motor

If you're suffering delayed motor response when you open the throttle, go to the Batteries page and follow the instructions there under Connection Problems.

Some editions of the Torq manual give details for greasing the motor gears. These instructions give the impression that the gears are just behind the motor's removable cover. That is not in fact the case, opening the cover will only reveal the armature windings. These instructions only apply to some other models in the eZee range. Access to the Torq and Quando motor gears can only be had by full withdrawal of the complete spindle/armature assembly, involving pulling from the bearing, best done only by those appropriately experienced.

If a loud rhythmic ticking, knocking or clunking noise is experienced, this can be due to water in the controller, or loss of one of the connections of the five Hall effect control wires. These are the five fine wires leading from the motor to the controller via soldered joins within the heatshrink sleeve alongside the Torq's front fork. On the Quando the wires go direct to the controller area. For advice on these problems, see Wiring and Diagnosis . The purpose of these wires is to inform the controller of the status of the motor's armature windings at any point of rotation and thus enable the motor to have drive smoothly applied from a standstill. Many cheap electric bikes using Hall effect motors dispense with these, and that's why they have to be pedalled initially to about two to three mph to enable the motor to then carry on. However, it's not possible to just cut the Hall effect control wires on the eZee motor, since the controller also has to be changed to a simpler version for the motor to work in the other mode, hence that knocking when a connection is lost. Here's more on Motor Noise.

There are no serviceable electrical components within the front hub. Once the hub motor is found to perform satisfactorily in normal use, it's likely to continue like that indefinitely without any electrical fault.

See the Diagnosis and Wiring pages. Cross referencing links on both pages.

Here's a rough hand drawing of the Torq motor's internals in cutaway section. Some of the small details have been omitted for clarity, the freewheel internals and various bearings for example, it's not exactly to scale, though quite close, and some artistic licence has been taken to facilitate the explanation that follows of how it works, plus adding colour coding to help the understanding of rotation. Three photographs of an actual motor's internals are at the foot of this section.

Here the side cover plate has been left off. On the grey spindle (1) with it's tunnel for the cable entry are fixed the iron poles (2) of the armature. The bad attacks of the measles surrounding those are the coil windings (3) around the poles. All this is static of course. Around the armature there's a rotating drum (5) shown in red, and around the inner surface of the drum are bar magnets (4). Pulses from the controller are fed to the armature windings, pulling round the bar magnets and thus rotating the drum.

Follow the red drum along and you'll see it transfers the drive through to the freewheel (6), then to the orange sleeve, this and the red drum sleeve turning as one in motor operation of course. Mounted on the orange sleeve is a green gearwheel (7), which engages with the blue orbital nylon gears (8). The orbital gears are spindle mounted on the black metal frame which is anchored to the spindle, so they keep the same orbital position and accept the rotation of the inner gearwheel. The orbital gears then engage the toothed nylon ring gear (9) which is anchored in the outer alloy hub casing (shown in yellow), thus rotating the hub and wheel.

The drum is not so much located by the spindle as by the sleeve from the freewheel and the tight engagement of the nylon gears, the remaining location being due to the balance of magnetic forces around the armature. From this you can understand just why the motor kicks up such a racket when the Hall currents fire unevenly due to damp in the controller etc. The drum is thrown out of balance and collides with either the armature poles or the casing, at the same time twisting the nylon gear assembly to add more noise. The gears have high temperature grease applied during manufacture and should be ok for a very long time.

On the left you see the static armature on it's spindle, the multiple poles and their windings evident. On the left side of the thick section of the spindle you see the slot from which the wires emerge to connect to the armature windings and Hall effect sensors which lie buried within. Around the armature is the rotor, a drum which carries a ring of slim bar magnets against which the phase pulses operate and which are read for position by the Hall effect sensors as they pass. The centre photo shows the other side of the rotor with the orbital gears linked to the centre gear wheel and the freewheel beyond. Those orbital gears act on the greased orbital ring gear seen in the back of the hub shell of the third photo. The steel housing for the ball race bearing is seen in the centre of the rear hub wall, and the right hand motor side plate has the same bearing.