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I have built an LCES 004 in late 2021. I was inspired to get this frame after seeing KaroKönig and his beautiful creation. It is working very well for a few months now, it is now April '22, about 400 mi clocked. I took a 20 Ah 960Wh 48V pack and managed to shoehorn it into the frame and built an aluminum cover plate. Yes that is the biggest drawback with this frame is that it's built for smallish batteries and you have to either get one of those or work out a more custom solution. I looked into a Cheeb a la Rob Rides and found the Dengfu was not available in the US, I am in Southern California. I definitely would have bought a Luna x1, but waited for 6 months and they just couldn't get them at the time. Today I'd probably just buy an X2 they look pretty awesome and are actually in stock at the moment holy crow! And a bit less money than I ended up spending on this build ha. Although I do like building things and it was a good pandemic project.
My previous ebike experience was with a pretty old Gary Fisher hardtail converted with Bafang bbs02. Also 20 yrs ago: electricycle.com. That was pretty cool but obviously this is a huge step up. Upon first startup everything worked pretty well. Overall it's a fantastic bike and I would say the frame is extremely well done and the geometry is well worked out for such a long travel. The m600 is just about the perfect amount of power for me. The bbs02 for that matter has enough power but having a torque sensor is a big improvement. I guess I'm more interested in exploring and going on long rides like 30- 40 miles over very long climbs and extremely rocky trails, so comfort handling and stamina are of prime importance. Huge amounts of torque and power and speed are not really what I'm looking for. I can generally just leave it on PAS 3 and go all day, whereas on a BBS02 I would be mashing the pas level up and down constantly.
I guess the battery build was the most custom aspect of this. I took a pack that came in a Hailong case, the cells are 2170s. The eBay seller was called cowellcowinbattery based in SoCal. I pulled out the cell pack and it almost fit in the frame except the BMS was attached on one side and it just was too tight. So I ended up cutting the BMS off and soldering on some longer wires so to mount the BMS on a different side and then shrunk wrap it all back together. So far so good it's in there nice and snug with a bit of padding around it. Of course with this setup it's very streamlined looking but the battery is not easily swappable, read on and you will see why that is kind of a drawback.
I have a few issues with how the motor is programmed regarding battery usage and not sure what the solution is. Obviously it's common knowledge now that the M600 is not programmable as previous Bafangs. I don't have much issue with the power level setups. My biggest gripe is when the battery is showing 20% on the display, the actual voltage of the pack is nearly 46 volts which is still pretty high and I certainly would not call that 20%, more like 45%. But at this point the motor seems to go into limp mode limiting max power output to about 225 W. At indicated 0% the the power cuts out, yet the battery is still over 42V. So I went to some lengths to put in a fairly huge battery, but I'm not getting all the energy that I want to out of it. Yes such conservative battery limits will keep your battery in wonderful shape for years, but I only take it down to these lower levels like once a month, so I think it will last for years anyway. I have read elsewhere here on the forums that someone came up with a way to adjust that shut off level down closer to like 38 volts or something which is much more reasonable. So I will investigate if I can get this firmware going on to my bike, at this point I don't have a besst tool yet and these firmwares seem highly experimental.
I believe I got the motor on Alibaba from China from a place called Greenpedel. I actually bought a silent PEEK gear from Luna but then on disassembling the motor I found already a plastic gear in it. I guess at some point Bafang started putting in plastic gears from the factory, although I've still heard of some motors new that are noisy. I find the motor to be pretty quiet, not as quiet as a bbs02 but acceptable.
Finding the right dropper post for this was a little challenging because the seat tube takes that angle bend so it's a bit on the short side. But I found one with really the perfect amount of travel so it worked out.
Otherwise my only gripe is that the little display dpc241 is small and stealthy however it's horrible, dim, you can read your speed and the pas level and everything else is microscopic. I might ask if anyone knows which displays work with this motor. My display is a little odd in that there are two cable connections coming out the back of it, a connection to the motor but also a connection on the back of it to the throttle. Other displays I can't tell if there's a throttle connection on them. Or do you use a separate connection wire coming from the motor harness to the throttle? I think there might be an extra wire that I tucked up inside the frame somewhere but I can't really remember hah.
Photo album of build:
eMTB Build - LightCarbon LCES 004