ORBEA GAIN WHEELSET conversion

[willcee]

need skilled assistance please..... I bought 3 years since a new pair of Orbea GAIN 250w rear hubmotored wheel and as a mate was running a gain we fitted and found it was working as per usual. so long story short bought a Whyte frameset RN7 and a TdZ motor and custom built battery found that RN7 2020 framsets those with internal cabling the bracket shell is barrelled so neither TDZ or BAFANG would fit through their various upstands and bolt upstands fouling on this swollen ridge on the bracket shell, so i pulled the wheel set down and a competent electican friend said why don't we fit the hub motor wheel and see if we can get it to operate with a stand alone controller, you have the 36v battery.. thats where we are ,he has it running on a test rig , however his findings are that it doesn't like modern control so he says, we have it on video at 17.5 mph on the bench but it would need more than that on a test road.. he has now undone the outer casing on the loom which connects the hub to whatever controller hes using , i gave him a couple of Bafang ones i had been supplied by my source in UK..he wants to test and trace all values of these 9 wires so he can isolate whatever is controlling or governing the wheel speed.. any ideas chaps .thanks . i 'm all ears

 

[vfr400]

There is nothing governing the speed of a hub-motor inside it. It's the controller that does the speed regulation. The 9 wires are 3 x motor phase wires, 3 x motor hall sensors, 5v supply to the sensors, ground and speed sensor.

Hub-motors have a maximum speed by design that depends on the Kv (RPM/V). I don't know thw Orbea gain's Kv, buit it's unlikely to be so low that the motor will omly spin to 17mph, otherwise, it would onlt do 13 mph when the battery is drained, since speed depends on the voltage according to max RPM = Kv x battery volts. A 36v battery is 42v when fully charged and 31v when empty.

If your Bafang controller has an LCD, you can probably reprogram the speed limit with a bafang cable. if it doesn't, get a decent controller, like a KT, where you can set everything yourself.

 

[willcee]

thanks for your reply, as a novice to wheel hub motors and the focused tweaking required with this particular instance the 250w Orbea Gain motor would you given your experience, [and if others have different views] actually recommend a particular KT model which again given my understanding of your experience with hub motors be better than what we are using at present the std Bafang issue.. thanks .. will

 

[vfr400]

Assuming it's a sensored motor, you can use any controller you want. For cheapness, we normally recommend the Brainpower one with the S866 LCD, which costs about £40, but if you want a rweally nice controller, it has to be a KT sine wave one at about £70 with LCD3. We stick with these because we know all the settings. Ive never heard of anybody using either with an Orbea Gain motor, so there's a very small chance of incompatibility, but if it works with a Bafang controller, there's no reason it shouldn't work with with of the other two.

 

[willcee]

well getting on with the build , just waiting for the hollowtech dedicated PAS kit so we can see what it gives at the pedals but running on a thumb throttle yesterday a Gain owner my chum had it at 22.5 on level 3 max [not in his Gain experience of perhaps 2.5 k miles cutting out]on the Bafang contoller 850 display adjusted down to 3 levels and speed unlimited with a wind on his back and turned into a 25 mph wind 16.5 on way home.. so looks good, what I hope is that this hub is not limited in the windings and some knowledgeable people say it may well be approaching the limit.. will