Vado 4.0 speed increase

Ncc74656

1 mW
Joined
May 6, 2022
Messages
12
I'd like to mod my Vado 4.0 to increase its top speed, for how long it helps for

What do you guys recommend?
 
It's not a bad idea, would certainly help with downhill. I'd like to get better uphill though, I moved to a new city which is why I bought this thing, each day I change elevation by about 1300 ft going to and from work and just around town. We don't have bike Lanes here so I'd like to be closer to the speed of the cars when they're doing 40 miles an hour past me
 
What speed can you maintain now, in the areas you want higher speed?

What speed do you *want* to maintain in those areas?

That will tell us the difference in speed you need to make up with whatever upgrade you do.

What are the specific conditions in those areas, such as slope, wind, road type, etc?

With that, the amount of power needed to to achieve it can be determined, and then that will give an idea of how much of the bike you will have to replace to do the upgrade.

It may be helpful to experiment with the http://ebikes.ca/tools/simulator.html which can show you how the conditions you ride under affect how a particular bike performs.
 
Going off the speedo on the bike itself which seems to be decently accurate. I can do about 28 to 31 miles an hour on the flat in these areas oh, I would like some more assistance, doesn't need to be maxed out power but just a little bit to help me get up to like 36 on the flat. The up hills I don't know if there's much to be done with oh, I can hold about 15 to 20 which is still way to Hell better than my regular bike but I don't think the bike can mechanically or electrically hold me up to anywhere near 30 + going up the steep hills

I'm usually on the roads so it's not like I'm going through the grass, that helps. The wind is a real killer. I live right off of lake and it's not uncommon to have 18 to 25 mile an hour winds multiple days a week.

I'll need to read up on that simulator, I don't know a lot of what it's asking

Some of the grades that I go up, I don't know their percentages but I can tell you over the span of 10 to 12 blocks I gain 875 ft of elevation and another areas the slopes change quite a bit and I can gain about 1,300 ft of elevation in 2 mi
 
Ncc74656 said:
Cost isn't a major issue, I just need to know what's out there

Great, that's the best kind of budget. So, assuming you have a welder or have access to a shop, you could swap out the motor and display for the Bafang Ultra and DPC-18. The triangle looks big enough for a decent sized 52V battery, then you just need to add a thumb throttle. Looks like 40mph is possible on 52V:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKawGBsXu2U&t=6s
 
Ncc74656 said:
I can do about 28 to 31 miles an hour on the flat in these areas oh, I would like some more assistance, doesn't need to be maxed out power but just a little bit to help me get up to like 36 on the flat.

Are you actually continuously maintaining 31mph, and for how long? I ask because if it's just a peak you're seeing, it doesn't help us help you figure out how much *more* power you'll need than you already have. ;)

If you have a smartphone, there are apps like Strava, etc., that can track your speed/etc over a trip, and show you a chart when you're done. The Grin Trip Simulator (a little different than the motor simulator previously linked) can help breakdown trip data from some sources to better understand what you're facing on your specific routes, to better plan for something that can do them reliably.


Not counting winds, that's an extra 5mph...but it is up in the air resistance domain where that costs a lot in power. I don't think any of the electrics on your bike will be able to do what you want; you would be better off starting with a whole new bike than modifying this one. (you could keep it as a backup, or sell it to pay for some of the new bike's parts).

Just so we have some idea what we're starting with (note that there's incomplete info, so I had to make assumptions, which could be wrong):

This is what the specialized page
https://www.specialized.com/us/en/turbo-vado-4-0/p/170303?color=264281-170303
says for the vado 4.0 regarding motor and battery; it doesn't say anything about the controller, which is what actually limits power, so we don't really know how much power it can produce...except that it says it can do 28mph, which typically takes around three times as much power as it says the motor can nominally handle. (meaning, you'd have to do a whole lot of contributing, two-thirds of the total power, if it was really only 250w controller...and if it's really a 250w motor, it'd probably cook riding it at three times that power level for long enough, because it's almost certainly a small geared motor inside the frame and these may not shed heat very well; it looks like a plastic body around the area, with some vents).
Motor
Specialized 1.2, custom Rx Street-tuned motor, 250W nominal
Charger
Custom charger, 42V4A w/ Rosenberger plug
Battery
Specialized U1-500, On/Off button, state of charge display, 500Wh


Side note: If the motor itself is doing all the work, and it's actually around 28mph+, on the flats with no wind, it should take around 750-1000w to do this, and the 500wh battery would last from 30-45 minutes from full to empty. Does that sound about right for what you see?

Don't get too discouraged from the stuff below; it's not impossible to do what you want, just maybe take more than you expect, and some of what you'd probably like to do (but don't expect to) probably isn't possible until you go beyond bicycle territory.

I did some simulator stuff just to give you some idea of what it takes to do what you want; each simulation is linked below. They are not using what you have on your bike; according to the simulator, the best a low-power hubmotor system can do, with 100w human assistance (which is typical of many people's continous potential output), is around 20mph on the flats with no wind. (which matches my experience with an old 350w hubmotor system I used to use when I rode "normal" bikes).
https://ebikes.ca/tools/simulator.html?cont=C20&axis=mph&batt=B3614_PF&frame=mountain&autothrot=true&throt=100&motor=MSX_8T

Note that I'm using the simulator in hubmotor mode; what you have is a middrive going thru the bike's gears, so the actual power levels needed to do things are different...but theyre in the same ballpark.



A basic "default" setup (only upping to 40A controller and 48v battery to get this speed with that default H3540 motor) on the simulator that does 31mph.
https://ebikes.ca/tools/simulator.html?cont=C40&axis=mph&batt=B4816_GA

That shows that it can take, with 100w human assistance, 1000w motor power (1200w battery power) to achieve (so 1100w "load", to keep that speed, with typical MTB posture and bike style). So I'm guessing that since the pages I could find on the bike you have say it's a 250w system, you must be really sweating it out to keep those speeds up even with the motor.

A road bike in tuck position saves a couple hundred watts *and* gets a couple more MPH
https://ebikes.ca/tools/simulator.html?cont=C40&axis=mph&batt=B4816_GA&frame=road

The road bike in tuck with throtle reduced to maintian only 31mph almost cuts power needs in half, with only 770w load to keep the speed, vs 1100w.
https://ebikes.ca/tools/simulator.html?cont=C40&axis=mph&batt=B4816_GA&frame=road&autothrot=true&throt=92.4


Upping the voltage to a 52v battery gets 35mph, almost what you want, but the load jumps up to almost 1100w, in the tuck position!
https://ebikes.ca/tools/simulator.html?cont=C40&axis=mph&batt=B5220_GA&frame=road&autothrot=false&throt=100

The same thing in the MTB uprigth position doesn't even reach 35, only 33, and has a 1300w load
https://ebikes.ca/tools/simulator.html?cont=C40&axis=mph&batt=B5220_GA&frame=mountain&autothrot=false&throt=100


To get the 36mph, MPT upright, I had to go up to a 72v battery and turn down the throttle, and that's a 1700w load. On the flats, no wind. The battery is actually putting out 1900w, and the difference is lost as heat in the system (battery, controller, motor). That *difference* is almost as much power as your system is rated for *in total*....
https://ebikes.ca/tools/simulator.html?cont=C40&axis=mph&batt=B7223_AC&frame=mountain&autothrot=true&throt=76.6











The up hills I don't know if there's much to be done with oh, I can hold about 15 to 20 which is still way to Hell better than my regular bike but I don't think the bike can mechanically or electrically hold me up to anywhere near 30 + going up the steep hills

If they're steep enough, you'll end up needing what amounts to motorcycle power levels to go the 36mph you're after. Let's assume a 10% slope, and that you and the bike are only 220lbs (the default in the simulator). To do 36mph it would take about 4kw battery power, and about 3300w total load on the bike and you (assuming you're pedalling). That's several times, at least, what your bike can do now.
https://ebikes.ca/tools/simulator.html?cont=cust_999_999_0.0001_V&axis=mph&batt=cust_200_0.0001_80&frame=mountain&autothrot=true&throt=32.2&grade=10

I'm usually on the roads so it's not like I'm going through the grass, that helps. The wind is a real killer. I live right off of lake and it's not uncommon to have 18 to 25 mile an hour winds multiple days a week.

Keep in mind that each mph of headwind is like you are riding that much faster. Having a 25mph headwind while riding at 25mph is like riding at 50mph, for hte power requirements. It's going to take what amounts to a motorcycle, power-wise, to achieve that.

This simulation's parts are far in excess of what's needed, but it lets you see the power it takes to do the ~61mph you'd have to be capable of doing, power-wise, to go 36mph against 25mph headwinds; almost 10kw (10,000) of battery power, and 7800w of actual load (about 10 times as much power wasted as heat as your whole bike can "nominally" make now, per it's motor specification).
https://ebikes.ca/tools/simulator.html?cont=cust_999_999_0.0001_V&axis=mph&batt=cust_200_0.0001_80&frame=mountain&autothrot=true&throt=56


To do the hills *and* the headwinds...that's a lot of power. Assuming the same hill and weight and wind as above, it would take around 14kw battery power, with an 11kw load on the bike. (you might as well relax and stop pedalling at this point, you probably can't even put in 1% of what it needs to move under these conditions. :lol: )
https://ebikes.ca/tools/simulator.html?cont=cust_999_999_0.0001_V&axis=mph&batt=cust_200_0.0001_80&frame=mountain&autothrot=true&throt=61.6&grade=10


Another few thoughts, concerning battery size (not accounting for a bunch of things you'd actually have to, like resulting total weight, battery capabilities, etc):

The battery you have now, if it were capable of this kind of power (it's not), would only last 500wh / 14000w = 0.03 hours, about two minutes, which at 36mph actual road speed would be about a mile. Let's assume you need to actually go somewhere, say, 10 miles away, and come back, so say you need 20miles of range (not coutning possible detours, etc); you'd need about 20 times the battery size you ahve now. I don't think you can fit a battery 20 times the size of what's on that bike on a bicycle-sized/shaped bicycle. ;)


Just some food for thought, to show what it may take to do what you want, so you can figure out if that really is what you want.
 
I've got a really read through all of this, a lot of information. Thank you very much.

I also emailed some companies that make chips that plug into these motors and unless I'm misunderstanding something, it looks like they add two miles an hour for $200? Just seems odd

The bike was about 4,000 new so I figured it was a good starting point. What I've got into this bike right now is an Onyx racing hubs, brake upgrades, I've got two batteries for it, Carbon wheels, carbon crank arms, upgraded pedals.

I've got a AC DC TIG welder and a MIG, acetylene torch and soon-to-be a 3-axis CNC machine. Also got plasma cutters and soldering stations oscilloscopes and plenty of knick knack parts for electronic repairs or mods. Also have a 3D printer

So long as I am on a nominally flat Road, I can hold 28 to 30 miles an hour pretty much indefinitely until the battery dies. Without the battery it's a lot harder to bike obviously but even on the lowest 33% setting, I can still hold 30 miles an hour but it just takes a lot more work on my part. If I'm just biking around the area I'll use 33 or 66% on the setting which is level one or two. Level three is the hundred percent and I used that one going to work because I'm biking in 40 mph roads.

Downhill I can clear 42 miles an hour oh, the motor stops helping right around 28 and a half miles an hour right now. Biking to work is about 11 miles each way and I can go to and from work about one and a half times before the battery is completely out. So I'd say I'm currently getting right around 30 miles of range on maximum setting. I get well over 100 miles of range on the lower settings.

I put a 50 tooth chainring and a much more aggressive 8 tooth 11 speed rear cassette. I also extended my crank arms to give me better leverage. With these changes I added quite a bit to my top speed but I also loaded the motor a bit more.

My entire bike is about 30 lb and I weigh about 125 so between me the bike and clothing we are around 160.

Last year I used my phone to check my Speedo and it was very close, next time I ride I'll run a GPS app on the phone and see exactly how the speed and altitude changes.

My thought was, if I could do some kind of voltage shunt mod to make the controllers think the motor is either going slower or drawing less power than actually is, I could upgrade traces on the circuit board may be replacing mosfets to allow for greater ampacity handling. It wouldn't be hard to add heat sink if needed inside of that motor case, I was already thinking of buying that German kit for the bearing upgrades and rebuilds so if I'm already in there why not.

I know that air resistance adds a lot of power need, I'm not totally sure how it plays a part in the 30 mile-an-hour range but I know from Automotive that going an extra 10 miles an hour once you're already clearing 100 requires nearly the same amount of horsepower additional that was needed just to get you to 100 point.

I found another website that uses a planetary gear set on the back Hub to fool the speedo and make you think you're going slower. Thus increasing the boosted top speed.
 
Ncc74656 said:
As my first e-bike
It’s a nice bike. You can enjoy it as is and then plan on a DIY build for the future.

https://www.electricbike.com/buying-a-frame-that-accepts-the-bafang-ultra-max-mid-drive-motor-and-3-builds/
 
Ncc74656 said:
I also emailed some companies that make chips that plug into these motors and unless I'm misunderstanding something, it looks like they add two miles an hour for $200? Just seems odd
They're just "black boxes" that remove the legally-required speed and/or power limiter(s) in the system.

You only get more speed, if at all, up to the point where the power of the system is insufficient to push it further. Under your conditions, I don't think you'd see any significant change.

note that sometimes the limiters aren't just for legal reasons, and the system may only be built to handle what it's already doing--pushed further various parts may simply fail (motor might overheat, controller fail, battery degrade more quickly, etc). Many (most) companies only make something *just* good enough to do what it's sold to do (otherwise it costs more than it needs to).


The bike was about 4,000 new so I figured it was a good starting point.
I wish cost was a good guide, but it always depends on the specific needs a rider has, and conditions they ride under, and then finding something that matches what is needed to accomplish those goals under those conditions. ;)


What I've got into this bike right now is an Onyx racing hubs, brake upgrades, I've got two batteries for it, Carbon wheels, carbon crank arms, upgraded pedals.
Well, realistically none of that matters much for what you want out of the bike, other than the extra battery, which you'll probably have to wire in parallel with the onboard one so that you can get enough power out of it without damaging it. You may need more battery than that, either for the range you want at the speed you want under the conditions you have, or to satisfy the power requirements without too much voltage sag (or for both reasons, especially as the batteries age).



I've got a AC DC TIG welder and a MIG, acetylene torch and soon-to-be a 3-axis CNC machine. Also got plasma cutters and soldering stations oscilloscopes and plenty of knick knack parts for electronic repairs or mods. Also have a 3D printer

It is very likely that the electric system on the bike simply can't handle the power you need to do the things you may ask of it; you'd end up replacing all of it to do that.

If all you want is an extra 5mph on the flats in no wind...you *might* be able to modify the existing system to do that, by taking out any margin it has for handling excess loading.

But with any headwinds, or any slopes, even slight ones, it may then exceed what the system can take and things may fail.

It sounds like your best option is not to modify this bike, but to start a whole new one that can maintain the speed you want under all of the conditions you have.


Remember also that it might take a while to do the mods, especially if something breaks in the process...and you won't have a bike to ride during that time (unless you already have another one). One more good reason for leaving this one as-is and building a new one from the ground up to do what you want.




So long as I am on a nominally flat Road, I can hold 28 to 30 miles an hour pretty much indefinitely until the battery dies. Without the battery it's a lot harder to bike obviously but even on the lowest 33% setting, I can still hold 30 miles an hour but it just takes a lot more work on my part. If I'm just biking around the area I'll use 33 or 66% on the setting which is level one or two. Level three is the hundred percent and I used that one going to work because I'm biking in 40 mph roads.

Without a wattmeter on the bike to tell how much power it's actually providing, it's hard to guess, but it sounds like you're providing far more power than the average cyclist can. This makes it difficult to estimate what upgrades the bike system itself will need, or be capable of, because we don't really know what it's already capable of.

It can't be only the 250w it claims to be, it's much more likely 750-1000w. But a wattmeter wired between the battery and the controller would be the only "easy" way to find that out with any certainty (unless you have access to a dynamometer to ride it on; one designed for lower power stuff vs those for cars and motorcycles that may not read correctly at low scales).

If it's really a 250w system, and is just "able to" output higher power but is being stressed by it, it's probably going to fail if pushed any harder than it already is. If it's really a 750-1000w system, then it can probably be modified for the extra 5mph on flat roads with no headwinds.



Downhill I can clear 42 miles an hour oh, the motor stops helping right around 28 and a half miles an hour right now.
That tells me the downhill is pretty steep; we have one here in Phoenix that I was able to reach nearly that speed on a regular bike long ago, if you google it it's 7th street on North Mountain, downhill from The Pointe at the top (either north or south); I dont' recall the actual slope but without power I couldn't ride up it, had to walk (slowly and laboriously) and rest for a while along the way and at the top. Ride back down was fun, though. ;)


Biking to work is about 11 miles each way and I can go to and from work about one and a half times before the battery is completely out. So I'd say I'm currently getting right around 30 miles of range on maximum setting. I get well over 100 miles of range on the lower settings.
This lets us get an estimate of power usage and power provided by the system. If you get 30miles using a 500wh battery, that's 500wh / 30 miles = 17wh/mile. If you're going 30mph for that whole range, you must be providing a huge amount of power yourself (even if it's all flat with no winds)...if you're varying speeds then it doesn't help estimate anything other than the wh/mile with your assist.

Do you happen to know what range you get without pedalling, at the same settings, at what speed, under what conditions? That will tell you more about what the motor system can already do by itself.

(I keep discussing this stuff because it makes a difference to what the motor can do vs what it has to be able to do, and thus what you have to change to make it do that).


I put a 50 tooth chainring and a much more aggressive 8 tooth 11 speed rear cassette. I also extended my crank arms to give me better leverage. With these changes I added quite a bit to my top speed but I also loaded the motor a bit more.

THe extra loading uses more power and creates more waste heat. You can simply increase the chainring size even further (if it will fit) to get the extra 5mph you're after, but the motor, controller, and battery may not be able to handle it.

Note that using such a small rear cog wears your chain a lot faster, especially under the higher power levels needed to go these speeds, and the cog itself (and the chain then wears the front sprocket out, and the other rear cogs), so you may want to monitor all of them for wear and replace all of them at the same time when you detect wear in one of them (because teh wear in the others will then more quickly wear the new part(s)).


My thought was, if I could do some kind of voltage shunt mod
Do you mean current shunt mod?

If you do that, you take away the controller's ability to detect overcurrents that may damage it, and it could fail suddenly and catastrophically at any time, usually in an unrepairable way.

to make the controllers think the motor is either going slower or drawing less power than actually is, I could upgrade traces on the circuit board may be replacing mosfets to allow for greater ampacity handling.

You may change the FETs but if the new ones need more gate drive than the originals to make them perform as needed, they may not work much better.

Most poeple change FETs to get higher voltage capability out of a system; to get higher current handling you usually have to put more FETs in parallel, and increase cooling. Using lower-RDSon FETs helps with this, but unless it's a huge change in total resistance and current-handling but with only the same gate-drive current needed to do it, it's probably not going to be much of a realworld change.


It wouldn't be hard to add heat sink if needed inside of that motor case,
For the heatsink to do much of anything, it will need airflow. It's likely that if heat is really a problem (you'd have to test for that before bothering with a heatsink change) you'd have to remove the outer casing so the controller and motor can get more airflow directly over them, or add fans that pull more air past the heatsinks and motor. (the fans will add noise and waste power, too)



I know that air resistance adds a lot of power need, I'm not totally sure how it plays a part in the 30 mile-an-hour range but I know from Automotive that going an extra 10 miles an hour once you're already clearing 100 requires nearly the same amount of horsepower additional that was needed just to get you to 100 point.
The simulator shows you how it works; just use the last link I provided and play with the speed controls, and watch the wattage numbers at the bottom (the "load" field is how much power total it is actually taking to do the work, the battery power field is how much the battery has to provide to get that much power at the wheel, given the wasted power in the stuff between it and the wheel...which is all heat inside those parts).

You'll probably get the idea pretty quickly; you don't have to change any battery/controller/etc stuff to get a wide speed range with that last link; it's already setup absurdly high-power (unrealistically so) so you won't run into a system limitation in the simulator within the conditions you're under. Just use the speed (throttle and / or speed line on the graph) and slope controls.


I found another website that uses a planetary gear set on the back Hub to fool the speedo and make you think you're going slower. Thus increasing the boosted top speed.
Do you have a link? (because that doesnt' make sense the way it's stated, unless the gear set is on the speedo itself, and there are MUCH easier ways to fool a speedo, just changing the number of magnets on it, for instance, or adding an electronic "divider" in the signal chain).
 
You asked about range without pedaling, you can't do that on this bike. You have to Pedal in order for it to boost you and the Boost is on the back end of the pedal stroke, so there is no throttle per se.

Where I find it really helps is normally when you're biking you've got that little bit of dead zone at the top and bottom of your stroke, this bike pushes you through that a bit and that really helps with keeping your speed up and lessening how much you got to put out.

This bike is still fairly difficult to Pedal even with the assistance on Lower settings. On the maximum setting you can basically do a leisurely ride where maybe you'd be doing 10 to 12 miles an hour but instead now you're doing like 23. I'm not a big fan of taking it easy so I'm usually always pushing it.

I do have a lot of ups and downs on my trip to work because you can't really go more than a mile in this city without finding a steep hill, having said that I will generally push myself harder uphill and take it a bit easier downhill to sort of offset that so my speeds are usually plus or minus four miles an hour from 28

I can modify the bike and get a wattmeter in there, the bike also connect to my phone via Bluetooth and I think there's a setting in there that tells me how many watts the controller thinks the motor is using.

The batteries are swappable so that's what I do, I haven't bothered running them in parallel. Specialized has firmware on the battery controller that tries to detect if the battery has been modified and will lock itself out. So I haven't pulled it apart yet.

My local bike shop told me if somebody else that bought the bike who did do some modifications to it. I don't know who he was or what he did but they told me he claimed that he was doing 50 miles an hour on it. They also told me that a couple of months after he came in to mention this, he said that his bike caught fire.

At the end of the day, I suspect that even a modist watt push up to 36 or so miles an hour would be enough to allow me to bike that fast, I don't want a bike that goes for me I just want one that helped me a long. so I really do not want to bike with a throttle.

I'll try and take a look at that site later tonight or tomorrow, haven't had time to really read through everything on it for the simulation.
 
I'm trying to find that product but I don't know where it is anymore. It was something three. He had YouTube videos on install, some German guy that did all the work on it. It was just a planetary gear set with a magnet on it to make the bike think it was going slower by changing the periodicity of the tone ring past the hall effect sensor.

Looking up all of these programming chips, all of them reference that they remove the 25 km an hour limit. I don't have that, even from the factory I don't have that, the bike already goes 28 and a half miles an hour under assistance and yet there's all these products that claim they "enable" what the bike shipped with from the factory for hundreds of dollars. Are they just preying on people's idiocy or what's the deal?
 
Ebikes sold in Europe are limited in assist to 25Kmh. You can use human power to go faster than that of course. These devices are intended to bypass those controls. Ebike laws in the United States are different. Most ebikes sold here are marketed as Class 1, Class 2, or Class 3. Class 1 and 2 are limited to 20Mph and Class 3 to 28Mph. I believe the Vado 4.0 sold in the US is a Class 3 ebike (no throttle and 28Mph limit).

Instead of modding the bike, voiding the warranty, and possibly damaging it, why don't you sell it and buy or build a different ebike? If cost is no object as you say, there are options out there that don't conform to the Class regulations. Some are marketed as class 3 with the option to disable the limit. Some are intended to be used on private property. And an e-motorcycle would be a lot safer if you intend to ride it at 40Mph. A motorcycle has wheels/tires, brakes, etc designed to be ridden at those speeds. A bicycle does not.
 
I'd much prefer to eke out a few more miles an hour on this one then completely start over on a DIY.
 
If you want to change your bike's capabilities at all, you got the wrong bike.

You can't install a more powerful motor.

You can't install a more powerful or more energetic battery other than whatever Specialized has to sell you.

The bike's software is locked. Not that it would matter much, because you're already up against the limitations of the hardware.

On the bright side, you got a flat bar model that allows you to swap the handlebar for a different bend. Count yourself lucky, because there are some ready-made e-bikes for which that's a horrifying ordeal.

The defining characteristic of a major brand e-bike like the Vado 4.0 is that it costs 4.0 kilodollars, and if you want something different you have to buy a different one. Congratulations, Apple customer.
 
With the gearing that comes on the Vado, you can't pedal it much faster than 30Mph anyway. You could install a bigger chainring and the chip to bypass the speed limiter in the controller, but I bet it still tops out around 30 - 32 on the flat and your range will drop off quickly at those speeds due to wind resistance and your upright position on the bike.

Vado_Gears.PNG
 
RunForTheHills said:
ou could install a bigger chainring
That's something he already did. ;)

I put a 50 tooth chainring and a much more aggressive 8 tooth 11 speed rear cassette. I also extended my crank arms to give me better leverage. With these changes I added quite a bit to my top speed but I also loaded the motor a bit more.
 
Ncc74656 said:
a much more aggressive 8 tooth 11 speed rear cassette.

I didn't know they make 8t 11 speed cassettes. If such a thing actually exists, I wonder how long that gear would last?

MTA, a 50X8 gear would certainly go fast enough.

Custom_Gears.PNG
 
Ncc74656 said:
I'd much prefer to eke out a few more miles an hour on this one then completely start over on a DIY.

Full circle back to the drop bars that should get you a couple miles an hour going from upright to a tucked position (this example uses the nominal battery voltage so speeds would be higher when more fully charged):
mid.jpg
https://ebikes.ca/tools/simulator.html?motor=MBBS02&batt=B3619_EZ&cont=C20&hp=250&axis=mph&frame=mountain&autothrot=false&throt=100&grade=0&wheel=650b&mass=75&mid=true&gear=1&tf=48&tr=11&motor_b=MBBS02&mid_b=true&gear_b=1&batt_b=B3619_EZ&wheel_b=650b&mass_b=75&hp_b=250&tf_b=48&tr_b=11&bopen=true&frame_b=road&cont_b=C20

Factory bikes are built as a system, so you need to upgrade the system, not just one or two parts. Even with the above illustrative example, you could double the controller current, but only see 0.2mph increase in top speed. Inceasing the voltage will give large gains, but with a factory bike, you need to replace at least the battery and contoller, with the latter possibly being integral to the motor.
 
RunForTheHills said:
Ncc74656 said:
a much more aggressive 8 tooth 11 speed rear cassette.

I didn't know they make 8t 11 speed cassettes. If such a thing actually exists, I wonder how long that gear would last?

MTA, a 50X8 gear would certainly go fast enough.

For cripes' sake don't do that. 11t sprockets are already incredibly destructive to your chain, which passes on the damage to the other sprockets in turn. Each tooth smaller makes the chain drive rougher, noisier, and far faster-wearing.

You don't have enough power to go nearly that fast anyway. You can accept your bike the way it is, ruin your bike while not getting the performance you want, or start over with a different bike. Those are your choices. You bought a bike that's designed to resist being "upgraded" into product-liability territory. I say either live with it, or sell it and buy something you'll regret going faster on.
 
I put a drop bar on, I'm looking to change out my brakes and shifters now to the standard road bike Style.

I also install the planetary gear set on the back to fool the magnetic speed sensor. Just put it on today and gave it a quick test, it boosts me now well past 34 miles an hour. Was able to go up a pretty steep hill at around 25 miles an hour and downhill I pegged 42.

On the short ride I didn't notice any increase in motor temperature. I'm going to bike to work tomorrow and we'll see what it looks like on a longer ride
 
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