Grinding noise and motor engagement issue

[michael00baker]

I purchased a Crosscurrent Air July of this year It has been great so far, however today my bike made a loud grinding noise when accelerating by pedaling from a stop. The bike was very sluggish, I think the motor was skipping teeth and did not engage the hub as the and the bike felt as if there was no assistance. I would have to wait a moment and pedal again to engage the motor and feel the assistance of the motor. This happened many times at the beginning of my ride today. I was worried that the “teeth” of the gears would be worn out and leave me stranded on my ride home from work today. Upon examining my bike, I could not see any mechanical problems, and I suspect the issue is within the geared hub. Any thoughts?

 

[Luis Mtz]

Edit: Thanks the team received your ticket


Hi Mike, we invite you to reach to our tech support at [email protected] with all your details so they can see your individual symptoms and help resolve this faster.

Their first recommendation would be to inspect your connections as they can loosen up with time and a rear motor connection can cause a similar issue.

Thanks

 

[rich c]

It might be as simple as the wire from the controller to the motor has loosened. Any codes on the display?

 

[larry-new]

My thoughts are that you were pedalling, and maybe the derailleur just had the chain in between gears...not to do with the hub at all....I hope.
At worst, you could pedal w/o the motor. AAA will haul your bike, btw.

 

[michael00baker]

I pressed the connectors together tightly and the noise disappears for one ride. This morning it reappeared. I will upload some cell phone videos I took of the noise on YouTube and post the links here

 

[michael00baker]

Here’s video number 1- this is a constant grinding noise

Here’s video number 2- there is a grinding noise initially, it goes away after I stop pedaling and start pedaling again.

 

[Bruce Arnold]

Yeah, that's not good.

 

[Dunbar]

If I had to guess, that sounds like the nylon reduction gears in the hub motor to me. How is the trueness of the rear wheel? My rear wheel was not coasting very well when my rear wheel was out of true.

 

[CodyDog]

That does sounds bad. Thanks for posting the sound bites. I think it is helpful for the rest of us who have hub drives to know what is expectable and what is not with the possible noise issues.

 

[michael00baker]

Update: I received a replacement hub motor from juiced. The noise has disappeared and my bike is almost like new. I have noticed that my bike is a little bit slower than my previous motor. It feels less peppy with the replacement. I’m wondering if the speed controller needs to be set up to the new motor? As I plugged in the new motor, but did not modify the software at all.

 

[Kilogttam]

Update: I received a replacement hub motor from juiced. The noise has disappeared and my bike is almost like new. I have noticed that my bike is a little bit slower than my previous motor. It feels less peppy with the replacement. I’m wondering if the speed controller needs to be set up to the new motor? As I plugged in the new motor, but did not modify the software at all.

Weird. Did you buy the CCA 1.1 or the original CCA?

 

[michael00baker]

It’s the 1.1 version

 

[TForan]

It sure seems like hub drives have a lot more problems than mid drives.

 

[Kilogttam]

It sure seems like hub drives have a lot more problems than mid drives.

Not really, they have their own specific issues and theyre hard on the bicycle components.

It’s the 1.1 version

They used to sell the CCA advertised as 350w but the one you bought was 650w. I would have assumed they're the same motor just programmed differently, but maybe not. Id talk to support again if it feels significantly slower and verify you've been given the correct replacement part.

 

[Deleted member 4210]

It sure seems like hub drives have a lot more problems than mid drives.

thats odd. I have been selling hub drives for 3 years, and not had one issue with the motor. (have had several issue with free hub bodies, but that is not motor related - and only on one brand.) Another dealer friend has been selling them since 2010, and he says he hasn't had one issue with the hub drives in all that time. I only recently started carrying mid drives this past year (Yamaha ebikes), but have seen two other brands of mid drives come into my shop for repairs. Maybe its the on-line brands that you are seeing some issues with. When I speak to other bosch dealers, specialized, or brose, they tell me about issues all the time with the mid motors. Hence why I kept shying away from them, until Yamaha finally came out with theirs this past year. Being a larger than $14 billion in annual sales firm, with a long long history of ebikes under their belt, (invented first ebike in 1989, and marketed their own ebikes starting in 1993 in Japan, 6 million mid drives sold), and 3 year warranty, I felt the risk was less than other mid drive brands. Their entire line up of motorsports products have a reputation for quality.

Here's one of several forums regarding Bosch motor issues over in the UK. Seems like a lot of issues to me, and since there are 10 times as many ebikes sold in Europe as here, its probably a more reflective indicator of potential issues since they have been selling them there longer and enough time has passed to start seeing potential for regular occurrences. http://www.pedelecs.co.uk/forum/threads/bosch-ebike-motor-reliability.29700/. With only about 150,000 to 200,000 ebikes sold each year in the past several years here in the US, and less than 30% of them being equipped with mid drives, thats a pretty small sampling. And given than more than 20 million hub drive units per year are sold for just the China population only, and at very very low prices, the few units we hear about having issues, seems like a pretty darn good reliability reputation. Spend just a little bit more for a good quality hub drive, and the reliability goes up immensely. So you have to put things into proper perspective and context, before you conjecture about what something 'seems' like.

 

[michael00baker]

Update: I took the motor apart and the gears look intact. Perhaps the hub is not engaging properly? I did not disassemble the motor further and will be sending it to juiced for inspection.

I have put approximately 1000 miles on my replacement motor without any problems. I have been using lower assistance modes when accelerating from a stop, hopefully this will prevent premature wear of the motor.

 

[2wheeler]

Michael did they send you a whole new wheel or just the motor hub?

 

[michael00baker]

They sent me a replacement wheel and motor assembly, essentially a new rear tire, wheel and hub motor. Here is a link to the part https://www.juicedbikes.com/collections/parts-1/products/motor-built-on-wheel-700c

This allowed to avoid respoking the hub, however I had to remove the cassette from the oringial wheel and reinstall it on the replacement.

Overall, I was very satisfied with the service. It would have been nice to have a local shop support, however I’m familiar with working on bikes and can do most of the maintenance myself.