Gmac 10t and phaserunner weird noises

Iceman

1 mW
Joined
Aug 21, 2023
Messages
16
Location
Swiss
My bike started acting weird yesterday, now there is no power on the wheel but very strange sound. Sounds like the motor is spinning inside but no power on the wheel.

Any ideas?
Is there a way to post videos?
Here is a db link of a video:

 

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What happened before the problem began?

What does "acting wierd" mean, specifically?

Is it a geared hubmotor? If so, it probably has an internal clutch, so the motor can spin backwards inside it without spinning the wheel. If the clutch breaks*** then it can spin both directions without spinning the wheel.
EDIT: Looks like the title of this thread has changed from when I started replying and now specifies it's a GMAC with a phaserunner.

The GMAC has no clutch so it can't do either of the things above.

But the gears can be stripped or broken, and the freehub mechanism can be unscrewed from the side of the hub and allow the whole mechanism inside to move laterally--if it moved far enough the gears wouldn't mesh with the ring gear on the casing.



*** like here
1711240565921.png
Yes, that's a hose clamp holding the clutch closed enough to (barely) operate....all the metal filings are from the clamp scraping the cover on the way home.
 
Last edited:
Is there a way to post videos?
If you post it to youtube as a non-private video, you can use the MEDIA button when posting to stick it inline with your post, and it can be played right in the post.
 
Sounds like the gears are toast from here.

You've been riding it offroad, huh? that's known to thrash gears. Open to confirm.

Luckily you can buy a new set: Gear assembly for GMAC Motors
 
What happened before the problem began?

What does "acting wierd" mean, specifically?

Is it a geared hubmotor? If so, it probably has an internal clutch, so the motor can spin backwards inside it without spinning the wheel. If the clutch breaks*** then it can spin both directions without spinning the wheel.
EDIT: Looks like the title of this thread has changed from when I started replying and now specifies it's a GMAC with a phaserunner.

The GMAC has no clutch so it can't do either of the things above.

But the gears can be stripped or broken, and the freehub mechanism can be unscrewed from the side of the hub and allow the whole mechanism inside to move laterally--if it moved far enough the gears wouldn't mesh with the ring gear on the casing.



*** like here
View attachment 349721
Yes, that's a hose clamp holding the clutch closed enough to (barely) operate....all the metal filings are from the clamp scraping the cover on the way home.


What happened before the problem began?

I was on my way home at night, the motor seemed to stutter but worked fine for a while. then the stutter got worse until there was no more power on the wheel. pedeling was hard, luckily it was all downhill from there.

wow yes seems my gears are broken. I will open the motor tomorrow and have a look.
 
not really offroad, but yeah I have been making minor jumps from the sidewalk...

And running what level power?

Based on the noises you're talking about i'm thinking it's gears even more.
 
thanks guys for all the answers.

I will open the motor tomorrow.

I had a problem before, were there was cut in the cable where it comes out of the motor. we were able to solder the wires back together. I guess there was a short, as my frankenrunner did not respond anymore and was not findable hooking it up to the PC.
When opening we saw the gears were damaged.
It seemed like there was soldering lead in the gears.



After replacing the gears and and hooking up a new phaserunner the bike worked fine for about 2 weeks.

this was all in in sensorless mode. as it seems I also fried the hall sensors.

what parts would I need to replace those?

I will post back when I opened it tomorrow.


You guys cannot believe how much I love my bike and how happy I was getting it fixed and getting so much freedom back.
Sucks so bad right now.





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luckily my friend had another set of gears laying around from another gmac.

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Holy smokes dude, that MAC has been 'rode hard and put away wet' AF. I've never seen a MAC accumulate that much grit!

I would suggest using an ebike tester to check the phase and halls, as something may be electrically damaged in the motor with solder flying around.

I'll let others give you tips on diagnosis.

If you have dead halls and solder, you probably overheated it within an inch of it's life.

Do think about - will that happen again after you fix it?
 
I was on my way home at night, the motor seemed to stutter but worked fine for a while. then the stutter got worse until there was no more power on the wheel. pedeling was hard, luckily it was all downhill from there.

If it weren't that you can hear the motor running inside, that description sounds like a controller FET problem, shorted phases making a motor hard to turn.

If the motor is actually running inside, that can't be the case, so the only thing left that fits is broken gear teeth jamming up the works, breaking other teeth off, etc, until the gears are not gears anymore.

Or the sun or ring gear breaking (or the ring gear pin shearing, so it spins inside the cover--that's actually probably the fastest to fix if you have something that can replace that pin). I attached a pic I took when I had mine apart, but I'm not sure the pin is visible.
1711253420145.png

But I have not had the misfortune to have to ride on damaged gears yet, so I don't know how that actually feels. :oops:

Please take and post pics of the internals of the motor; I'm curious to see whatever failure mode you have, so I can prepare for it with my GMAC if it ever arises (or do what I can to prevent it).

EDIT: Your most recent posted images kinda look like what I had here due to the freehub unscrewing itself:
I tried to copy one of the images in here, but the upload never finishes, so you'll have to look at them there.

Holy smokes dude, that MAC has been 'rode hard and put away wet' AF. I've never seen a MAC accumulate that much grit!
I guess you didn't see mine (linked above)
 
If you have dead halls and solder, you probably overheated it within an inch of it's life.
Just guessing, but given the specific damage around the halls to the board traces, and the posted-about wiring faults that killed the BR, I think the solder didn't melt from motor overheating, but from current thru the wrong paths from the wiring fault.

The windings are not darkened that I can tell; I suspect motor overheating sufficient to melt the solder and damage the PCB coating would probably have done so.
 
I've never seen a cooked looking, yet dead mac.
Everything will fail around the windings, perhaps they're very high temp rated.

I think you're right in suspecting a short.

This motor could blow another controller if the short still exists, so one should be ruled out.
 
Another possiblity rather than current heating for the PCB damage is water intrusion. It would also allow the grease contamination seen. There is corrosion near the axle, and deposits around the magnets that could be corrosion as well.
 
what parts would I need to replace those?

Spare GMAC Hall PCB
perhaps...
Male L1019 Cable for All-Axle Motor

there was cut in the cable where it comes out of the motor.
Perhaps you should work out why this happened, and eliminate that problem, then replace the cable and PCB.

Also I recommend that apart from fresh grease, the inside of the motor with replaced parts should be quite clean. The other way to get a clean, reliable GMAC is to buy a new one - weigh that cost against the parts and effort to ensure cleaning out yours.
 
Wow, that is ... That is just bad.

I would suggest using a tank with some of the purple de-greaser stuff that is out there it is not likely to chew up the coating on the wires... but it will help get all the stuff out.

If that grit is magnetic, that is a good idea, wrap a magnet in thick plastic and just start sucking it out, once you are to the point of negligible return on the magnet... THen it is a top down cleaning with the chemistry of your choice. I would go either purple stuff, or the ::strains:: I can even remember the can and the way it looks.. There is an electrical cleaning solution yellow label with white background and is specifically for cleaning "motor and generator windings" the name brand is escaping me atm.

And clean.. clean some more. Clean until every thing you are touching causes pain, then recover and clean some more.. otherwise that is the little motor that did, and now needs a dirt nap.
 
I was looking at the images from the previous dissassembly again for reference when looking up info for someone else, and:

It's hard to tell without touching it, but it also looks like corrosion in the holes of the aluminum stator support, and various other places in the motor.
1711301773961.png

The cover/case has clearly visible rust on the brake rotor mounting holes, and almost certainly aluminum corrosion on the inner face of the cover. I can't be sure but you don't appear to be using a disc rotor bolted to them, so you could use the spacer and rotor bolts that come with the GMAC and keep those holes filled to minimize this problem.

1711301916684.png
Additionally, there are missing caps on the planetary gear mounting/retention pins for one of the three pins on each of at least two of the gears (as well as damage to the actual gear teeth).
1711302008824.png
 
I had a problem before, were there was cut in the cable where it comes out of the motor. we were able to solder the wires back together. I guess there was a short, as my frankenrunner did not respond anymore and was not findable hooking it up to the PC.
How exactly was the cable repaired? Mostly just curious, but depending on the specific repair, and the cause of the cable damage, it could lead to further problems later.


When opening we saw the gears were damaged.
It seemed like there was soldering lead in the gears.
Given the missing caps on the mounting pins of the gears on at least two gears (see image above) and the corrosion in the motor, I doubt at this point that it was solder in your gears, unless you tested it and found that it was composed of actual solder metals.

I would suggest instead that it was pieces of the metal from the pin caps or the pins themselves, and/or bits off the corroded areas (probably tiny tiny fragments that have been congealed/compacted into larger ones by gear action).

If it was pieces of the caps/pins, that could also have caused the gear tooth damage itself.

this was all in in sensorless mode. as it seems I also fried the hall sensors.

what parts would I need to replace those?
Usually any of the Honeywell / Allegro SS41 / SS411 types will work. You need open-collector output, bipolar latching operation, and a supply / signal voltage range as wide as possible, preferably Vcc down to 3-4V up to at least 20-30V, to allow for the poor operating conditions inside motors. Some versions have faster response, or take less or more difference between polarity strengths to switch states, and in some motor usages and conditions may work better.

Note that non-genuine parts won't have identical specifications to the genuine ones, so you have to check the actual spec sheet from the specific manufacturer you're buying, for the specific sub-version of the part you get, to see what it really does vs the genuine ones. If there's no such data available, then you can't know what it will really do or if it will operate correctly, and you would be better off buying genuine known-capability parts from Mouser, Digikey, Farnell, etc.

Sources like Amazon, ebay, ali*, etc., have ZERO guarantees that you will get what you think you are buying. ;) they may work, but you won't know till they're actually working in there...and if they aren't working as needed they may pass a static bench test but fail to work as needed while the motor is running for various reasons.


Some info comparing a few versions:
Also are plenty of other posts discussing halls in various motors. :)
 
hi guys.
I am overwelmed by all the feedback and all the suggestions and obviously all the time you spent looking into my problem.
thanks so much!


So I opened the motor today, and yeah it looks very bad. the gears are completly destroyed.

as mentioned before, the last pictures were from the last problem were the cables were completly chewed up and resoldered together. then the gears (the blue ones) were exchanged for an older part laying around (the black ones). So I do not know what motor they came from and if they were actually suitable for this gmac.
when fixing the cables they were soldered together and insulated with heat shrinking tubes.
then the cable coming out of the motor was mainly taped together. unfortunetly I dont have clear pictures of how that was done.
My friend who built the bike (and also helped me fixe it) is travelling allot and is not availrable atm.

this just give you some background infos.

1. Problem with cable entering the motor:

when opening up the parts today I saw that the main cable coming out from the motor was chewed up again. It looks like the individual cables were fine, but yes there is definetly a problem with how this was installed. also I took the wheel off and reinstalled it a few times. I think I definelty made some mistakes reinstalling the wheel. the spacer (and half cut spacer sorry I dont know the word in english) are sharp and will always chew up the cable.

2. the gears are completly destroyed.

I am not sure if there is a problem with the new black gears that were installed or if there is another problem that destroyed the gears. (So Morty how much do you know about the gear wars? O how I envy you :) )

3. the hall sensors are not working

So there was often a slight chewing or stuttering (after the first repair) specially when starting the motor and not allready driving.
according to my friend this should not have been a problem, but I think this also contributed to destroying the motor.


So what to do?

As I am not an expert in either mechanics or electronics, I am wondering If I can send the whole motor back to canada to get it rebuilt.

If not, the next steps would be to clean everything out and install new gears. Gear assembly for GMAC Motors
how to I get the gear part out? I was not able to loosen or take out the gears.

then I think driving around with the damaged hall senors seems to be a bad Idea. so exchanging the hall sensors:
Spare GMAC Hall PCB
and while at it also replace the cable coming from the motot:
Male L1019 Cable for All-Axle Motor


what other steps would you recommend?


again, thanks fo much for all you support.











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2024-03-24 16.47.51.jpg
2024-03-24 16.41.09.jpg
 
Holy smokes dude, that MAC has been 'rode hard and put away wet' AF. I've never seen a MAC accumulate that much grit!

I would suggest using an ebike tester to check the phase and halls, as something may be electrically damaged in the motor with solder flying around.

I'll let others give you tips on diagnosis.

If you have dead halls and solder, you probably overheated it within an inch of it's life.

Do think about - will that happen again after you fix it?
Yes I think just exchanging the parts might not be the longtearm solution..
 
Wow, that is ... That is just bad.

I would suggest using a tank with some of the purple de-greaser stuff that is out there it is not likely to chew up the coating on the wires... but it will help get all the stuff out.

If that grit is magnetic, that is a good idea, wrap a magnet in thick plastic and just start sucking it out, once you are to the point of negligible return on the magnet... THen it is a top down cleaning with the chemistry of your choice. I would go either purple stuff, or the ::strains:: I can even remember the can and the way it looks.. There is an electrical cleaning solution yellow label with white background and is specifically for cleaning "motor and generator windings" the name brand is escaping me atm.

And clean.. clean some more. Clean until every thing you are touching causes pain, then recover and clean some more.. otherwise that is the little motor that did, and now needs a dirt nap.

yes, deffinetly clean everything out. again, this images came from opening and fixing the last problem, everything was cleaed when doing that.
 
I don't think Grin rebuilds those motors and I doubt it would be much cheaper than just buying a new one if they did. If you buy the exact same motor to replace it, you can probably re-use the rim and spokes from the old wheel. But considering the abuse you put it through, maybe a direct drive motor would be more reliable for you.
 
So I opened the motor today, and yeah it looks very bad. the gears are completly destroyed.
Yes, those are toast. They look like the typical white nylon gears. Depending on the actual material, they might not be as tough as the material the GMAC gears are made from. But if there were any remnants of the missing / damaged pins or anything else still in the motor from the previous issue, even a tiny piece of metal, etc, it could have chewed up *any* gears (even metal ones).

The GMAC gears in your original pictures look like they are still usable, other than the missing / damaged pins securing the assembly together. So you could ride with those until they fail if you need to, once any bits of those pins that could still come out are removed to prevent damage.


as mentioned before, the last pictures were from the last problem were the cables were completly chewed up and resoldered together. then the gears (the blue ones) were exchanged for an older part laying around (the black ones).
I don't see any black gears in this thread's images. There are only the GMAC blue ones in the earlier posts, and in this post I'm replying to there are white gears (albeit quite dirty with contaminated grease).



So I do not know what motor they came from and if they were actually suitable for this gmac.
when fixing the cables they were soldered together and insulated with heat shrinking tubes.
then the cable coming out of the motor was mainly taped together. unfortunetly I dont have clear pictures of how that was done.
if the images in this latest post are of the present state of that cable, and it's not new damage, I highly recommend pulling the undamaged part of the cable on the outside of the motor up and thru the axle until entirely undamaged cable is inside the motor. Then cut away the whole length between the motor internal connections and this new undamaged cable area, and strip back the undamaged cable jacket inside the motor enough to secure the new wiring to where the old wiring used to go.

this removes the entire damaged and spliced area, which then removes the risk of destroying your controller again, as long as the axle is correctly mounted to the bike such that the wiring is not stressed and the wiring is then secured out of the way of anything that can damage it.

It does shorten your wiring by several inches, and some setups may require moving the controller closer to the motor to accomodate this, or using an extension cable between motor and controller. If neither is an option, then I'd recommend getting a new motor-side cable from ebikes.ca to completley replace the existing one, that will be long enough to fit all the way from the internal connection points to wherever you need the connector to be.


If it *is* new damage, I think you should carefully look at how the motor is mounted and the cable is routed, as something could be repeatedly damaging it again there.

If the cable is rubbing against any sharp edges, either the edges need to be rounded off, or the cable needs to be rerouted, etc.



So there was often a slight chewing or stuttering (after the first repair) specially when starting the motor and not allready driving.
according to my friend this should not have been a problem, but I think this also contributed to destroying the motor.
If it was running sensorless, some "stuttering" is normal if you are not pedalling first to get started at least a tiny bit and then going, depending on the specific controller setup and the actual load the system has to get moving and the conditions it has to do that under.

(my trike is so heavy especially with cargo that sensorless doesn't really work very well on it regardless of controller type or brand).

Replacing the whole hall PCB is probably the easiest way to fix the sensors, but you can get individuals as noted previously and just solder them in.


If not, the next steps would be to clean everything out and install new gears. Gear assembly for GMAC Motors
how to I get the gear part out? I was not able to loosen or take out the gears.
AFAICR, it's just held in by the key fit in the slot shared with the axle, so a "gear puller" centered on the axle end and jaws on the metal triangle should be able to remove it. There may be a snap ring before you can do that, but I don't remember from when I had mine apart, and I can't tell in your images. But you can verify that with Grin before ordering the assembly. (I think there is also a thread here somewhere with info about this, but I don't have a link).

This video by Grin probably shows the procedure, but I haven't watched it, so you'll have to verify that.
 
thanks guys.
I have ordered new gears, halls sensors and a motor cable.
I will post back when parts are here and all is cleaned out properly.
For now I will have to get myself a "standard" ebike.
Then maybe in a later step I will check out and build myself a direct drive bike that might be more offroad compatible.

again, thanks for all your help, much apreciated.

Cheers from sunny Switzerland
 
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