Upgrading (up-sizing) motor's phase wires, from 14AWG to 12AWG,

Having some phase/signal wires stripped (again) by not fastening them well enough, I had to open up the motor and re-solder/attach them. :(

So I decided to upgrade the phase wires while I'm at it from what seems like 14AWG to 12AWG high quality Turnigy wires.

However, lo and behold, the channel is way to thin to allow three such phase wires due to their very thick silicon wrapping.

What to do? Replace the thick coating of course, by stripping the silicon and slipping a shrink tube!

The yellow wire on the right is the stock wire. The red wire on the left is the 12AWG turnigy wire with the silicon wrapping, and the wire in the middle is the turnigy wire, bare with only the shrink tube. See that it's beefier than the yellow.

The next step is mounting the hub motor plate back without causing damage to the coating, since it's a pretty tight fit as it is. BTW, for this particular job and for opening up hub motors in general, do yourself a favor and cough up some $$$ and get a gear-puller. If I knew how easy it is to get the plate off using a gear puller I had gotten one from day one!

Let's begin. Start by just inserting the motor axle's narrow part through the plaate's bearing...

Examine the fit more closely, see that no one is hurt...

And continue to press until it's mounted all the way.

Now make sure the moving part does not touch the wires (here I used a zip tie) since it will strip them as one point or another (which is what happened last time).

And we're good :)

If you're use the same color wire for several other wires, be damn sure to mark them beforehand. I've always kept that rule and never had to re-fix anything, which would be hellish.

I hate soldering hall-effect sensors

...so much.

But in case you smoke 'em, you just have to...

Honeywell S411 sensors (from Lyen), Crystalyte H4040, off-sized shrink tubes.

Finale

This project turned out to be much more complex than I initially thought. There was just a lot more details into every stage of the build: initializing the batteries, fabricating the torque arms, preparing a gazillion connections, etc etc. Not to mean it wasn't worth every piece of effort - it was. Riding this thing on & off road is brilliant fun. Cheers!

3-speed switch with Lyen controller

The controller came without the 3-speed pigtail to connect to. Lyen's been great, and in several days time I received a pigtail to solder onto the board.

The wiring for this controller is:

wire color > controller board hole location

red             x1

green         x2

black          gnd

From Lyen: The way it works is speed mode 1 is the program engaged when the X1 and GND is shorted on the controller board, open = speed mode 2, and X2 short to the GND is speed mode 3

Using a PC power supply to power the charger

Modding a used Enermax Liberty 400w PSU. It's very quiet so i can charge at the office. Enermax wrapped the inside very nice and tidy, I only had to solder the green wire to ground to convince the PSU it was connected to a motherboard, and prepare connectors for the +/-12v.
No need of resistors whatsoever.

Real, first ride

This time I fully configured the CA to take over completely.
Now that I was fully exposed to the capabilities of the CA, I am so happy that I decided to purchase it, it was indeed worth every single dime. GrinTeck rulez, no questions. To ride w/out one of these is of course possible, but you ride with so little control over your system (basically the only control is the throttle) it's simply not the way to go.
Here's just some of what you get with the CA:

• Nice, big, illuminated display of current battery voltage, kph, Wh/Ah being drawn, motor temperature.
• Limit system by: amps / watts / speed. No need to touch the controller's firmware anymore.
• Stabilize the throttle signal ("ramp up") - this is a big thing. Without this, every slight turn of the throttle makes the motor kick the bike forward, and with a powerful motor such as this, it's not pleasant at all. With the ramp up, it's smooth, the rider doesn't have to worry about not turning the throttle too much. The throttle can be twisted all the way up, and when reaching the desired speed you just let go a little.
• Back down the throttle if motor's temperature passes the limit.

I don't know why exactly I topped at ~50kph at the previous "first ride", but this time after flushing the controller's firmware the wheel had no problem spinning at 100kph (in the air, that is). I managed to get at 65kph on the road and that's a scarry f***ing speed to be at. Well... I remember feeling that about 30kph when I just started with the 400W bafang on the gary fisher, so times will tell on that one :)

Here's how the settings look like.

 
It was INSANELY fun to match speed with cars (keeping a safe distance of course). Later I went back to the age of 10 and started racing other cyclists. The race took exactly three seconds, after which they were far off in my rear view mirror.
 
I had a fantastic ride. This is true mobility, at a decent cost.

Towards the end is was less fun - I opened the throttle all the way to gain some speed and held it there. Then I let go of the throttle but the bike kept...accelerating! I got all confused because it happened so fast. I tried to brake but that only slowed the bike down to some degree and immediately there was a turn that I had to take, that I lost control over the bike and fell down on the side. Luckily, it ended with no more than a few bruises.
What happened was that the auto cruiser kicked in, it just happened at an "inconvenient" time that I didn't react to that normally. I picked myself up really fast and disappeared from the scene, and proceeded to immediately turn the auto cruise off, limit the speed to 50kph (which is already a lot), and limit the amps & watts.
Now, this accident I had with the floor wouldn't have happened at all had I installed the e-brake sensors. It shouldn't have happened.
I was so eager to test the bike that I thought I could manage with just letting go of the throttle would do. Now I'm angry at myself, I don't like falling and seeing myself fail like that. It was a sweet, sweet ride and I ruined it. It was stupid, reckless, and definitely not according to the plan. So there's a lesson for you boys and girls, protection is paramount.
 
All in all, I put in an immense amount of work in this project over the past three months (and I'm in huge debt to the wife for this) and now's the first time I'm getting something back.
 
Insights:

  * 5kW is INSANELY ALOT. It's only for accelerating really fast or with steep hills. 3kW are more than enough for maintaining a very decent speed and having climbing ability.
  * 50kph is so damn much too, it's scary. Good thing I chose a beast like the Demo8 as basis. As I said, don't know yet if I ever want
    more than this speed.
  * The Crystalyte H40 is a beast. It could be above my needs, but on the other hand it just means that it'll be indestructible.
  * I have to learn all the dynamics that come with highspeeds, this is no childsplay.
  * Bike / fuel tank / motor can withstand crashes :)

First ride

O-M-G this is such a riot!!!! :) The bike accelerates faster than cars. Hills are nothing for this motor, it just pushes like crazy.

The CA's ramp-up is simply a must - without it every slight change in the throttle is a nuisance. With the ramp up it speeds up really smooth, that way it's supposed to be.

I didn't have a speedometer installed but I don't think I did more than 55kph - need to verify that. Might be that I limited the controller in firmware..?

The one torque arm handled everything I threw at it. Motor axle didn't twist inside. I'm still going with a second arm for backup, who knows...

To conclude, this baby is just it. The acceleration is indescribable, you have to be on the bike to understand. The acceleration seems almost the same even up steep hills, but the speed wasn't really what I hoped for (and I sure didn't spend so much money & effort just for 55 or even 60 kph. I also didn't configure the CA at all, it is in the same condition as when it arrived, and when it's connected to the controller it won't do more than 10kph ;) So it will need setting up as well before this becomes the magic ride I plan on.

Main battery harnesses

That's it, four parallel harnesses, five connectors each. This was just tedious to make...

XT60 male plugs on the battery side (source) and 4mm HXT hobbyking bullets on the load side. I always paint with black the (-) on the housing to avoid shorts. That's one of the issues with the bullets, which the EC5 / XT60 / Andersons / Deans-T simply don't have. On the other side, they're dirt cheap, easy to solder, easy (at least easier) to connect/disconnect.

Making the big plug detachable for easy maintenance (and because I love everything to be modular as possible, no catholic marriage between parts.

And if I ever laid my eyes on something beautiful...

Charging the whole shebang!!

A 4-way plug made of four pairs of HXT 4mm bullets

These are 4mm bullet connectors from hobbyking. Each of the four groups of batteries ultimately has an entry here. In this they are not yet connected and can be represented as either parallel or serial with the right connector (as shown in this post). A paralleling connector will be used for the charger, and a serializing one for the controller.

Finished checking all the batteries

With the exception of three, all twenty batteries have terrifically balanced cells all the way down to ~3.50v per cell.

Batteries lined up, fuel tank ready for testing: