ade towell
Über Member
- Location
- Nottingham
Interesting so it doesn't feel the same as a direct drive torque sensor? Would that be the same for the other rear hub motors with torque sensors?
There is also the cheaper TSDZ2B torque sensor motor although it seems to be less reliable and a lot more fiddling than the Photon - is that fair/true?
Yes it is the torque sensor kits from Whoosh I'm interested in though also good to hear the Orbea has a cadence sensor that can feel natural.
The direct drive DIY motors with torque sensor I am looking at can all be had in some kind of UK legal form I think?, they are
TSDZ2B - which seems to be an older well established motor that has had issues with heat and needs fiddling with the software to sort but is then quite reliable and pretty cheap. Apparently there is a larger newer TSDZ8 which handles heat better but has only just come out so reliability is unknown
CYC Photon - which looks great and is smaller in size but is £1000 plus battery
ToSeven DM02/01 - very new but looks promising, the smaller DM02 is nearer the size of the Photon but much cheaper, can be had for about £300 although there are no UK suppliers yet so that would be sent from China and may well have customs duty on top and obviously no local support if things go wrong. It looks like the latest firmware has got that motor working very well though and is tempting although a bit of a risk
As you can see I've gone down a bit of a DIY rabbit hole, the allure of buying a kit is that my dad could still use his Whyte bike which he loves, and it can be moved from bike to bike and bits replaced if necessary - worry that many of these factory built are trickier to fix when out of warranty. Am happy to be wrong about that - in which case the Carrera and the Fiido are the 2 most appealing.
(Apologies for the weird formatting and bold bits, not sure what's happened there)