Electric Bikes - Wow - Magic Pie fiasco...typical GM

Seems like stories are cropping up all over the place (especially the GM forums) of failed internal Magic Pie controllers, due to overheating. Not only that, the internal controllers only supply around 20 amps. There's gonna be a lot of unhappy pie-eaters around that will have a failed pie, followed by the usual "lacklustre to non-existent" communication from GoldenMotor, as they try to rewired their failed pies to a different external controller, by bringing the wires out through the hub. That's a lot of regen going back through the controller in there...ouch...putting controllers inside motors seems to be a bad idea...I know Bionx works well, but I resent the proprietary location of controllers in there too...sorta like Microsoft vs Linux...

BUYER BEWARE.

Yup... I have about 85 miles on my brand spankin' new Magic Pie II...

It performs very well. However, I have had it shut down, due to heat, 3 separate times in the 85 miles I've put on my pie so far... And it's FREAKING NOVEMBER!
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By spring time I will be looking into an external controller, or an entire new conversion kit perhaps.

How hard is it to get an external controller working? You have to take your entire wheel apart and open the hub, I think. What a giant pain in the ass end...
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My opinion of GM's Magic Pie II so far??? Motor good. Controller bad.

Hi Witt, my sympathies to hear about your problem with the pie...I'm presently using several of the bmsbattery.com "Universal" 12 mosfet brushless controllers, on both 9C and Crystalyte, in sensorless mode. They are cheap and have good power - start well very close to immediately with very little pedaling, with no Halls connected. That means with just the phase wires coming out through the axle, you could get the pie going, pretty inexpensively. Probably for about 40 bucks. I bought three of them from Hong Kong for 100 dollars after shipping. I don't know how to hook up a CycleAnalyst to them though, but you could use a WattsUp or CA-direct connect on them. They seem to have lots of guts compared to some of my other controllers (eg. 35amp Crystalyte) and very little cogging. I think they would work on a stripped pie motor pretty good...they have regen capability as well as both throttle and PAS/Pedelec connectors. All I hooked up were the three phase wires with Anderson connectors, soldered three throttle wires together, and installed two Andersons to the battery connection. I'm not using the regen myself.

Note: I assume the pie has three phase wires...if not, the controller I mentioned wouldn't work