TorqueBoards Direct Drive Motor Kit

I’m also having issues with my DD setup from day one. There’s a strange noise coming from one of the motors and it doesn’t sound like anything I’ve heard from everyone else’s issue video clips. The noise is intermittent and hard to reproduce on the bench, but I’ve got two clips where it’s apparent. It has gotten significantly worse in the 8 miles total I’ve ridden the board. I emailed Dex 3 days ago and no response so far, but it sounds like it could be a good while before I hear anything so I figured I’d post it here.


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Have you tried different wheels or tried loosening the nut a tiny bit?

Any chance it’s a bearing?

That 2nd video sounds like a demon from hell oh lord

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It could be a bearing because that motor spins down slightly faster than the other one. I tried loosening the nut and it spun down at the same speed, which leads me to believe the nut isn’t causing anything to contact. Should I loosen the nut and try and push the wheel away from the can when I do so?

Personally I’d switch one wheel onto the other side to eliminate possibility of an improperly installed wheel bearing first, since that is really easy

Motors don’t always spin down exactly the same as each other but it should be close

I had this same sound when I got mine. STOP riding, you need to either regrease the main motor bearings by taking the shields off and adding more or cleaning it out and adding more. You can remove the back clip off with pliers if you can’t fork the back shield off.

Maybe check the wheel adapter for scraping in case the smaller motor bearing has been scraping it before assuming it’s bearings. This sound though completely resembles bearings that have spun too fast with too little lubrication.

Look at videos on how to remove bearing shields and you need to repack the bearings. Mine did this exact shit but now are amazingly smooth. Buy fully synthetic grease from your hardware store.

Also triple check your spacing and if you need to add speed washers on the Inside of the wheel.

You have to do both bearings, the big one pictured in my post and this small one under the wheel adapter. I don’t know which one is the problematic one but both had similar grease jobs:

Also if you’ve already ridden miles with this noise, have a good look where you maybe have excessive wear which may require a good cleaning to spot. You might still be ok but find the source of the noise before riding more. If you’re not comfortable with this or don’t know anyone knowledgeable you should talk to TB support.

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Adding grease to the motor bearings seemed to help, but the noise isn’t fully gone. I’m not sure if I need to add more grease or what. It’s definitely the bearing closest to the hanger making the noise.

There’s no visible wear to the wheel adapter or bearing behind it so I don’t think they’ve contacted at any point.

Here’s a video of what it sounds like with grease in it:

How is the free spin on both wheels? They don’t seem to keep moving too much after you release throttle, are you sure you haven’t over tightened?

You removed the shield when you added grease? Try backing the wheel nuts out a bit and see if that releases the binding on the wheels. You might have to add speed washers behind the wheel. Double check the big circlip too, it could be scraping along the edge.

I’d call this pretty close to ideal sounding and freespin, the grease slowed them a bit, but broke in after a few miles.

The same noise occurs without the wheel even mounted. The circlip moves with the outer race and the shield, so there’s nothing for it to scrape against. I did remove the shields when greasing the bearings and used Castrol PyroPlex Protection ES, which is a lithium grease.

Ok when I regreased I went a bit nuts. I used orange cleaner and a toothbrush to srcrub out what would go then I flushed with alcohol, then used compressed air to push remaining old grease out, turned the motor by hand a bit to free up extra grease/shavings and repeated this cycle until I felt the bearing was completely dry and clean. This took about 30min per motor. Then I packed each dimple on that retaining/spacing ring with grease, turned the motor by hand back and forth a bunch then packed each dimple with grease again. After this I put the shield back on and motors were happy.

I don’t know if this will fix your issue but my stuff sounded exactly the same and completely went away after I did this process. Maybe I was lucky. It depends if you have some permanent damage or something else wierd but I don’t think so.

The fact that it got better means you’re on the right track? :sweat_smile:

What if you have that problem above where you have to smack the front center like @Kram720 to release binding on the bearings idk but I would do that as last resort. (And with a nicely fit socket)

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I tried throwing some more grease in it and the noise went away, but now there’s a noise that sounds like something sliding. Running the motor with no load at 25mph for 30 seconds begins to cook the grease. The can gets hot right at the big bearing so I know that’s the issue. I’ll try flushing it fully when I get a chance and see if I can clear whatever debris might be in there. I hope nothing in there is permanently damaged…

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30 sec should def not be enough to cook grease even if over packed. So yeah either debree in there or the can has shifted on the stator axle like kram’s. the motor should hand spin kind of freely with no wheel attached like a rotation or two if you spin it manually.

Here is some hand spin:

Bro that’s fucked. By overcooked 3000km elofty sounds cleaner than that

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would anyone be so kind as to measure the diameter of the pins for the Kegel core and the outer diameter?

if i know these dimensions i can pull off a test batch of my wheel design, thanks!

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sounds like the bearings are damaged

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The diameter of the pins might be closer to 5.44mm

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i love you!

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@torqueboards can you help me out with this?

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Your noise go away for a bit if you do motor detection again?

Yesterday I flushed the bearings and the motor was still hard to spin and was making the same noise as when the bearings were greased so I didn’t bother putting grease back in them.

I haven’t re run motor detection or even run the motor using the esc since I flushed the bearings, only spun it by hand.

I tried your method of moving the stator back and that had no effect on how difficult the motor was to spin.

I’m not sure what steps I can take past what I’ve done, so I’ll probably run the board single drive until I get a response from TB support. In case I don’t get one, what’s the part number on the big bearing? The small one is 6904VV.