A camping recumbent with the new TSDZ8 motor

[Bob.A]

I'm looking for a motor for my third ebike build. First two are recumbents and this one will be as well. I have a greenspeed magnum with a tsdz2b and a rans stratus with a bbs02. Both bikes have over 1000 miles on them with about a year and change worth of riding. Have had no trouble with either motor and have not committed to a specific motor yet, but am going to keep it with 48v since I have a battery that I plan on swapping over with a second mounting base. Neither of these bikes is well suited to being transported. The magnum is a trike and even without the battery weighs in around 50 lbs and is just too hard to get in a rack single handed. The Stratus probably weighs in around 40 lbs without battery but is over 8 feet long and just wont fit in any rack that I have found. Yeah I could pull wheels off and throw it in the back of the truck, but that gets old and isn't great for the bike long term.

This bike is going to be used for camping trips as well as taking it to other bike paths on a rack. It's a Sun CX LWB recumbent with a 26" rear and 20" front wheel. It's a very comfy bike but on the heavier side since it's a steel frame and not very fast. The motor will take care of the not very fast part. The plan is to mount the battery low on the bottom tube with a DIY mount similar to what I did on the trike. I am leaning toward a mid drive motor since I think they make for a much cleaner install and tend to run very quiet compared to the hub motors I have experience with. And finally I am trying to do this one as cheaply as I can get away with although I'm guessing that when all is said and done I'll probably have between 4-500 in the project not counting the cost of the bike.

I like the torque sensing of my current motor and have had no issues at all with it for the last year and a half and 1000+ miles I put on it. I'm not skinny but its also relatively flat where I live and it is running the original OS just fine. I can get the bike up to about 15 mph with the 20 inch rear wheel and that is fine by me. I have no issues with heat and get about 50 miles out of the battery. I was set to try and find another of the tdsz2 motors and came across a site, Varstrom that has the newer version the tsdz8 for about 50 more. It looks like they took a lot of the design from bafang and incorporated it along with their torque sensor tech. For that small a difference in price I will go with a newer design. I've seen a video comparing the two motors and nothing stands out that makes me think they will be troublesome.

So what I'm looking for is anybody that has installed this newer version can give me some feedback on it. I can order it on Amazon right now for about 400 as well as on the Varstrom site for a bit less. I know I can return it with Amazon so that may be the way I go unless I get some feedback to go elsewhere. If I could find a mid drive cheaper, I might be tempted to go that route since this is going to be a minimal use bike in the long run. The bafang I have on the rans was bought with a battery on a DIY home built I got on CL for 350. I harvested the parts I needed and trashed the frame since it was a pretty low end bike to begin with.

The Sun CX

 

[Bob.A]

Hmm, 64 looks and no comments. Oh well, I'll post for posterity then. Hopefully it will help somebody else down the road.

Ordered the TSDZ8 motor off Amazon, came to a bit more than 400. I also ordered a second base for the battery and will swap it when I need to use this bike. Motor is worth over twice what I have in the bike, but that is probably not unusual these days.

 

[Jeremy McCreary]

Long posts are pretty common around here, and I'm a frequent offender. I recommend starting with your core question and elaborating from there. A quick executive summary at the beginning also helps.

 

[Bob.A]

The motor kit and the other parts were finally all here last Friday. I tested out the motor with my existing battery and the second mount to make sure it would power up before I started taking the bike apart for the install. It powered up and I was able to goose the motor with the throttle so I commenced operations.

It wasn't long before I ran into a snag. I did not have the right tool for the bottom bracket. Lucky for me the LBS had the correct parks tool available for around 16 bucks so that kept the process going. I swapped over the brake levers, removed the front derailleur and mounted the motor. Of course there were no physical instructions with the motor so I relied on experience from the last two installs and a quick check of one of the online videos. It all went pretty well considering.


My homemade mount which consists of a 3" aluminum angle and 42mm U-bolts worked fine.

One other physical issue was where I ended up putting the display. The cables were not long enough to put the display on the top bar as I'd hoped so it ended up getting mounted low on the bars by the head stem and consequently the control buttons were not near the grips. I have a 5 pin extension cable ordered which should let me relocate it.

The seller did not include any documentation with the motor so I had to scrounge online to find some manuals. Unfortunately for me the ones I found were not quite it. They had me holding in the up/down buttons to get into settings which did not work. An overnight email response from the seller said to double click the middle button which got me into settings. There aren't that many user selectable parameters with the OEM software. You can have either 3 or 5 pas levels and change the display brightness and metric/imperial and wheel size but that is mostly it. Probably very similar to the TSDZ2b motor I put on the greenspeed close to 2 years ago.

So far I have about 16 miles on the bike and these are my impressions.

The motor is not as quiet as the older version or the Bafang. It has an audible whine when it is engaged. It's not terrible by any means, but it's not silent.

The throttle works fine and it will take you to full power if you hold it down long enough. I don't have a throttle on the older tongsheng and the bafang only takes it up as fast as the pas level is programmed to go.

Like the other TS motor, it feels more like bionic legs than a mini motorcycle. So it is more subtle though the whine reminds you its doing it's job.

The host bike, a Sun EZ rider CX is a comfy but heavy beast, much more so with the extra 20 lbs of motor and battery and mount on it. Nothing really sporty about it, with a stiffer frame compared to the Rans XP which has quite a bit of frame flex built in. But like a heavy motorcycle, you don't mind the weight once it gets moving and it is still a nice ride. It reminds me of a Tour Easy I picked up for my brother earlier this year which I guess makes sense having been designed by the same guy.

Speed wise I would do about 8 mph before the conversion on a flat road and with the motor in level 5 I was averaging around 12-13 with about the same amount of exertion.

So overall I'm happy with it so far. We are taking it camping at the end of this week so I'm sure I'll see a few hills with it. Hopefully this will help anybody else who might be thinking about one of these motors or converting one of these older Sun bikes.