Frayed Magic Pie cable

[malkowski]

Hello all,

I wanted to post a problem I had (and the solution) to get some opinions on what caused it to happen.

When I started riding my bike one morning, I got maybe 5 blocks into it and I felt the motor die and what felt like "severe regen braking" kick in. After searching these forums I figured I had a damaged controller, but didn't know what caused the problem.

While disassembling my Magic Pie (Thanks Alan!) I noticed the wire was frayed leading into the axle. My ultimate solution was to re-wire the pie as a standard motor and use a GM 48V external controller. This works fine for now, but I'm concerned that without identifying the problem, my wiring will wear through in time and I'll fry this controller too... or at least have to rewire it... talk about a PAIN trying to fit all the cables!

My only theory is that the axle rocking forward from torque caused the cable to wear over time. I had the bolts pretty snug... would torque arms solve this problem?

Anybody think the warranty would cover a replacement controller?  

Anyway, here's a picture of my frayed cable... anyone experience this? Is it caused by the axle shifting under load?

[Dennyb123]

I haven't experienced any wire fray yet. But, right from the beginning I made torque arms. There were 2 reasons for me to build custom torque arms. First, the torque washers provided with the kit had no effect. The cutouts on my frame are to shallow. The second reason was to beef up my kickstand. I welded my kick stand to the second torque arm. Now, the kick stand is stable and can't spin on the axle causing the bike to fall over with all the weight from my lead acid batteries. Both torque arms are bolted to the frame via holes which were already in the frame.

[malkowski]

After thinking about it a little, I realized that duh, of course torque arms would fix the problem... that's kind of their intended function.

I cut up some angle iron and used a couple of hose clamps on each side to secure them, between that and now the multicolored wires coming out of my motor it makes it much more frankenbike which I think is good.

I just wish I'd done it before chewing through the cable!