Bafang BPM kit

  • Thread starter Deleted member 4366
  • Start date
D

Deleted member 4366

Guest
The kit took aout 5 weeks to arrive. They gave a tracking number after shipping, which I was able to use after I figured out that you had to type the letters in lower case, even though they were upper case. The kit was easy to install except that the freewheel was too long for the axle. I had to make two special washers to act as spacers for the anti-rotation washer to clear the freewheel, otherwise it jammed when I did up the wheel-nuts. The connectos matched, but there were mistakes with the pin insertion on the pedal sensor and throttle, so I had to remove the pins and reposition them. Iwired the controller standby wire to a switch on the handlebars, which is important unless you want to splice a switch into a brake switch wire to use as a standby, because the bike makes so much power that it's easy to flip it when trying to park it (when not on it but switched on). I used 44v 10.8aH lipos because a lifepo wouldn't be able to provide enough amps. The controller is rated at 500w, but will draw 28 amps (1400w) from the battery.

This is the high torque/low speed version of the motor with hall sensors. The controller can run with or without hall sensors. There's a simple self-learning procedure that you have to do after wiring up. I run it in hall sensor mode, where it is very smooth. The power is miles above any of the legal 250w bikes that you can buy - I would say more than you need. Leaving the throttle shut, it takes about one rotation of the pedal for the motor to kick in. The power depends on the speed of pedalling and the speed of the bike, so when you set off in a low gear, you can't pedal as fast as the bike accellerates, so you need to start in 6th out of 8, which isn't so good until the motor goes. It's better to leave it switched off until you're rolling unless you want to use the throttle. In this mode, steep hills are not easy because when you change down, the controller gives too much power and you accellerate; when you change up, there's not enough power so you slow back down. This can be overcome with the cruise control, which I'll describe later. With this setup, no hill will defeat you. In this mode there seems to be a maximum assist speed of 15mph.

Using the throttle gives huge power and speed. I haven't measured the top speed, but I would guess about 25mph on the flat without pedalling. This draws the maximum current of 28 amps, which would flatten the battery in about 15 minutes, so not a particularly smart thing to do unless necessary. The cruise control is automatic. I think there's a wire to the controller that you can cut to disable it, but I can't remember. So, having wound yourself up to maximum speed, when you decide to shut the throttle, nothing happens, which causes immediate panic. You have to brake or blip the throttle to cut it. Once mastered, the cruise control is very useful because when you set your cruise speed at say 12mph, it works like a 250w bike and gives increasing power as you slow down below that speed and a nominal 30watts above that speed , which nicely cancels out any motor drag, so that you can pedal at 15 to 20 mph on the flat using only 30watts. This increases your range immensely. Before using the cruise control, I was using 7aH for my 30 mile commute, afterwards 3aH, but of course I did more pedalling. Without power, there is a bit of drag from the motor that you can feel above 15mph, but is unnoticeable at lower speeds.

Overall, I think this kit is superb in what it does. You need a little mechanical and electrical nouse to install it, so it won't suit everyone, but I would say that a bike fitted with this kit and limited to 15mph is how an electric bike should be. There's no legal bike that you can buy that matches it's pulling power and climbing ability and I would recommend it to anyone.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Arbol
D

Deleted member 4366

Guest
I can tell this is old. There new ones go 31 MPH or you can have it set to unlimited.
There's lots of different versions. there's a numger on the motor which tells you the speed. The mumber is something like this:

BPM 36V500W 26(11)

You can get 350w or 500w ones, and 48v and 36v. They did make some batches of special voltage for some customers. The 26 indicates the recommended wheel size and the number in brackets is the speed code, which can be decoded using this table:

http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=43106

You can change the speed by changing the voltage from it's designated voltage. A 36v one will spin 33% faster at 48v. You have to choose the speed carefully because it has a big effect on efficiency, which can cause the motor to heat up and waste a lot of battery.

The code 8 is the fastest,which will spin to 29mph at nominal voltage. With a fully charged battery, it'll spin to 34mph, but you wouldn't see that speed on the road. It would be more like 25 mph unless you over-volted it a bit
 
Last edited by a moderator: