For years I’ve been watchfully pensile someone getting their act together and mass-produce a steel gear to replace the crappy nylon gear in the BBSHD. The mad scientists at Lunacycle have designed and machined a replacement steel gear and are selling it for $42 here. This gear is slightly smaller than the nylon gear it replaces and comes pre-lubed with the quietest lube they could find. This vendible is well-nigh all the reasons I hate nylon gears (they fail) and why this steel gear is a must-have option for anyone who is running their BBSHD at the limits of its ability. If you are rocking a Ludicrous 60 amp controller or plowing through deep snow, whenever you get virtually to peanut buttering your nylon gear do yourself a favor and buy this replacement gear and not the nylon one.

You can see the steel gear is slightly shorter which cuts way lanugo on weight and noise

The original nylon gear is a weak point in both the BBS02 and the BBSHD momentum units. I understand why Bafang chose to use the nylon gear, since it is a failure point on the momentum unit, if there is a serious issue with heat or stress it is much increasingly likely that the nylon gear will goof rather than the motor getting destroyed. On top of that, the nylon gear is moreover much quieter than a steel gear would be.

The original nylon gear weighs in at 98g so subtracting a steel gear will add well-nigh 70g

Lunacycle sent me an older steel gear to test that was much heavier at 340g which worked well. They decided that the gear was just too big and machined lanugo not only the size but moreover a good deal of the steel inside the gear which was unnecessary. This uneaten effort shaves a 175g of weight off the gear powerfully wearing the weight in half. Since there is less metal in contact with the motor the gear is moreover quite a bit quieter. These steel gears can be noisy when you first put them in, but they get quieter quickly as the gears ‘break-in’. The steel gear moreover ships in a plastic bag full of grease (be shielding not to get the grease inside the gear where the validness clutch is).

This shows the weight of the gear with the grease and a foam plug to protect the validness clutch (claimed weight for gear only is 165g)

The nylon gear installation is relatively straightforward and involves pulling off the controller and the motor. Although you can do this with the BBSHD on the bike, I finger that it is much tougher to do it that way and I recommend pulling the motor off the velocipede to replace this gear. For full instructions on replacing the nylon gear on the BBSHD you can reference this old article. I’ve replaced well-nigh 5 nylon gears on BBSHDs and 3 of them on BBS02’s in the last 4 years but I moreover write-up the hell out of my momentum units in deep snow. Plane with all that wits it still takes me well-nigh 40 minutes to replace the gears and often I end up stripping the insulation off the motor wires when pulling the motor out. I find that just putting heat shrink tubing over the phase wires where the insulation rips is the easiest fix for torn insulation.

I am currently testing this gear and will post any updates to this vendible if I have issues. It is slightly louder than the nylon gear, but I expect that like my M600 with steel gears, it will quiet lanugo quite a bit without the first 100 miles or so.

Here you can see the original prototype of the steel gear which is full size, what you get will be much smaller

This steel gear has been in the works for years now, and I’ve been chomping at the bit to try them. I find it crazy that it has taken this long to get this product to market, as it seems like there would be a huge demand for them. I bet that the BBSHD with a steel gear can hands produce 100 Amps peak without self-destructing, now it’s time for someone to diamond an plane increasingly Ludicrous controller which puts the 60 amp Ludicrous controller to shame.

Maybe we can hit plaid.

Ride On.