True or False - Bafang 750w vs Bafang 750w

[Imchud]

All...
Recently I've posted about looking for another E-Bike, I've been going back and forth on motor size, fat tire or no fat tire, Mid Drive or Hub Drive, on and on and on. Currently, I own a Magnum "Metro 750 Hub Drive" - Which I love... except it is currently in the shop because of a motor issue. Sooo, today I was telling another LBS about what I was doing... and he told me to stay with a 750 Hub Drive, but in a fat tire style. He said the trouble with my current 750 hub drive motor (It's been shutting down on a few hills and making grinding noises), is because my current bike has a 2.5" wide tire. So the Bafang 750 is a skinnier motor (which is true) and therefore has a different Planetary Gear set-up than the ones found on a 4" Hub Drive fat tire bike. Even though they are both Bafang and Both 750 watts... he said they are not rated the same or have the same output in torque.
He went on to say that the wider motor is stouter and has different gear diameters giving it more torque than the skinner motors of the same wattage. Also said it would climb hills faster and better than most Mid Drive bikes. He said that the manufacturers rate them basically the same and apparently, he has had them apart on the bench and said it is very obvious one would be stronger than the other... So what do you think.... True or False????

 

[fooferdoggie]

a wider tires and a hub drive is not the hill killer setup.

 

[JRA]

You can also lace the 150mm version into a 35mm wide rim and still use the 2.5-3.0 size tires if fat tires aren't your thing. Maybe just replace the motor that has issues on the bike you have with the former? Much cheaper than a new bike.

 

[ElevenAD]

Yes there is a more robust true 750 available for fat bikes but that does not mean every fat bike with a Bafang 750 will have the bigger motor, for example older Rad Power fat bikes used the thinner 750 motor inside the wider casing. The only way you can know for sure is if you see it written specifically in the bike description or you email the company and ask them or you get hold of one of their motors and pull it apart.
My 2cent is if your climbing hills that cooked your hub bike just get a Middrive, hub bikes are not ideal for climbing even if it was 1000watts climbing with a hub bike puts a lot of stress on the motor.

 

[indianajo]

My 2cent is if your climbing hills that cooked your hub bike just get a Middrive, hub bikes are not ideal for climbing even if it was 1000watts climbing with a hub bike puts a lot of stress on the motor.

I climb hills up to 15% grade with 60 lb groceries & 20 lb tools spares water rain gear, with a Mac12t 1000w geared hub motor. 330 lb gross weight. Fits a 135 mm dropout. Mac12t will start without pedaling on that grade and pull up to 6 mph. Faster if I pedal, which I do. What it will not do is climb 1000' of 15% grade in an hour. It would overheat. Cooling is inhibited by the air gap between rotor & case. I climb 77 rolling hills in a 28 mile commute twice weekly.
Gears do wear out. I wore out a set in an ebikeling 1300 w geared hub motor in about 4500 miles. It was perfectly capable of pedaling 4 miles to destination & back home 28 miles unpowered. Changing out a power wheel for a new one takes one afternoon. I keep one in the garage. At <$300 I throw hub motors away, not take them to the shop. It is a 4 mile walk to the nearest shop as my wife's car will not fit a bicycle.
I have seen Bafang replacement gears for sale. No other brand.
Does not sound as if O.P. burned his winding. Shut down can be battery hitting controller voltage limit at the wattage draw a steep hill requires. Grinding noise is worn out gears.

 

[harryS]

It's somewhat true, but I wonder if the bigger motor will be enough to climb your hills.

 

[m@Robertson]

He is right about the fat Bafang (g060 and the newer G062) being really heavy duty, and much more so than their nonfat motors.

I think he was not saying your problem was a 2.5" tire, but that it was a thinner tire and therefore it needed the narrower, lower-capacity motor. That makes sense, but not fat tires being needed to climb hills.

He's showing his inexperience saying ANY hub motor of that caliber will climb better than a mid drive. That is a) nonsense at a fundamental level and b) something I would expect from someone who only sells low-power mid drives like your typical EU-spec motors that at least pay lip service to the 250w EU power standards (but really don't conform to it any more than anything else does).

Hub motors have an inherent disadvantage in hills because they are single-speed. They power thru the hub and cannot take advantage of the gears. You can easily figure out how important gears are without calculators or self-important internet experts arguing over it as follows: Ride up a hill on a bike with no motor (you and your legs will be the motor) and stay in your 16T cog in the back (thats the typical Bafang hub motor cog). Your climb and your life will suck. It sucks for the poor motor too, which can only overcome this suckage with raw power... and at this level it doesn't have enough. A mid drive on the other hand can shift gears just like you can, and its life gets easier exactly like yours does. So it can apply the torque it outputs in a much more useful way.

Hub motors are great for simplicity but their weakness is steep hills. If you have rolling hills, its not a big deal. When they get steep thats when the motors lose effectiveness. I started building with mid drives specifically because of the limitations of the Bafang fat G060 750w motors... and I was running two of them in 2wd, 35a per wheel and 52v backing them up. A mid on its own works better where its steep.

 

[Imchud]

He is right about the fat Bafang (g060 and the newer G062) being really heavy duty, and much more so than their nonfat motors.

I think he was not saying your problem was a 2.5" tire, but that it was a thinner tire and therefore it needed the narrower, lower-capacity motor. That makes sense, but not fat tires being needed to climb hills.

He's showing his inexperience saying ANY hub motor of that caliber will climb better than a mid drive. That is a) nonsense at a fundamental level and b) something I would expect from someone who only sells low-power mid drives like your typical EU-spec motors that at least pay lip service to the 250w EU power standards (but really don't conform to it any more than anything else does).

Hub motors have an inherent disadvantage in hills because they are single-speed. They power thru the hub and cannot take advantage of the gears. You can easily figure out how important gears are without calculators or self-important internet experts arguing over it as follows: Ride up a hill on a bike with no motor (you and your legs will be the motor) and stay in your 16T cog in the back (thats the typical Bafang hub motor cog). Your climb and your life will suck. It sucks for the poor motor too, which can only overcome this suckage with raw power... and at this level it doesn't have enough. A mid drive on the other hand can shift gears just like you can, and its life gets easier exactly like yours does. So it can apply the torque it outputs in a much more useful way.

Hub motors are great for simplicity but their weakness is steep hills. If you have rolling hills, its not a big deal. When they get steep thats when the motors lose effectiveness. I started building with mid drives specifically because of the limitations of the Bafang fat G060 750w motors... and I was running two of them in 2wd, 35a per wheel and 52v backing them up. A mid on its own works better where its steep.

Yeah... it didn't make a lot of sense to me either. Only after riding the new Mid-Drive for the last week, it is so obvious that the hill-climbing power is awesome compared to my hub-drive. My wife's bike is a Pedego with a 500w hub drive, class II... which seems to work great for her, she wouldn't trade it for anything. I was explaining the Mid-Drive to her, and she wanted nothing to do with it. Until... I passed her on a big hill today. We were 1/2 way up when I zipped around her, then waited at the top. She asked me one more time about the difference between the two. She then said, still not interested... and don't ever pass me on a hill again, you scared me and almost made me fall off my bike, then she just zoomed away, where I respectfully "followed" her back to the car.

 

[Chargeride]

This is the full G06 750w on the left with the 350w in the vice , the 350 deglued its magnets at 2KW, the 750 survives to this day.
The 750 is almost an inch wider

 

[Chargeride]

Here's a real world comparison of a mountain climb with a 2Kw G06 hub drive against my standard 1500w bbshd.

 

[Rome]

That's what I call an exclusive trail ride.
My bikes are mid drive. Man that's one very relaxing ride video. Thanks.

 

[Imchud]

Here's a real world comparison of a mountain climb with a 2Kw G06 hub drive against my standard 1500w bbshd.

Wow... Awesome video. thanks for sharing. That is the only way I would have been able to see that monument, through someone else's eyes. I don't care what kind of motor I had... unless it was gas, I would have been down waiting in the car.