Gospade reliability?

chibi-sphere

10 mW
Joined
Dec 5, 2016
Messages
20
Hi,
I finally got my bike converted with a gospade motor and its great but it keeps turning itself off at random and inconvenient moments. Not only that, but it is getting more and more frequent. I just had a horrible walk/ride home from the hairdressers. Thank goodness I wasn't further from home!

I've already had the thing back in the shop because the assist level lever stopped working, so I'm wondering, have I been sold a lemon? Are gospade not very reliable?

chibi
 
Sounds like a battery problem, or a poor connection somewhere.

Could you give more complete details on the exact situations where the problem occurs, and the specific things that happen just before and after and during?

Never heard of the company itself. The only reference to them (prior to your thread) here on ES is this thread
https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=96208&p=1409085&hilit=gospade#p1409085
 
I installed a GoSpade mid-drive kit on my partners bike a few months ago. Was a local (Australian) battery supplier that was selling them for a good price, so thought it worth trying. Very simple install and controls, and although not torque sensing you can tell it has a cadence sensor with 120 magnets, actually attached to the main gear which I saw when I did my usual gear grease check before I installed it on the bike. Really solidly constructed and no problems so far. Unfortunately that supplier doesn’t seem to stock them anymore, and they seem to be pretty much unobtainable on aliexpress. So perhaps the company is no longer?

Two things I found that might apply to the cutting out problem. Firstly, the power cable that connects to the motor has a connector at the motor end I’ve never seen before, that uses a threaded metal ring to lock together. I tried to get it tight just with fingers, but ended up using two pairs of pliers to grab each side and tighten. Quite a tight thread with not a lot of grip, and the actual internal connector parts didn’t engage well without the force of the locking ring , so I can imaging would be easy for it to not be making good contact. The other thing would be the power cable supplied had both thick main current wires, but also some very light gauge data/sensing wires, I guess for interfacing with the gospade battery which I didn’t use. I made sure to insulate them appropriately with heat shrink and was told buy they seller that was fine and they weren’t required, but might be worth checking they are not connected to anything if you are not using a gospade battery. I imagine they would be to interface with a battery BMS and shutdown the motor if below a threshold?
 
Thanks guys.

I can't tell you what the conditions are that it shuts down because it is completely random; riding time, cadence, speed, terrain, absolutely no correlation.

I am an Aussie too!

The guys at the shop are determined to fix the problem, but I'm a bit worried that it is unfixable. Your comments have reassure me, Blacklite.

I'll pass on all your ideas to the guys at the shop (which will probably annoy them, but oh well.)
 
Very late reply to this topic but .. the problem was the BMS. The shop sent the battery back to the manufacturer and everything has been running fine since then.
 
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