Brose 2.2 Gen 3 Turbo Levo Motor Swap ?

[GL1]

Hello, my 3rd Gen (2020) Turbo Levo's motor has a slipping sprag.

I have a spare motor...same generation from a (2021 I think) Turbo Levo, Brose 2.2 S Mag etc. Exact same. I've had it waiting for a situation just like this.

I'm going to send the original one in to be rebuilt and was excited to finally use my "spare" motor to keep the bike running while the other is serviced.

I installed said spare motor and though the battery / TCU powers up and I can adjust power levels it immediately gives me a flashing blue and red light.

I am seeing that maybe the TCU has to be "coded" to match the motor? Great. I don't have the TCU that came with this spare motor. If this is the case, how is this done? And, then I'd assume if / when I put the original motor back in I'd have to somehow do the same thing?

OR...am I missing something else here?

Why can't these just be component plug and play!?

 

[DS.]

The 2.2 was probably running the new screen and your trying to run it with the old TCU you will have to get it paired if this is the case all my bikes have the same old TCU and I have swapped motor's between them but if one had the new TCU I would have a problem

 

[Fangs2k]

Hello, my 3rd Gen (2020) Turbo Levo's motor has a slipping sprag.

I have a spare motor...same generation from a (2021 I think) Turbo Levo, Brose 2.2 S Mag etc. Exact same. I've had it waiting for a situation just like this.

I'm going to send the original one in to be rebuilt and was excited to finally use my "spare" motor to keep the bike running while the other is serviced.

I installed said spare motor and though the battery / TCU powers up and I can adjust power levels it immediately gives me a flashing blue and red light.

I am seeing that maybe the TCU has to be "coded" to match the motor? Great. I don't have the TCU that came with this spare motor. If this is the case, how is this done? And, then I'd assume if / when I put the original motor back in I'd have to somehow do the same thing?

OR...am I missing something else here?

Why can't these just be component plug and play!?

Your local Specialized dealer should be able to pair your motor to work with the TCU in the bike. I had a new TCU fitted to my Levo SL and it wouldn’t work until it was paired, took the tech a few minutes on the Specialized software.

You’ll likely have to do the same when the repaired motor comes back. My local bike shop didn’t charge me anything to pair my TCU, but it shouldn’t be expensive anyway.

 

[GL1]

The 2.2 was probably running the new screen and your trying to run it with the old TCU you will have to get it paired if this is the case all my bikes have the same old TCU and I have swapped motor's between them but if one had the new TCU I would have a problem

This is great to know. ALL of mine (I have four) have the old TCU. So, I'll take it to the shop but if this new motor (which very well may have had the new TCU) is changed for the old TCU then it should be plug and play between all my bikes? And, the original for this particular bike that I'm getting rebuilt by eBike Motor Repair should then also work with all my bikes and can be my new "backup" if this is the case!

 

[GL1]

Your local Specialized dealer should be able to pair your motor to work with the TCU in the bike. I had a new TCU fitted to my Levo SL and it wouldn’t work until it was paired, took the tech a few minutes on the Specialized software.

You’ll likely have to do the same when the repaired motor comes back. My local bike shop didn’t charge me anything to pair my TCU, but it shouldn’t be expensive anyway.

Right. So if THIS is the case, then it isn't so much just whether a motor is set for the old vs new screen but the actual TCU somehow. Well, if this is the situation then I think I'll still have this original motor rebuilt and it can become my spare and then I'll have to take it to the shop someday again if and when I put it in another bike. I sort of wish / hope it's just the new vs old TCU and once it's set for the "old" they will all just work and be plug and play between my bikes but you may be right...it may be an individual pairing that has to happen to THAT specific motor and ECU. I'll post what I find out from the dealer. And I sure hope the battery is not also part of this individual pairing as well! Doesn't sound like it.

 

[GL1]

OKAY, so I have talked to two dealers / shops and the awesome eBike Motor Repair guys and here is what I think I have learned.

1. A motor must be paired to a specific TCU.
   
   
2. Only a dealer with the proprietary Spec software can do this pairing.
   
   
3. You could apparently pair multiple motors to a TCU (not sure how this would work if they were uninstalled though.)

There may also be firmware updates needed etc. and along those lines there may be different firmware for the older "bar" display vs the newer "digital" display and that could also cause an issue. But the overall takeaway is that a motor has to be paired to the TCU in the bike you are putting it in.

So, overall you can't just yank a motor from one bike and put it in another. Even if it's the same generation, from the same model, etc. This is a bummer as I wish they were just plug and play. (The good news is that batteries are. They are not included in all this pairing etc.) If you only had one bike you could conceivably have a spare motor already paired to that ECU and then swap it in as needed (again, maybe you can pair them when off the bike...maybe if it's hooked to a battery etc? Not sure.) But, for my purposes I wanted a spare motor that I could throw into any of my four Levo's while I send the other to get overhauled etc...that will only work if I also make a stop at the dealer and have them pair it. But then, it'll only be paired to THAT bike. Interestingly enough this would also go for the TCU. Some guys have wanted to put the digital TCU on their bike and apparently that can happen if all the firmware is updated and, if it then also gets paired to the exiting motor. Again though, NOT plug and play.

And, as I'm also learning, I would not assume most dealers know immediately how to do this stuff. I went to two big shops and one was fairly certain it couldn't be done. They said the closest they do to this is when they have a warranty motor come in from Spec which comes "unpaired" and then they do the pairing. They also questioned whether they were "allowed" to do this (more on that below.) The other shop said it can be done and seemed agreeable to doing it...or trying it at least, but warned me it could be between $25-100 depending on the time it took them. Most shops only have a few guys who know this stuff or are trained and for something like this they have to do some research or contact Spec.

But, as to whether this kind of thing should be "allowed," I think Spec and the dealer have to allow it as it's not that far from existing "right to repair" laws with cars. This motor I have came from a bike that was a "bike on roof into the garage" incident. It has less than 100 miles on it and I should be able to run it if I want and should not be blocked from doing so due to proprietary software etc. If it's a concern about theft etc., on a component I don't think many folks are out there stealing motors (trust me I have experience in pulling them now) but even so it's not Spec duty to police any of that in my opinion.

So, I'm still very pro-Spec and pro-Levo but this bums me out. It makes me less autonomous with my "fleet" and I wish Spec could make things like this possible either through Mission Control or by giving consumers some version of their software. Otherwise, like the current situation with many cars right now, we become entirely beholden to the dealer for the life of the bike even after it's out of warranty and as I'm somewhat finding, some shops will use that to simply say you need to buy a newer bike etc. bc yours is no longer supported. That's bunk and unfair to the consumer and also gets closed to "planned obsolescence" which I despise about our current world.

 

[DS.]

So I’ve just swap the TCU from a gen2 to a gen3 with no problems so what you are saying this shouldn’t of worked

 

[GL1]

So I’ve just swap the TCU from a gen2 to a gen3 with no problems so what you are saying this shouldn’t of worked

You are correct. By what I've been hearing what you did there should not have worked. And yet, it did.

I would have expected the "new" TCU to have been paired to a different motor and not the one in the bike...and thus cause a motor error as mine is.

And so answers still elude me. I wish Spec would have a resource we could all learn from on this stuff.

And as I said before, I'm not entirely sure I trust all I'm hearing from the dealers I have visited. No one seems to really know how it all works entirely. If these weren't so fun and I wasn't a certain age I'd consider ditching them for the simplicity of an acoustic again. But then, I'm not sure they HAVE to be as complicated either. Having Gen 1's and Gen 2's, the complexity has increased for sure. Such is the world.

Well, I'll let you know if I learn more.

 

[Jase]

Really interested to see how this plans out. I have a repaired motor that was paired to my bike sat as a spare. I have a new motor in at the moment, but when this goes bang and it will, can I just put the spare motor in?

 

[DS.]

Yes should be fine

 

[Just gan]

I got new TCU and had to send motor away to get paired

 

[Greeno]

My buddy has a 2024 levo pro gen3 bike and damaged his mastermind TCU display.
Local shop ordered a new display and paired it to his existing motor, took 5 minutes.
From what I have read you can also upgrade the older graph bar displays to the mastermind style, again it’s gotta be paired by a bike shop.

 

[GL1]

Really interested to see how this plans out. I have a repaired motor that was paired to my bike sat as a spare. I have a new motor in at the moment, but when this goes bang and it will, can I just put the spare motor in?

I think if your spare is paried to that same TCU, you will be fine. The eMotor Repair guys said this should work just fine, and that you can have more than one motor paired to a TCU...and I trust them.

The problem I have is that this spare motor I have, I wanted it to be able to be used in a pinch in any of my four Levo's. So I didn't want to pair it to one in particular. I figured I'd throw into any of my bikes if and when I sent an original in for rebuilding etc. (like I just did.) But, it only takes about 2 weeks to ship, rebuild and get back from ebike Motor Repair anyway. So it's almost not worth it if I had to go to the Dealer to get it paried to one of the bikes and if I have to pay for that service which one dealer said would be a cost...albeit likely not too expensive. Still, I might as well just wait for the original to come back at that point. So without it being plug and play it really doesn't fit with the model I'd hoped for. Oh well, it's still a spare if I ever completely destroy a motor (and then I'd pair it to that TCU / bike permanently) and certainly it has all good parts if I ever decided to harvest it for that but don' t think that would be a good use of it.

The other thing I've been thinking is about getting an extra TCU I can pair that spare motor to, then swapping both as needed and all should work in any of my bikes. I guess what @Just gan said above.

But, from all I have heard, what @DS. did should not have worked and yet it did. He swapped a different TCU in without any pairing occurring and it apparently worked. IDK...that blows what I thought I'd learned about how this pairing between TCU and motor works.

 

[Greeno]

Looks like what DS did was swap the older Display and maybe those don’t have to be paired.
Which display do you have on your (4) Levo’s?

Looks like if you purchase another display to pair to that motor then that “paired set” can be installed in any bike and should work.

I know battery’s can be swapped because I used to change out my 700w battery to my smaller 500w battery occasionally but that is with the gen3 with the mastermind TCU.

 

[GL1]

Looks like what DS did was swap the older Display and maybe those don’t have to be paired.
Which display do you have on your (4) Levo’s?

Looks like if you purchase another display to pair to that motor then that “paired set” can be installed in any bike and should work.

I know battery’s can be swapped because I used to change out my 700w battery to my smaller 500w battery occasionally but that is with the gen3 with the mastermind TCU.

Yes the old display may work differently (may not have to be paired.) In my bike, it has the older style TCU but my spare motor likely have had the newer digital TCU controlling it in the bike it came out of so that may be a / the complexity and issue. Had it been controlled by an older TCU maybe that would have worked to just swap it. And yes that could be why DS's worked...maybe the older TCU's aren't paried to the motor...? Good thought.

Agree, I think if I can get another TCU (maybe older preferred) that could be the ticket for me and my fleet.

Agree on batteries. I do that all the time. So they are not part of all this pairing as far as I have experienced. Those are plug and play.

 

[GL1]

Old style TCU's are $140. I may pick one up. New style MasterMind are $250. I have seen some successfully upgrading to those but IDK...with the issues I'm having I think just staying with the old may be best.

 

[Greeno]

Pretty sure your TCU can only be paired to ONE motor at a time.
Im in the process of receiving a new “spare” motor from Spec as the one I currently have is showing signs of possible torque sensor issues and they don’t want to replace it under warranty since it’s not a consistent problem.
Anyway so I can get a new motor for like 6 bills but I can’t pair it to my existing TCU as long as I am still using my existing motor.
When and if my current motor fails I can install the new motor but need to bring it in to the shop so they can pair it again.
Then I can send the old motor out to be repaired but will need to do the same process again if I swap out again.
To remedy this I could always just buy a “spare” TCU and pair it to the Spare motor and it would be good to go.
But the shop couldn’t pair them on the bench as they would need to be installed on the bike To have battery power etc.

 

[GL1]

Hi, so I wanted to sort of finish this thread out to help anyone else looking into this.

Despite anything I wrote previously (some of it was guessing or errant,) here is what I have found to be true through much testing:

For GEN 3 Levo's Brose 2.2 motors with the OLD "bar" style TCU's:

- Motors and TCU's can be swapped interchangeably as desired. I tested this thoroughly by moving my TCU's around between bikes. They all powered on with the different motors and worked just fine. I did not test what this did in Mission Control. If someone knows that would be interesting and maybe I'll have to test that too.

- Using a new style TCU (Mastermind) did not work for me. I bought one and tried it on multiple bikes. I charged it with a micro USB and then installed it in all my bikes. It would turn on but I got error codes that I could not get past. Some say it worked for them (with only an introductory error code each time they powered on,) but even if it worked in a basic manner, it did not give them all the functions of the Mastermind. (I'm guessing to do this Spec would have to pair it or update firmware somehow for the Mastermind specifically.) Knowing this was likely the case even if I could get it going I sent it back and plan to stick with the bar style since all of mine are the 3rd Gen and old-style TCU's.

NOW, as for my spare motor; I believe the issue with that not working on any of my bikes lies in the torque sensor on the actual motor, not the TCU or any kind of firmware or pairing issue. Whoever had that motor before me likely disassembled the "motor side" (there is evidence of this) and likely messed up the alignment of the torque sensor in the motor itself. It would not work with any of my other bikes or TCU's. The eBike Motor Guys are pretty sure this is the situation and once they rebuild that and get it aligned again I'll test it out. Suffice to say (and I've been learning as I've been doing belt replacements and such,) there is really NEVER a need for most of us to take the motor side apart. You can take the belt side apart, access the belt, sprag and all bearings there. Never take the other small side off or you will risk messing the sensor up and eBike Motor Repair will have to fix it for you.

So there's a lot I still don't know and it seems hard to find regarding how all this tech works with firmware, pairing, Mastermind vs old bar style TCU's and such. But what I posted above is what I know based on my own fiddling around with four of these Gen 3 Brose 2.2 old TCU style Levo's.

 

[Just gan]

I had three motors on warranty on my gen 2 levo ,two were posted to me . When I got a new TCU January this year I had to post motor to dealer to get it paired. Obviously different with gen 3 with what you are saying. I remember him saying it has to be paired with frame number as well ? but I never posted frame.

 

[GL1]

I really don't like all the proprietary tech around all of this and the lack of details on how it all works even more so. From my experience the dealers I have been to don't seem to know a lot either and if someone does it's typically one guy that went to some Spec training etc. and handles all the ebike stuff.

I know it's the way of the world but I really liked how the first few generations were fairly component-based, simple, and plug and play. For me it's a reason to just keep buying Gen 3's and not get into the newer stuff as it's bound to have more proprietary tech. I do the same with cars though. I'm old.

 

[cream]

I really don't like all the proprietary tech around all of this and the lack of details on how it all works even more so. From my experience the dealers I have been to don't seem to know a lot either and if someone does it's typically one guy that went to some Spec training etc. and handles all the ebike stuff.

I know it's the way of the world but I really liked how the first few generations were fairly component-based, simple, and plug and play. For me it's a reason to just keep buying Gen 3's and not get into the newer stuff as it's bound to have more proprietary tech. I do the same with cars though. I'm old.

I know exactly what you mean. Nobody will tell/know anything, even the specs (real information) is omitted and replaced with fancy terms brought by marketing dep. machinery (either bio or silicon). I love tech....proprietary or not. I don't like what some will do with it, that's another story.


But then again, there's a thing called reverse engineering. I did that to things since I was a child, didn't know it was called that. I remember the time my dad got a Philips stereo from W.Germany in 1986 (we were living under Ceausescu's regime in communist Romania so I was told not to mention that to anyone at school). I looked at the papers that came with it, being drawn by the schematics diagrams that of course were Chinese to me(I had 7 years back then). Imagine that stereo came with service manual included (procedures, information, specs, schematics to component level, all the part numbers etc). The same with a Toshiba VCR. JVC audio amp. My dad's Dacia 1310 . Back then, right to repair was not in question, it just was. We still got the right to purchase

You can't beat the awesomeness of being able to control the tech you have, the way you want...When you succeed...that is. Otherwise it boils down to maybe some partial knowledge you got and plenty of frustration. Nowadays, they even remark the chips just to make things harder(eg. Shimano). With current silicon manufacturing capability it's easy to implement strong security (encryption) with low price (you don't want to know the production cost of a Mastermind TCU). Working with newer stuff is getting harder for me, I'm also old

As someone who tingled with lots of devices in the past 20 years I can write a book about my view on how all evolved with goods and bads. Speaking of tech, what we can do now, was really a fantasy back in 1990's. I'm actually happy that I got to walk this earth in this period

 

[GL1]

I know exactly what you mean. Nobody will tell/know anything, even the specs (real information) is omitted and replaced with fancy terms brought by marketing dep. machinery (either bio or silicon). I love tech....proprietary or not. I don't like what some will do with it, that's another story.


But then again, there's a thing called reverse engineering. I did that to things since I was a child, didn't know it was called that. I remember the time my dad got a Philips stereo from W.Germany in 1986 (we were living under Ceausescu's regime in communist Romania so I was told not to mention that to anyone at school). I looked at the papers that came with it, being drawn by the schematics diagrams that of course were Chinese to me(I had 7 years back then). Imagine that stereo came with service manual included (procedures, information, specs, schematics to component level, all the part numbers etc). The same with a Toshiba VCR. JVC audio amp. My dad's Dacia 1310 . Back then, right to repair was not in question, it just was. We still got the right to purchase

You can't beat the awesomeness of being able to control the tech you have, the way you want...When you succeed...that is. Otherwise it boils down to maybe some partial knowledge you got and plenty of frustration. Nowadays, they even remark the chips just to make things harder(eg. Shimano). With current silicon manufacturing capability it's easy to implement strong security (encryption) with low price (you don't want to know the production cost of a Mastermind TCU). Working with newer stuff is getting harder for me, I'm also old

As someone who tingled with lots of devices in the past 20 years I can write a book about my view on how all evolved with goods and bads. Speaking of tech, what we can do now, was really a fantasy back in 1990's. I'm actually happy that I got to walk this earth in this period

I really like that you brought up "right to repair" and I think that as a "vehicle" these should fall under that as well and what I see Spec doing with their tech is dangerously close to breach of that (in my very non-official opinion.) But, this is why they came out with laws like this for cars. You have to give BOTH the mechanics (so the dealers) and the owners the right to fix things on their own and right now we are essentially locked out bc of the proprietary tech. I mean, if you have to send something to Spec to get it "paired" then that's proprietary if I've ever seen it.