A2B Metro - www.ultramotor.com - Video Page4

WOW! Everytime I read these great stories I learn something new!!
My A2B with controller in motor version has a new life!!
With a 48Volt 1000 watt Lipo4!! Woohooo!!
Now to get some brakes on it!!
After reading (above) I hooked up my new battery directly to the motor wires and although I didn't get any significant speed boost I do go for miles and miles.

I am 160lbs and my buddy sitting on back is 160, with the battery and bike weight we are at about 420 lbs!
The bike hauled us but the 48/1000 did heat up the motor and I had to dump water on it to cool it off so we could get home, it took nearly an hour for the over-heat sensor to reset.
Here is a couple pics of my setup- keep in mind that my bike is looking rough as I just want to GO!!!
The battery is taped to the back for now, my kid broke the derailer bolt hole off the frame so I am in process of puttin a single speed chain. The bike is Live all the time with it hooked up this way- I have 2 batteries now - the in-frame 36 volt and 48/1000/25ah battery is phenomenal!!
Thanks Paul Drury for your insight to hook this battery direct!!!
I believe my bike is the bike that Y-Pedal use to own- he will be dismayed perhaps to see the abuse I have put it through.
This winter I will remove the controller from the hub and put néw spokes- gotta find someone to do this a reasonable costs.
Note that I welded a bracket around the swing arm to attach a gas motor and/or a home-made fender.
Oops can't attach pics... Will try again... Says they are too big.
 
Update: I have overheating and temporary shut-down after a long hill or long usages, but the power and speed are incredible. I have the original A2B with controller in motor (2 wires). Battery is commectrd directly to the 2 wires going into hub!
I'm guessing my speed is now 40kms on straightaway & 50 km downhill. I have a 50km range and more perhaps 100 conservatively, with the 48 volt 1000 watt lipo4 battery but again it heats up the controller an shuts down in certain conditions. I pour water from the ditch onto the hub then stuck the bike into the cold grassy bushes and have gotten on my way in 30 mins. I must learn to switch to the 36 Volt in-frame A battery just before it shuts down. I should have opted for the 800 watt battery and so must Consider ripping the crappy controller out of my hub (very difficult job) and getting a 12 Fet 48volt 1500 watt controller, argh... Maybe by the end of winter it will be ready... I'm enjoying the summer right now.... Bike is getting me to the beach 50kms away so woohoo have a good one. Try to update more in future.
Suggest watching out for gravel with my Shinko Sr714 Tires- and doing 50kms I want a 3" tire for these speeds and superb handling.

East Coast Canada Rules!
 
I would not bother trying to keep that limping old motor in there. If I were you I'd probably throw a MXUS 3kW in there these days and bump it up to 72VDC. Or in my case I'm probably going to slap a Crystalyte 5403 in there that I can pull off another ebike. Cheers
 
I've had the overheating problem a few times also. Strange thing is every time it shut down, the motor is barely warm on the outside. It does take about 30 minutes to reset. I'm in the process of converting mine to an external controller. The stock motor is pretty beefy, just the controller sucks. It's been a lot of work, but I'm nearing completion.
 
Ypedal said:
Hey, anybody reading this that have 3rd party controllers on their Metro, what speeds do you get on level ground at 36v ?

I gutted the controller from one and am using a Grinfineon, getting 23 kph on the flats ( at 36v operating voltage ) instead of the expected 30 kph... wondering if this is typical of other's experiences.

Mine seems to be running normal speed (at least on the bench). I'll have a real test soon I hope.

(*EDIT*) real test indicates the motor runs at the same speed as the stock controller at light load.

Did you check the throttle signal voltage?
 
No, didn't check the throttle Voltage... It's not in my budget for another motor- maybe this winter I can take it apart and rip the controller out If I can find someone to respoke my wheels. I want new spokes anyways, and my sprocket cassette is noisy so I found a new one for $10.00, that is next on my list perhaps this week, as well as a caliper for my rear brake...
Yes the outside of the hub is barely warm when it shuts down. Really disappointing because my power & speed is so great! I will remove the controller this winter and get a 12 MOSFET cheapy from eBay.
In the meantime I am flying around and away from Momcton NB to Shediac & beyond- woohoo- Freedom!!
:)
My motor is fine- just need to replace the controller- these motors are tôugh and will take 72 volts- I will stick to my 48 volt as even this battery was beyond my reach $(500.USD $600$Canadian) if I didn't scam Paypal lol...
G'diggity.
 
Does changing the controller solve the overheat problem ?
I can see it may prevent the safety shutdown , but is the overtemp sensor protecting the controller, ..or the motor ?
Is the temp sensor in the controller or imbedded in the motor windings ?
IE, without the controller shutting off, will the motor continue to heat up and fry itself ?
 
The stock temp sensor is on the controller, not the motor windings.

With an external controller, I'm running 2kW and the motor is barely getting warm. And it climbs like a goat now.
 
Good evening,
a quick update and a question if I may. I eventually tacked the problem of my lack of speed to a dodgy connector in the birds nest of wiring at the bottom of the frame, once i rectified this I managed to reach a max speedof 26.4 mph on the flat without assistance :) However the crappy internal controller was unable to sustain this before the thermal cut out left me stranded. So I decided to ditch the internal controller and bought a 1000w sinewave controller. The problem I am having is fitting the three phase wires and the wiring forthe hall sensors down the spidle and getting cover on, there isn't enough room. The phase wires I am currently trying to use are 12 awg silicon, have other people experienced this and if so is there a solution that doesn't involve grinding more of the spindle away. Is it possible to use 14 awg cable or would that get too hot for the 48v 20-25 amps that I intend using?
thanks
Paul
 
Silicone insulation tends to be pretty thick. I used 12ga stranded TW, the kind of wire you pull in a conduit (Home Depot). I think the insulation is nylon, and it's fairly thin. Once it gets through the axle, you can splice to the silicone wire. I have about a foot coming out of the motor.

The other trick I used is I found a piece of plastic tubing with the same ID as the bearing and slid that over the bundle of wires on the flat of the axle. Then I clamped it tightly with a couple of hose clamps to make sure it was compressed. Then I put some super glue into the gap between the wires and axle and let it harden. Once cured, I peeled the plastic tubing off and it holds the wires in a perfect half-moon shape that the bearing will fit over. The tubing has to be polyethylene or polypropylene so the super glue won't stick to it. A little grease inside the tubing will help get it off.

Phase wire stuffing.jpg
 
Good evening,
well I managed to find the time to put the motor back together, I followed your advice fetcher and I eventually managed to get the motorback together although it was still a tight fit. I have done a few test runs and a new problem has cropped up. The new controller is a 1500w sine wave and came with a KT LCD3 display, the motor pulls away fine and accelerates to a decent top speed however if I back off the throttle whilst travelling at more than 10mph the power is cut to the motor as expected but if I reapply the throttle there is no power until the bike coasts down to about 8mph even if I have the throttle wide open, at about 8mph the motor kicks back in and accelerates normally. Below 10mph it works normally and if I back off the throttle only partially above 10mph it works normally. I have tried various combinations of settings of the KT LCD3 but it makes no difference. Has anyone got any ideas as to what the problem may be as I am all out of ideas.
thanks
Paul
 
paul drury said:
Has anyone got any ideas as to what the problem may be as I am all out of ideas.
thanks
Paul

Hmm... that's a controller issue.
Does that model have regenerative braking? If so, you might try disabling it in software just as a test. That is certainly a strange behavior and I have not heard of anything quite like that before. It's definitely possible the controller is somehow defective.
I'd suggest contacting the seller and ask them for advice.

Yes, those wires are damn tight. I wish there was a way to make the hall signals wireless to the controller. That would be so handy.
I've actually looked into doing just that, but the solutions are a bit complex for my liking. It could be done for sure though.
 
Good morning,
Ypedal the battery voltage at rest is 53.04V, at full throttle with no load ( back wheel off the floor) the initial current peaks at approximately 1.94A before settling down to around 0.8-0.9A with a voltage off 52.65V.
fetcher I believe there is a setting on the KT-LCD3 for regen which is C13 I have set this to 0 so hopefully no regen but I still have the same issue.
thanks
Paul
 
Ok after a little more investigation I have found the following. With the KT LCD3 panel disconnected the controller still runs but also it still has the same throttle problem. I am getting the full 4.2v to the throttle at all times even when the throttle is not responding, the throttle also puts out the full signal when the throttle is wide open even when the controller is not responding. I have tried a different throttle and the results are the same. Interestingly if the throttle is eased back but not fully off then the problem does not occur, ie the motor picks up speed again immediately without winding down to 8-9mph. Also when I have the regen set on the controller that works when I ease off the throttle, but as soon as the throttle is fully off the regen stops and the bike will coast. So it would appear that there is something going on in the controller whereby it must see a throttle input at all times to work correctly, or maybe I am grasping at straws.
thanks
Paul
 
One more thing you might try before trashing the new controller is to try adding a bit of resistance in series with the throttle ground wire. This can be done anyplace along the wire that's handy, usually near the controller. Something like a 200 to 500 ohm trimmer pot that's adjustable is ideal. Adding this will have an effect similar to mechanically moving the throttle stop so it rests at a slightly higher voltage when off. Be sure to have the wheel off the ground when testing.
Some controllers have safety features in the software to detect a bad throttle and get unhappy if the throttle signal goes too high or too low.

It might just be a bad controller too.
 
Goodevening Fetcher,
well I tried the trimpot suggestion, I adjusted the pot until the wheel just started to turn with the wheel off the ground which was at 1.22v I then dialled it back to 1.19v and still the same problem persists. So I think I have pretty much exhausted all avenues and I guess I will just have to buy another controller and see if I have any more luck with that one. Thanks for all of the help and suggestions it is appreciated.
thanks
Paul
 
Good afternoon,
would anyone have any suggestions for a reliable controller, it needs to to be 48v 1000w continuous (minimum) and preferably compatible with the kt-lcd3 display.
thanks
Paul
 
I've been using the 12 FET version of these:
https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=75888

I really like it but I'm not using any of the wireless Bluetooth or GPS functions. Just program with a laptop. The sine wave output makes the motor virtually silent and the controller has more than enough output to overheat the motor even with ferrofluid. The regen braking works great. It did take a little messing with the settings as the numbers in the software did not correspond exactly to what you get, but it was proportional so not hard to dial in.

You can see how I installed mine here:
https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=50590&start=50

I've seen others mount one in front of the down tube just above the bottom bracket. Seems like that location would get a lot of road spray/mud, so I went with rear mount.
 
joepah said:
fechter said:
Blazing Saddles bicycle rental in San Francisco has dozens of A2B Metros. They've never seen a swingarm crack like that. I wonder if salt water entered the hole and started stress-corrosion fracturing?

Well that's something.. How long does Blazing Saddle keep their rental bikes?

They are still going strong there now in 2017! I have seen their "graveyard" and not one is from a cracked frame.
 
Cracked my swing arm today. Did not wait for torque arms to arrive. :x
Looking to buy one...
 

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