any advice on a cyclamatic grinding noise

[ebike23]

I have a cyclamatic power plus. A few days ago took it out and all was well, even went up a steep hill with power assist. Got home and charged it, charged fine. Took it out the next day, pressed the pedal assist button and all i could hear with a loud grinding noise from the hub, kinda like a tyre in full motion pressing on the metal side. I quickly switched it off. After a few attempts of the grinding noise the motor has given out. On the odd try it will do the same loud noise until i power off.

Iv checked the battery, its a cyclamatic 24v. Fully charged reads 23.4v so the battery is ok. Opened up the controller, wires seems to be ok but have not checked with volty. Before i take it apart can anyone offer me some advice as to what i could do ?

prior to this, wasnt opened or anything. Many thanks.

 

[dbdbdb]

Resurecting this thread as I now have the same problem. It started as an intermittent motor faiure (lights on but no power). I was convinced this was the red push button on the throttle so I soldered it closed which fixed it. For 20 minutes. Then power failure again this time with an occasional grinding noise from the motor and some small wheel movement when power works.

Doesn't sound good, is it worth dismantling the motor?

 

[saneagle]

Resurecting this thread as I now have the same problem. It started as an intermittent motor faiure (lights on but no power). I was convinced this was the red push button on the throttle so I soldered it closed which fixed it. For 20 minutes. Then power failure again this time with an occasional grinding noise from the motor and some small wheel movement when power works.

Doesn't sound good, is it worth dismantling the motor?

It's not very likely to be the motor. Which Cyclamatic is it? Start by checking all the connections to the motor, then check where the cable comes out of the motor to see if there's any damage there. The grinding noise tells you it's an electrical problem. If it were a mechanical issue, it would be continuous, anyway. Some Cyclamatics have a connector on the motor cable about 6"-10" from the axle. That one must be pushed in all the way to the marked line, not just in tight.

Please let us know what you find.

 

[saneagle]

I just remembered that the early versions had a block connector on the motor cable that was covered in heatshrink. Have a look at that connector because it's quite likely to be corroded. The one I was referring to above is the normal round waterproof 9-pin connector.

 

[Nealh]

What one hears as a grinding noise is usually an electrical commutation noise, most riders will not have heard a commutation connection fault before which can sound as if it is mechanical..
As mentioned it is a wiring connection issue so one has to chack the three phase at the controller and the motor connector

 

[dbdbdb]

Thanks for the replies. It's a Cyclamatic Power Plus, shiny aluminium mountain bike, front suspension, quite old. Yes it is an earlier version with the heatshrink. There is slight damage to the heatshrink at the front where the wires enter, not much though. I'll remove the heatshrink and inspect it.

 

[saneagle]

Thanks for the replies. It's a Cyclamatic Power Plus, shiny aluminium mountain bike, front suspension, quite old. Yes it is an earlier version with the heatshrink. There is slight damage to the heatshrink at the front where the wires enter, not much though. I'll remove the heatshrink and inspect it.

If you can, please show us a photo to remind us of which connector is in there. I improved my Cyclamatic Power Plus to do an easy 33 mph. There's loads you can do to them to make them more powerful and better to use, while still keeping them legal. They're a bit weak and low range as they come. The best thing, though, is that it's legal to use a throttle on one if it's pre 2016.

 

[dbdbdb]

Photos attached. As you can see it's still 24V. Defo pre 2016, maybe 2010. On its second battery, a LiFePo4 24V.

 

[saneagle]

Photos attached. As you can see it's still 24V. Defo pre 2016, maybe 2010. On its second battery, a LiFePo4 24V.

You didn't show the motor cable where it comes out of the axle. What I can see, looks weird. Possibly damaged, or possibly the axle is in upside down, which would fill your motor with water and short out the hall sensors to cause the problem you describe. The cable should exit downwards.

LiFePO4 is not so go for 24v because it's lower voltage than a normal li-ion one. If your motor's OK, you might want to think about going up to 36v and a decent controller, which makes the bike a lot better for about £200. The Cyclamatic controller does actually work at 36v, but your low voltage cut-off would be too low and battery indicators would always show full. I made a thread about all these sort of mods. If you're interested, search for Beastamatic threads.

 

[dbdbdb]

You didn't show the motor cable where it comes out of the axle. What I can see, looks weird. Possibly damaged, or possibly the axle is in upside down, which would fill your motor with water and short out the hall sensors to cause the problem you describe. The cable should exit downwards.

LiFePO4 is not so go for 24v because it's lower voltage than a normal li-ion one. If your motor's OK, you might want to think about going up to 36v and a decent controller, which makes the bike a lot better for about £200. The Cyclamatic controller does actually work at 36v, but your low voltage cut-off would be too low and battery indicators would always show full. I made a thread about all these sort of mods. If you're interested, search for Beastamatic threads.

Thanks yes axle cable entry is just outside one of the photos, I will strip the connector heat shrink tomorrow and take some more pics. Had this bike from new, axle hasn't been moved. The cable does exit the axle upwards so may let water in and may have slight damage, otherwise similar to the bike in this pic https://m1.secondhandapp.at/1.1/5b292eef35f9bf3bce6f6690
Mind you it's been stored indoors since long before this problem began, not seen rain.

 

[Nealh]

For sure the motor cable exits north of the axle.

There are a few possible faults to cause the grinding noise and all are electrical.

One will need to show a nice clear pic of the wire coming out of the axle .
One of the wiring under the heat shrink and the exposed end with the yellow wire.
And one of the wiring at the controller end.

 

[dbdbdb]

Right, heat shrink removed (it is unusually thick ). Connector unplugged, also unscrewed the control box panel. Quite a rat's nest of wires, not sure why so many are needed for a DC motor. Several are disconnected.

Wires going into axle look ok, they were entering from the bottom after all.

I think I have eliminated the battery as a problem, I wired up a spare 24v.

I have my multimeter ready, anyone know what voltages to look for and where?

At the moment when switched on and full throttle applied there is nothing apart from, about one time in two, a soft clunk from the control box area. The grinding noise stopped before I started dismantling.

 

[saneagle]

The motor is three-phase, so there are three thick phase wires that provide power to it. The controller needs to know the position of the motor so that it can fire the energy pulses down each phase at the right time. It uses three hall sensors for that. The hall sensors are powered by 5v (thin red and black wires). They send their signals back to the controller by the thin blue, yellow and green wires. If the controller doesn't get the correct timing signal, you get the grinding noise.

If the controller continues to fire incorrectly timed pulses, the current is huge and it can cause the MOSFETs to blow. The MOSFETs are like electronic switches/gates that let the pulses of energy through to the motor.

First find the hall sensor connector inside the controller compartment. It's a large white block with the 5 wires in it. Check that it's clean and put a blob of silicone grease in it to protect it from water. Don't put anything back in the compartment because you have to do some tests to see what's wrong.

Here's how to test an ebike system. Start with tests 2, 5 and 6. tests 2 and 5 with the controller switched on and powered. Test 5 with the phase and battery wires disconnected:
1. Measure the voltage at controller's battery connector. Obviously should be battery voltage. 36v - 42v for a 36v battery would be an acceptable range, but if you've fully charged the battery and it's less than 41v, it needs some sorting.
2. Measure the voltage on the 5v rail. You can measure that between any ground (black) and any of the reds going to throttle, PAS or motor halls. It should be around 5v.
3. Check throttle signal wire voltage on it's connector while connected. it's the wire that's not red or black on the throttle connector. Should give about 1v to 4v when you twist the throttle. If there's more than one wire, your meter will find it. It's the one that's between 1v and 4v, assuming that it works.
4. Check that the pedal assist sensor is pulsing. Measure the PAS signal wire while turning the pedals slowly. Should pulse 5v on and off every time a magnet passes the sensor. The signal wire is the one that's not red or black.
5. Check the motor hall signal wires (blue green and yellow) on the motor connector at the controller. They should each pulse with 5v going on and off as you rotate the wheel BACKWARDS.
6. Mosfet test. Disconnect the motor cable and battery from the controller. Measure the resistance (200k scale) between the red battery connection and each of the three phase wire connections, then repeat with the black battery wire. Each set of 3 readings should be the same as each other and in the range 7K -24K. Though can be higher as long as they're all the same. Due to the capacitor across the battery wire, you can get a constantantly changing measurement while it charges. In that case, try swapping your probes round. Even though can be a moving result, the only important thing is that all three move in a similar way.

Wiring diagram in this thread. Yours is slightly different in that you have the little potentiometer to adjust the speed instead of bridging the white wires:

CYCLAMATIC CONTROLLER REPLACEMENT ISSUES

Hello, I'm after a little help replacing my Cyclamatic power plus controller. Where do I start?? The old controller when opened had an exploded capacitor, I replaced the capacitor but it was dead, obviously what ever made the capacitor explode in the first place had affected other parts of the...

www.pedelecs.co.uk

 

[dbdbdb]

Thanks that's very helpful. I have run out of time today so it may be a week or so before I can get back to this.

Couple of things - I disabled the pedal sensor some years back so this bike only runs from the throttle. Also a correction on the 'clunk' - it is a soft thud noise, low frequency so hard to locate but I am now sure it comes from the motor not the controller box. It does seem to happen only once for every two full turns of the throttle.

 

[dbdbdb]

Managed to do the following:

1. Measure the voltage at controller's battery connector.
27.3V. This is a 24V battery.
2. Measure the voltage on the 5v rail.
4.7V
3. Check throttle signal wire voltage on it's connector while connected. it's the wire that's not red or black on the throttle connector. Should give about 1v to 4v when you twist the throttle. If there's more than one wire, your meter will find it. It's the one that's between 1v and 4v, assuming it works.

Am I testing to earth (black?). There's a small chip on the throttle ring with green and red wires to it, looks like a hall sensor, 2.3V across these wires. The other white wires is closed to the red by the push button switch. Only other wire seems to be a yellow wire which goes to the LEDs

4. pedal sensor disconnected some years back.

5. Check the motor hall signal wires (blue green and yellow) on the motor connector at the controller. They should each pulse with 5v going on and off as you rotate the wheel BACKWARDS.
A hard test to get any speed on the wheel without the pedals breaking your fingers while holding the multimeter! Best I could get was 2.9V up to 3.4V on each wire. Possibly 3.9V seen but nothing 4V or above.

6. Mosfet test. Disconnect the motor cable and battery from the controller. Measure the resistance (200k scale) between the red battery connection and each of the three phase wire connections, then repeat with the black battery wire.

I got stuck here. The controller is buried at the back. Am I to disconnect both the black and red thick battery cables? Wiring diagram seems to show 10 wires going from the controller to the motor, which is motor cable I disconnect? I assume the 3 phase wires are the yellow, green and blue?

Thanks

 

[saneagle]

Managed to do the following:

1. Measure the voltage at controller's battery connector.
27.3V. This is a 24V battery.
2. Measure the voltage on the 5v rail.
4.7V
3. Check throttle signal wire voltage on it's connector while connected. it's the wire that's not red or black on the throttle connector. Should give about 1v to 4v when you twist the throttle. If there's more than one wire, your meter will find it. It's the one that's between 1v and 4v, assuming it works.

Am I testing to earth (black?). There's a small chip on the throttle ring with green and red wires to it, looks like a hall sensor, 2.3V across these wires. The other white wires is closed to the red by the push button switch. Only other wire seems to be a yellow wire which goes to the LEDs

4. pedal sensor disconnected some years back.

5. Check the motor hall signal wires (blue green and yellow) on the motor connector at the controller. They should each pulse with 5v going on and off as you rotate the wheel BACKWARDS.
A hard test to get any speed on the wheel without the pedals breaking your fingers while holding the multimeter! Best I could get was 2.9V up to 3.4V on each wire. Possibly 3.9V seen but nothing 4V or above.

6. Mosfet test. Disconnect the motor cable and battery from the controller. Measure the resistance (200k scale) between the red battery connection and each of the three phase wire connections, then repeat with the black battery wire.

I got stuck here. The controller is buried at the back. Am I to disconnect both the black and red thick battery cables? Wiring diagram seems to show 10 wires going from the controller to the motor, which is motor cable I disconnect? I assume the 3 phase wires are the yellow, green and blue?

Thanks

You're looking for pulsing 5v on the hall sensor wires. You measure while turning the wheel SLOWLY and BACKWARDS by hand. The result should show the 4.7v switching on and off several times with each rotation.

The wiring diagram shows 8 wires going to the motor: 3 phase power wires, 3 hall signal wires, two wires to power the halls.

It's easiest to pull the controller out and disconnect everything to do the MOSFET test.

In the diagram, the throttle signal wire is green coming from the throttle and yellow on the other side of the connector going to the controller. Test it in that connector. Always measure voltages from ground.