jeff.page.rides said:
BMboomer said:
Hi from Australia, haven't posted for a long time, but still into electric bikes, & my original cheap eBay direct drive hub bike has been improved over the years, & is still going strong.
Now for my latest project. I ordered a TSDZ2 kit, months ago just before the Covid 19 restrictions kicked in. & I still haven't got it. I thought things might get difficult, so I ordered it from Amazon AU, from a company called Greenergy-AU. It costed more than ordering from China, but I was thinking that I would be ordering from Australian stock.
Not so. It's coming from China anyway
Tracking tells me that it's still stuck at " Depart from overseas processing facility", & has been for a month now.
Anyway the delay has given me plenty of time to select a candidate bike for the TSDZ2 if & when it arrives. So I bought a great bike on Gumtree, that would be very suitable, & it was only $125. It's a Raceline Comp. Not very well known, but Raceline was the high end of Apollo, who are a very reputable bike brand in Australia. This bike is very well equipped. With decent Manitou forks, Hayes hydraulic disc brakes. Mavic rims on Shimano hubs. 9 speed cassette with Deore XTR derailleur. Deore shifters, all in a nice big light alloy hardtail frame with a standard 68mm BSA BB.
All set, but still waiting for the motor, & then I see on Gumtree an almost new condition, 2008 Giant Trance X0 frame, with 5" of Fox Float air suspension. More than twice the price of the Raceline, but it really is a thing of beauty. So I bought it thinking I might cannabalise all the good bits from the Raceline, put them on the Giant frame, & have a nice full suspension bike for the motor when it comes.
I know I would have more difficulties installing the motor in the FS frame, but at least it is a 68mm BSA BB.
What is the community opinion.
Is the extra difficulty of fitting worth the extra comfort of the FS frame, considering that I'm an older bloke, & probably won't be going more off road than gravel walking paths. Or should I stick to the Raceline, which is pretty much an ideal install.
Every full suspension bike is diffrent to install the TSDZ2 on. So try it on the full suspension bike first and if it's simple give it a try. If it is going to take a lot of work or will not work you can move it to the hardtail.
The motor finally arrived, & it wasn't going to go in the Giant Trance frame as the bottom floating suspension pivot was right in the way, so I fitted it into the Raceline hardtail which almost seemed like it was made for it.
I found the motor was a bit underwhelming at first, as I'm used to riding in the lowest level on my direct drive bike, but it wasn't too bad in the third level. It was super economical though giving me 140km on the first charge of the new 36v 17.4 ah Samsung 29e battery run down to 30v. That was including climbing over Buderim with it's 10% hills, twice.
After that economy & performance testing, & with my watt meter still in series, I thought I'd give the Open Source Firmware adapted to Vlcd5 that has been put together by some of the amazingly talented people that post here. I had already got the ST link V2, & it all went pretty easily.
I tried it at 36v using mostly the default settings in the Java Configurator, & was immediately blown away. Not only by the extra performance, lowest level almost felt like 3rd level did, & going up from there as the levels go up. But the whole thing felt much smoother & quieter.
Then I seriesed up 3 more parallel sets with my 10s to make a 13s, & tried it at 48v. That didn't seem to make much difference, to it's performance. Just doing it at a few less amps. The way that I will be using it, I won't be over stressing it anyway, so I am quite happy to stick with 36v. I'm quite commited to 36v. All my other e-bikes are 36v, & 10s is a nice round number.
I'm feeling like this is an awesome bike now. It's making my old legs feel 50yrs younger, & getting me up hills that have me walking if I'm on a road bike, or working a bit harder than I want to on most other e-bikes I've tried.
Now I've fully charged the battery to see if the extra performance comes at a cost to economy. So far it's looking good. I've done 45km, my Vlcd5 is telling me I've got 88.9% left, & I've still got 5 out of 6 bars on the gauge.
I'm thinking about my next project now (love retirement). Probably a stealthy road bike, with an AKM 128 CST. I want to use 36v but that motor seems to be only sold rated at 48v these days. I remember people using it at 36v & getting good torque. Anybody know if they're different windings these days?