Adjust settings to get more torque?

[duggie]

Hi folks. I've just bought my first ebike, and I would like to know if I can adjust my settings to get more torque.

I'm a beginner on a learning curve. I'm happy enough with the whole bike, but if I could buy another I would go for more torque. The torque at the moment is 53Nm.

I bought the bike with a special purpose in mind which is to get me to and from my allotment which involves a steep hill. I tried it today and it would just about do it with pedal assistance. I reckon 70Nm would make all the difference.

So I'm not bothered about speed or range.

I don't know the make of my ebike. But it is a 20 inch fat tyre, folding, step through, rear drive, 1000w 48v 18ah with an M2 display panel.

If you need more info to help answer my question please just ask and I will try to provide it.

Duggie

 

[indianajo]

I found with a 1300 W ebikeling geared hub motor, that wattage from 500 to 1300 did not increase torque that much. As in the acceleration did not increase with the excess wattage. I had a throttle so I had direct control of the watts. My controller went up to 30 amps.
A Mac12t hubmotor would increase torque because of the extra windings, but I haven't been able to buy one since I burnt the pins off mine in the rain. Clutch had worn out, too. You can still buy a pallet of 8 on alibaba for ~$1600 + freight + customs, but I haven't found anybody selling singles. Getting the motor laced into your wheel is up to you or your serviceman. I paid $730 for mine so $1600 for 8 is not unreasonable. But I can't read chinese to understand if I was buying rear or front motor (width), with or without freewheel flange, how long a wire harness I could have.
If you reduced to 2.1" tires it would help reduce drag. Would require skinnier rims, though.

 

[harryS]

How do you know you have 53nm if you don't know what bike you have? That would be from a spec sheet, but in my opinion, most of that stuff is exaggerated or made up anyway.

If your display shows watts, you can compute your wheels speed and use this website to show effective nm. A 20" fat tire spins about 250 rpm at 15 mph. If you can pull 20A out of your controller, that's 980W. Computes to 38 nm.

Watt (W) to Torque (Nm) Conversion Calculator | Electrical4u

Enter the power rating in Watts and speed in rpm, then press the calculate button to get torque in Nm and pound-foot (lb-ft).

www.electrical4u.net

I don't think you can adjust settings. To get more power for hill climb, you would upgrade to a larger controller, like 25A, if you can fit it onto your bike. Usually requires a new display. You also need a battery that's happy supplying the extra current.

There are dozen of bikes like this step thru. Batteries that are 48v. Basically the same size motor. All got controllers that are around 20A, mounted under the battery, with no room for anything larger, but a bigger one can be mounted elsewhere.

In addition to a large controller, you can buy a larger motor, as your current one will likely burn up under sustained hill climbing. They're available too,

 

[duggie]

HarryS.........it's exactly that bike, but in black and a front rack too. Spooky haha. Yes the 53Nm is the spec sheet, and I agree it will likely be much less. Another hard tough expensive learning curve which I suppose is fair enough. But I have been learning and am thinking if i can adjust the parameters to allow more amps into the motor then it could increase my torque. But I can't see anything obvious that will allow me to do that with going into the settings. And in truth i am not clever at anything technical, so i could be missing something easy or obvious.

I don't want to keep spending on the bike if it means new motor, controller and battery. I paid a 1000 for it.

Is it possible to get a folding bike, suitable for trail riding, with a 250w motor which has a torque of about 100Nm. ?


Indianajo.........yes i'm hearing about geared hubs, and that would seem to be the logical way: come to a steep hill and so just drop down to a low gear for it. It is making sense to me. Shifting to a lower gear would be to increase the torque. If my motor had gears i bet i would be ok. I would be happy to go up a steep hill at a snail's pace. This would not do for most mountain bike riders as they would want speed too. So maybe this is the answer for me, a geared motor.

If you was happy to go up a steep hill at a snail's pace, what bike would you go for?

 

[AHicks]

If you want to adjust amperage higher, you must have a controller with that ability. Most do not!

Yes, gears do better in hills. To answer your question, for maximum effect, have a look at bikes using a mid drive - where the drive motor is mounted mid ship (NOT a hub drive). They will generally climb about anything.

 

[duggie]

AHicks..........thanks for that advice. I presume a mid-ships motor would also do just pure electric as well as power assist?

Do you think I could get an ebike with mid-ships motor and which also has a lot of torque and also a geared motor? Ideally such a bike would have off road capability, be folding, and step through.

I don't know much about electrics, but is it feasible to get such a bike with high torque which is 250w so that it is road legal?

 

[duggie]

AHicks..........it's just dawned on me that a mid ships motor would use the geared chain which is used to pedal to drive the back wheel, so it would have a low gear, of course. This is making more sense, the motor powering the normal chain drive with the seven gears?

 

[harryS]

An average rider can add 80-100 watts with the pedals.

 

[fooferdoggie]

An average rider can add 80-100 watts with the pedals.

should be able to add more then that. I am not that health and I can average 150 watts on a ride. peaks of 300 to 400 watts and on a heart day I have done 700 wats for a few seconds.

 

[AHicks]

AHicks..........it's just dawned on me that a mid ships motor would use the geared chain which is used to pedal to drive the back wheel, so it would have a low gear, of course. This is making more sense, the motor powering the normal chain drive with the seven gears?

Sounds like it's starting to come into focus for you.

Just be aware some mid drives e-bikes come with a throttle, and some do not. Of the ones that do not, most cannot have the throttle added, making the "with throttle" or "without throttle" a decision that needs to be made early on.

Good hunting!

 

[harryS]

Congrats on the new bike, Duggie. Unless your riding group is way faster than you, just enjoy the ebike. It's not even good weather in the UK yet. The fun of ebiking is still ahead. Those fat tire folders are plenty powerful.

 

[indianajo]

I can peak 400 W for 3 hills of 100'. After that I have to stop & pant. I'm age 71.
Mid drives only increase torque if the rear sprocket is bigger than the front. Think 48 tooth rear spocket. Rare, expensive, usually only found on mountain bikes costing $5000 up. Additional penalty of frequent chain replacement, as the 48 tooth sprocket doesn't come in 8 speed or lower rear. 10 11 speed chains wear out faster. I got 5000 miles out of my first 8 speed chain.
My current bike with 32:32 sprocket ratio allows me to climb 15% without power. 32+42+52 front sprocket, rear 11 to 32 tooth. My 1000 w geared hub motor would start & climb that grade without help with 20 lb tools water supplies 80 lb groceries 72 lb bike 160 lb me. Rain burnt the harness off that motor. We'll see about the 500 w motor I have as replacement next April.

 

[duggie]

Thank you very much for that info, guys. I've enough now to work on. My allotment is very fear to me, but it involves a steep hill which is too off putting to walk, and there is no where at all to park my vehicle, and it involves an uneven path which can be muddy. The folding fat tyre design is perfect. I thought 1000w would be powerful enough, but learnt that what i really needed was high torque. It's still too cold to test the bike more. Either way, I will be sorted because it really matters.

I saw something astonishing last year. I was parked at the top of a hill which is just a few feet short of being a mountain, the road which is the pass road over it. The road up is pretty much straight up from the bottom, certainly over a mile. We watched 6 lads. What was happening is that they all had a bike but one of them had an ebike and he was towing them up one by one. He was wizzing up, I mean really fast, easily 30mph, no pedalling. Really steep There was no straining. It was like he had a 250cc moto-x. So fast was it all happening that i could only think of the wreckless danger as they wore no helmets. That bike was something else. It had a massive hub. the guy said it cost, if I remember right, and surely I can't be doing because he said it cost 20 grand ! I must be wrong. But it was a crazy figure. They were only about 16 years old. And it had the appearance of a bicycle, too. And this hill was a long way from town, and with many other hills between. It was witchcraft, like something in a dream. My mate I was with was equally blown away.

 

[rich c]

There needs to be a general understanding that a $1500 electric assist eBike is not a motorcycle. Yes it has similar parts and looks, but the basic engineering principles behind these bicycles is to get a boost, NOT full out propulsion. Companies continue to blur the line even further, but what you bought is not a motorcycle.

 

[duggie]

rich c .......... I agree about that, rich. In my case it is all off road. In fact I have a motorcycle which I no longer will ride on the roads because it feels too dangerous. The problem is the 'young lads'. It's the age-old problem with broad brushes which lump very different types into one lot, and so the line gets drawn for that lowest common denominator and spoils it for the rest.

It's a bit like with the Law. I remember something in the local paper which named some bloke with a headline 'Local pervert fined for indecent exposure in public area', and in actual fact he'd simply just nipped down a backstreet on the way home from the pub, haha. terrible