Hello all, newbie here lol. I recently purchased a Keteles K800 dual motor bike. So far I am loving the bike. Easy assembly, looks to be a quality build etc. Unfortunatly about the time I received it and got it assembled the rains began so i've not had the chance to ride very much. Today the sun is shining so hopefully I will get to take a ride. My question is...........does the front motor only run from the throttle or can it run in pedal assist mode? I turned it upside down, switched the switch for the front motor on, when I turned the crank only the rear motor ran. When I turned the throttle both front and rear tires spun. Is this the normal way it is supposed to be? Thanks for your help!!
m@Robertson
Well-known member
You will have to ask your ebike manufacturer. The answer is going to depend entirely on how they set up the bike. It is quite conceivable that its meant to be this way (which is a shame).
Thanks for the response. I have reached out to the MFG via Email but have not heard back yet. Love the bike but they offer very little info in the manual. Hoping someone on here has the same bike and has more experience than me.
Annieolnie
Well-known member
Your bike uses the M5 display. The Chanson-China ebike display video on YouTube goes over your settings. The video will drive you crazy, but if you can make it through to around p10 or so, they go over pedal assist levels and the throttle. There is no assist on the front motor, but you can adjust a number of other things. I don't know how they could have dual assist without having some kind of differential, but I don’t know a lot about dual motor ebikes.
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Thanks so much! Yeah listening to that was painful lol. Another member reached out to me [HOZER] and answered my question about the front motor only running with throttle. I also found out the front and rear will run in the walk assist mode and cruise control. I don't think running both motors in cruise control is such a good idea but it is nice pushing the bike up a steep slippery hill.
Thanks again, much appreciated!!
m@Robertson
Well-known member
There's no diff needed. Christini uses a sort of diff where the front motor is geared to something like 97% of the rear, so if the rear starts slipping the front just takes over the load. But that is a VERY different kind of animal as ebikes go. Just for starters they use a single motor to power both wheels.
On a dual motor ebike, the dual-drive controller routes power instructions (i.e. some level of current) to each motor. There is no diff as each motor just runs at its designated power level without regard to whether the other one is slipping (but single-controller awd bikes typically cannot independently/on-the-fly vary the power that each wheel receives). On my awd bikes, I use dual controllers that among other things let me adjust PAS independently (and apply throttle to each wheel independently if I am going that route). When I was doing 2-hub awd I used a single pas sensor and then a Y connector that sent the PAS signal to both controllers simultaneously.
It sounds, though, based on what you are saying, that the Keteles bike is throttle only on the front wheel which is a shame.
Annieolnie
Well-known member
A duel motor bike like that, with different PAS levels, seems as if it would take a different skill level. Did you connect the brake shutoffs one to each motor so that if you needed to just bail on the front motor, you would be able to? Also, how does it handle if you say, put the front motor on PAS 1 and the rear on PAS 2 ?
Having lifted my Keteles clear of the ground with a small block and tackle I found the same thing. The front-wheel motor only works with the throttle. Climbing the steep, slippery and uneven track to my house using the throttle only I found that the front wheel was spinning, alarmingly, most of the bike's weight being thrown onto the back wheel so using pedal assist only for hill climbing is better. Same problem with cars. Front-wheel drive cars are useless on our track. I have an ancient 4WD Jeep which is normally rear-wheel drive unless slippage is detected when the front-wheel drive kicks in. My old rear-wheel drive Ford Capris had no problem at all, even towing a heavy trailer.
I fully agree with your comments about the Keteles 800 though. It's fantastic value for money and the components are good quality with no corners being cut regarding all the extras either. Must be really heavily subsidised by the Chinese government, like their electric cars.
I fully agree with your comments about the Keteles 800 though. It's fantastic value for money and the components are good quality with no corners being cut regarding all the extras either. Must be really heavily subsidised by the Chinese government, like their electric cars.
m@Robertson
Well-known member
Nah. You figure it out in a couple of city blocks. Same goes for being on singletrack. HOWEVER, if you read what the cognoscenti on internet discussion groups say, you can wind up with all manner of misconceptions without realizing you are talking with people who are just talking rather than knowing from riding and building.
I did a whole writeup on 2wd bikes and covered common misconceptions and rideability pretty much straightaway.
Dual Motor AWD Electric Bikes (the good and bad)
I like to build top-quality-component ebikes from the frame up. Quite a few of them are dual motor or AWD or 2WD or whatever you want to call them. Why would you build an AWD ebike?
talesontwowheels.com
That misconception list came from listening to the same naysaying nonsense over and over again, while being a person who already had thousands of miles of ride time on bikes that the internet said can't exist. In 2025 there are so many commercial 2wd bikes (that suck... but still) that the "it can't be done" argument has largely melted away.
Actually, early on I had custom cables made that split the brake cutoff function into two signals, one for each controller. Same with the PAS signal. so if I squeezed one lever, both motors shut down and pedaling engaged the PAS on two motors at once, which is a thing of beauty and without question is the single biggest spiff to an awd bike.
On my mid-drive+hub bikes, the dissimilarity of the motors prevents me from splitting signals, so I have the front brake cutting off the front motor and the rear cutting the mid drive. Not my first choice but it has never been noticeable. Cutoffs are primarily useful when at a dead stop when you accidentally touch the throttle, or engage PAS inadvertently. That makes this compromise have no real world effect. Also, PAS is just engaged differently. The mid drive has its own internal PAS mech, and I just put the PAS disc for the front motor on the left side, and tell the controller to run in the reverse direction.
It handles perfectly. Check out that article. I address that specifically as its an outgrowth of the 'motor contention' argument and it turns out such a thing doesn't exist. Two motors, each with 5 levels of PAS, create a bike with 10 levels of PAS since you can do PAS1/PAS1, then PAS 2/PAS1, PAS3/1 and so on. When I am dealing with sand drifts over pavement, I bias to the front wheel and reduce to the rear so the front motor pulls me through and the rear has enough power to keep going but not enough to spin and try to go sideways. On a rwd single-motor bike you're walking the thing (I ride past people doing that all the time).
The fact that a geared hub motor freewheels forward means that if one motor has more push than the other, the one with less power is unaffected. This is also true for mid+hub 2wd. Look at these bikes: 2wd. Different motor types and different wheel diameters. Power will never be the same on both wheels, and you actively do NOT want it to be, because the ability to bias power to one wheel or the other is a big benefit.
m@Robertson
Well-known member
IF you can manage it manually via throttle (probably too much to ask as basic throttles can be an on/off switch), I found that on singletrack and extremely steep ascents, the best strategy for the front wheel is to give it about 250w total power (thats arrived at using a KT display that shows real-time watt output). Any more and you can spin the wheel which is a waste of power and a safety/efficacy issue. Any less and there's no point. You feed it just enough power to take advantage of the lesser traction available.
Oddly, the same goes for downhilling and flat land on singletrack. Hit a root and pop up the front wheel. If it comes back down pointed in a different direction, the front wheel can shoot off in that direction and you faceplant. Low power to the front wheel means safe recoveries on bouncy/rocky terrain, and same deal: Just enough power to help and not enough to spin.
If your front wheel has PAS, this is a hell of a lot easier to manage as you can just set it on say 2 of 5 and power delivery manages itself.
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