop a twist and no longer be flat plates to be the source of this problem.

If it's not the upper sheets the entire motor assembly would have to be crooked in the lower sheets.

 

[emaayan]

Every system has different exploitable vulnerabilities.

I'm not sure that you have twisted the upper sheets. That's just the most likely cause of what I can see in the photo. Sight down the plane of the main side plates and see if they look flat. The plates won't bend front to back. They're too rigid in that dimension. They would have to develop a twist and no longer be flat plates to be the source of this problem.

If it's not the upper sheets the entire motor assembly would have to be crooked in the lower sheets.

motor ASSEMBLY? or just the lower sheets themselves?

 

[jdevo2004]

Emmayan take 2 new pictures of your bike, one on each side of the adjustment bolts on the lower sheet. I want to see where they are.

 

[emaayan]

If your are attempting to compare their posttions to see if its twisted dont bother,i can tell you right now they both on the bottom(i.e motor longest distance) the 3rd is currently awol untill i slip in the steel alllen bolt i got. (Only ill slip so that the allen would be on the non chain side.

I think ill go back to ecospeed for now ,untill mike finishes the lower and upper revisions ,working on it during vacationis one thing, but daily messing with it after a full work day untill 1- 2am to be operational by Next morning is exasuting. Im so tired now.
Once the drive is offline ill take it apart piece by piece and try sort stuff out like if can salvage the jackshaft from the clingy belt pulley.see if there are any bends or twists in the plates.

 

[emaayan]

right then, ecospeed is back online the kit is off, and here it is front view, and somehow, this does look healthy
while i may attribute the lower sheet to bolts and stuff, the upper sheet is simple is twisted towards the belt.

 

[emaayan]

in order to emphasize my point another pushing bolt, here is my paragon sliding dropouts, they allow me to stretch the bike chain exactly the same way i stretch the lower sheets. but these are M8 bolts, not 5 or 6,, and this is for a HUMAN powered chain. can you imagine what these will would have looked like if they were designed to withstand the kit's pull? i know it's not exactly the same conditions, but the principal is the same. trying to hold it with just the sliding bolts is like trying to use super glue on it, it simply won't hold on some conditions.

 

[emaayan]

our machinist just gave our plastic brat a big brother :wink: