Wilderness Energy BD36 Magnets Coming Loose After 3 Years
Anyone else had this problem?
One day while zipping along to work at 20Mph there came a horrible grinding sound from my front wheel hub motor. I thought it might be the brushes had worn out but what had happened was one of the permanent magnets had come loose and lodged against the inside of the motor. It was getting ground down as the wheel turned. I didn't go very far before needing to take apart the motor.
When I took apart the BD36 hub after 3 years of hard use commuting to work, one of the magnets was loose. I used some permabond 910 adhesive and stuck it back on in the right spot with the right orientation. It held up for another 9 months running at 48Volts until the brushes went out. When I took the motor apart again to replace the brushes, the same magnet that I had scribed an arrow into was loose again. This time I wasn't messing around. I took some marine epoxy, surrounded all the permanent magnets on the hub and ground down the excess until the surfaces of the magnets were exposed. This has been running for a few months now at 48V without a problem.
Don't! throw away your hub motor when it dies. Send it to me and I'll fix it. These things will last forever if you do the right thing to make them work. I like the brushed motors better because the controllers are cheaper, you could use direct DC with a little dial to control the voltage if you wanted. I'm still using the original 3 year old Wilderness BD36 controller at 48V. Yes, the brushes wear out, but I found some old motor brushes, ground them down to fit and away I go again.
Yes the batteries are costly, but I've found that if you charge at 12V in parallel SLA batteries are still cheap enough to offset the cost of my 10Mi daily commute. I figure I'm spending less than $0.50/day burning up recyclable SLA batteries every 5-6 months. I'm sure it would cost more if I used NiMH or Lithium batteries.
Matt
A few notes to add, if you take the magnet off the motor, make sure you get it back the same way, so mark it before you remove any magnets!. If you flip it, the motor will run hot.
In my case, I melted the epoxy off on my magnets, getting it hot enough to ruin them, magneticly. They appear ok, but the motor now runs hotter than it should be, now even at low speeds since the magnets are not strong enough anymore. Running it like that testing, the motor got hot enough to start slipping where the band that holds the magnets is shrink fitted to the inner hub that holds the brushes. After fixing that with some screws, the motor then proceeded to set the brushes on fire, in about 1/2 mile. The initial breakdown of this BD36 motor took about 400 miles since I was riding for one hour continuously in 105 F heat.
I still have the motor, but need a new inner assembly, hub, brushes, magnets, if you have any laying around.
My BD has made a few small grinding sounds under a strong draw at start up / full throttle and then it goes away...
Only 150 miles on it so I'll run it till it dies one day.
When it does, here's a question: Do you think the C-lite brushed motor would perform similarly or is it a little weaker?
curious
I have heard of the c,lyte being slower, but I think it had a 20 amp controller. I have also heard the rotors can be interchanged with WE, though the magnets look different. If they perform any different with the same controller, it would be from different winding count. I suspect that they are wound the same though.
IIRC, the C'lyte brushed motors are practically identical to the BD36s. The brush holders and I think the sideplates are even interchangeable.
They sure are, I read that the screw holes are different in number on the side plates, but you can switch hubs or brush holders. I don't know about the windings though.
Hi Matt,
My motor started making a grinding noise this morning half-way into my commute. I ended up having to pedal my rig unassisted the last few miles. Anyway, I finally got my motor apart. I had been hoping that the brushes were bad. But of the 10 magnets on the rotor, 9 were loose. As you see in the picture, when I removed the rotor, 6 stayed inside. Of the four that stayed on the rotor, 3 move. Looks like I need to find some of that heavy duty epoxy.
Rob
HI Matt, Do you have any pictures of this marine epoxy job that you can share with us?
There have been others with loose magnets on the WE BD36. I only have approx 400 miles on my BD36 but will keep your info on file for possible future loose mag problem.
Tks for the info. RussD