Your new Luna Apex & Apollo: An Introduction
Congratulations on your new Apex!
The Luna Apex/Apollo is a special breed of ebikes, built from the ground up, the frame was designed and made in the USA and it was assembled using the best parts and best materials we could find. We selected the Bafang Ultra motor to build and adapt our frames around it. The bafang motors are very reliable, are easily programmable and repairable and will have a good amount of aftermarket parts.
The basics
Unpack your new Apex by opening the TV box. Then carefully remove your new E-Bike from the box. Use safe lifting techniques and/or get someone to help you lift it out.
Your E-Bike comes almost completely assembled. The handlebars will be turned sideways to fit into the box, so the first thing you will need to do is align the handlebars with the front wheel. Make sure the main electric harness is not looped around the steerer and be sure to fully press-in the connectors if needed. The correct way to do this is to loosen the stem and the top cap. Next align the handlebars and tighten up the top cap screw enough so the bearing rotates freely but with no free play. Then tighten the 2 stem bolts (about 5nm) to secure it.
Before you power up, or ride your new E-Bike, recharge your battery first as described below. For further info on taking care of your battery pack see the battery documentation links.
Additional reading (highly recommended to bookmark these links)
- Temperature effect on your battery, Do's and dont's
- Battery Documentation Repository
- BBSxx mid drive wiki for motor maintenance, mods, troubleshooting and tips
- How to setup rebound and compression damping
Charging your battery for the first time
LunaCycle Fusion batteries have a state of the art smart BMS in them, the BMS has functions such has auto-balancing, so you do not have to charge to 100% to do it (just a couple times when new). The BMS will take care of the balancing for you!
Batteries are typically shipped in a partially discharged state, so they need to be fully charged before you use it for the very first time. We recommend to use a surge suppressor with your battery charger.
CRITICAL: Never store a discharged pack for more than a couple weeks, the smart BMS in the pack pulls a very little current to monitor the pack but you must check on it from time to time, so it never goes under 38V. Also never ever... EVER attempt to charge a frozen Li-Ion battery that is under 32 deg F (or 0 deg Celcius) Below freezing permanent damage will occur if you try to charge your battery pack. If your pack is frozen bring it inside your house and let it sit for a few hours till the battery is over 50F (10C) And never charge a hot battery, let it cool down to 85F (30C)
How do you use the charger? Start by selecting the amperage level (5 amp is ideal for such a large packs as this one) and set the charge percentage knob to 100% (depending on the charger model). Now plug the charger into the AC outlet, then connect the XT60 to the bottom left side of the Apex Fusion battery. This is to prevent any arcing/sparking from occurring in the charging port area and keeping all that stuff isolated to something easily replaceable, like the yellow XT60 connectors.
Next, after the battery has finished charging (might take 6hours+). The LED should be green on the charger indicating it has reach it’s maximum capacity. Now, just let the battery sit for an hour or two before using the bike. It’s important to do this to allow the battery to settle and balance out. Be gentle with the power usage during your first ride, try not to pull maximum power and take it easy.
For the best results, we recommend to charge the battery to 100% for the first 2-3 charges to help balance and proper break-in of the cells inside and always charge the battery directly before you ride. Do not let the battery sit around fully charged more than a few hours or else you will see significant and permanent reduction in all areas of performance, including range & power
It is also not recommended to charge your bike unattended, such as overnight in your basement/garage while you sleep. We know this is probably the most convenient time for most folks and 99,9999..% of the time nothing will happen, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be safe. Lithium Ion fires typically occur most often while the cells are under use or being charged (usually overcharged). It’s better to be safe than sorry when handling and using large battery packs like this so you (or others) don’t end up in a dangerous situation, even if it were very unlikely to happen.
For more info on battery use, charging and safe handling please read the articles in the Battery documentation master repository (click me).
While your battery is charging
Get to know your new E-Bike. Put some air in the tires, adjust the seat height to fit you. Do this by loosening the Allen key clamp. While standing on one of the pedals, lean against something and lift the seat up to you.You may cut the carbon seat post to your liking but not the dropper seat post obviously. Secure the seat clamp by torquing it lightly.. DO NOT OVER TIGHTEN THE CLAMP (ONLY 4-5 NM of torque is needed). It may take a couple of tries to get the seat adjusted properly and pointing the right direction. Check the suspension sag of the rear shock and front forks, Suspensions are factory adjusted and may be set set to hard or too soft for you. If you don’t know how to setup sag on a fork or rear shock we recommend searching on YouTube for videos, The Apex will require a shock pump to set the propoer presure in the rear shock and the front fork (excluding Lauf carbon) they can be bought online and at any bike shop (every Luna bike listing links to the bike specs from the manufacturer for reference if you are looking for info on the parts)
Wren Inverted front fork manual
Wren Sag setup
Additionally it is always a good idea to give the bike a good once over, make sure everything is properly tightened and fastened with nothing out of the ordinary. Then, take it for a spin, try out the brakes, and shift through the gears. All bicycles have adjustable derailleurs/IGH and adjustable brakes and your new bike might need some fine adjustment to work better. All adjustments can be made with a screwdriver and/or allen wrench. Your new E-Bike should not need any lubrication right away, but, like any bike, will need regular lubrication and maintenance.
Using your new Apex/Apollo the first time
Powering:
Press the power button for 2 sec and the display will light up, use the "+" or "-" to change the level of pedal assist.
Please refer to the DPC-18 manual here for more info on programming and accessing the other functions.
The DPC-18 has a new feature with the Ultra motor, it's the SPORT and ECO function, but unfortunately we feel no real difference between the 2 modes. To try it press and hold "+" for 2 seconds to access the SPORT mode.
Riding it:
Caution. Avoid bogging and over-heating your new E-Bike motor by keeping the motor rpms higher. In other words if you are going uphill you should have it in a low gear (low gear is for low speed, high gear is for high speed) If this is not done you may damage the motor, so take care you have it in the proper gear.
Even though your Ebike looks extremely cool and wearing a helmet is often seen as uncool, please wear the appropriate protections.
General Maintenance
Battery maintenance
The Apex/Apollo has a potted weather proof battery and it's custom fitted to the frame, your responsibility of owning it is to remove the battery after a few rides in the mud, sand, dirt. This involves cleaning and inspecting the power connection too.
To remove the battery, simply take a Allen key and unscrew the 2 top bolts shown here, then you can lift the battery and unplug the XT60.
Derailleur maintenance
When using an ebike with a mid drive it is important that the derailleur is properly adjusted, more important than on a regular bike since you are putting much more power through the drivetrain than usual. Adjusting this component can take as little as 10 minutes and is very straightforward once you understand the basics (you can get any bike shop to do this if you prefer but it is fairly simple if you would like to maintain it)
Apollo derailleur hanger is bent or broken?
If it's a slight bend, you can fix it, hangers can be bent back no problem
Click here to order a replacement if it's broken:
Special note for Rohloff owners:
Congrats for purchasing the best internal geared hub on the market, it comes pre-lubed and ready to roll. With care the Rohloff can last a lifetime. We highly recommend you to download and read the manual here:
https://www.rohloff.de/fileadmin/use..._11_web_En.pdf
The frame is carbon fibre so you cannot tighten the pivots too much, please use this chart to tighten your pivots. You can use the same settings for the Apex too (10nm for the main pivots and 8nm for the rear pivot)
But since you are excited to go out riding and don't want to spend all day reading a technical manual here are some pointers :
Operation
Changing gear with the Rohloff SPEEDHUB 500/14 with pressure on the pedals is not necessary when being used appropriately. However due to the robust construction of the Rohloff SPEEDHUB 500/14 changing gear under pressure is possible and is not harmful to the hub. It is however possible that when changing gears under high pressure the hub could accidentally fall into a neutral gear, this is due to the coupling elements not seating correctly into the next elements and therefore rebounding back.
Warning:
Cycling through deep water with a SPEEDHUB is not permitted. Do not submerge theSPEEDHUB as water will penetrate the gear-unit.
Unprotected transportation on a motor vehicle through heavy rain can also lead to waterpenetration and should be avoided.
– An oil change should be completed immediately if you believe water may have penetrated the gear-unit. This will ensure any potentially penetrated moisture is rinsed back out.
Maintenance:
-Chain and chain tensioner (where applicable) should in regard to regular use (at the latest after riding in rain) be cleaned and re-lubricated.
-The cable box of the external gear mech should be demounted approx. every 500km, cleaned and the cable pulley lightly greased from the hub-facing side.
-The oil must be changed at least once a year or every 5000km
-Use only un-pressurized water and gentle cleaning fluids. Do not use a high power jet wash system, brushes or abrasive materials for cleaning purposes.
Warning:
Cycling through deep water with a SPEEDHUB is not permitted. Do not submerge theSPEEDHUB as water will penetrate the gear-unit.
Unprotected transportation on a motor vehicle through heavy rain can also lead to waterpenetration and should be avoided.
– An oil change should be completed immediately if you believe water may have penetrated the gear-unit. This will ensure any potentially penetrated moisture is rinsed back out.
Maintenance:
-Chain and chain tensioner (where applicable) should in regard to regular use (at the latest after riding in rain) be cleaned and re-lubricated.
-The cable box of the external gear mech should be demounted approx. every 500km, cleaned and the cable pulley lightly greased from the hub-facing side.
-The oil must be changed at least once a year or every 5000km
-Use only un-pressurized water and gentle cleaning fluids. Do not use a high power jet wash system, brushes or abrasive materials for cleaning purposes.
Need to remove the motor
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Suspension pivots are squeaking
Get yourself a bottle of tri-flow oil and put some onto your frame pivots and also the motor spindle seals to avoid squeaks and creaks.
Watch this quick video on how to do it
Dropper seat post dropping while riding or need to change it?
Rear wheel fells loose, cassette wobbling side to side:
If your rear wheel or rear hub feels loose or rear wheel is wobbly slightly, don't panic and watch this video, it's just likely the cone nut on the disk side that gotten loose. And while you're at it inspect the inside of the hub and bearings. This video is from Joel a Luna employee, it's ax1 but it's the same as the Apollo.
Headset is loose, fork rattles and/or and cannot tighten the top cap more?:
The X1 does not use a a standard star nut pressed into the fork steerer tube, it uses an expansion plug (AKA wedge plug or compression plug). Over time the wedge nut can loosen and move up the steerer tube. All you need to do is to adjust it a little down further.
Instead or explaining how these work and how to adjust it and tighten the headset just watch one of these 2 videos that explains how to adjust it. It will fix your issue!!!
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I ride this thing? Is there any proper procedure?
Yes, there is a proper way to ride these bikes. This is a mid-drive system that utilizes your gears to achieve maximum efficiency.
The trick is you have to choose your gear before tackling the hill. You don’t really want to be shifting while going up a hill and hitting the throttle at the same time, or "lugging" the motor in the wrong gear. These bikes are still just normal bikes outside of having motors installed on them. The rear derailleurs, chains, cassettes/freehubs and IGH were all designed with human power in mind, and while it works fine with normal ebike use overly stressing the system through incorrect riding will wear out parts faster than usual.
Climbing a big hill while in full throttle in the high gear for longer than 10 seconds will blow just about any electric bike motor including the durable ULTRA motor. So don’t do that. Even trying to do this with high level PAS in the wrong gear is still sketchy. If you can’t completely assist the motor enough to keep it efficient, it will simply absorb all of that load into the internals and controller.
Generally you want to pick a low gear if going uphill and a high gear if on flats or downhill. A good way to think about it is to test the bike without any power input. Shift through all the gears and get a sense of how much torque is needed to push forward. If it feels like it’s too much for your leg, it’s probably too much for the motor so shift as efficiently as possible.
Is my battery charging correctly? I can’t really tell. What is supposed to happen?
After you have read over the beginning section of charging your battery for your first time. You should see the charger immediately engage with an audible noise, like the fan turning on, or a high pitched whine and a red LED
If you’re experiencing an issue where the fan isn’t turning on, or you don’t hear anything, or the charger is turning on/off repeatedly. Please contact support@lunacycle.com
My charger says 58.8v on the label. I thought I bought a 52v battery. Was I sent the wrong charger?
Absolutely not. There should be nothing to worry about. 52V batteries are only labeled as “52V” because that is the “nominal” rating of the battery. Sorta like the middle ground between fully charged and completely dead. A fully charged 52V battery ends at about 58,8v, which is exactly what the charger is calibrated to stop charging at which is why it’s labeled that way.
What are all these blank diagnostics info on my DPC18 display?
If using dpc18 there are some parts of the display not usable, stuff relating to battery readouts that would require a special plug directly into the battery on the pack.
My display just shows 80% or 100% capacity on the bar and doesn’t ever change. What’s going on? Is it broken?
Well, no, the bike was installed with a 52v battery, then we would recommend adjusting the battery readout on the display settings to show a “voltage readout” and to simply ignore the percentage bar on the top right corner. The percentage bar is actually very inaccurate and was mainly designed by Bafang with 48v batteries in mind.
It also won’t tell you anything important, like how close you are to approaching the auto-shutoff mode or how much “voltage sag” you’re pulling from the battery. Without knowing your voltage sag, you could be dangerously close to hitting the auto-shutoff mode (43v) and not even know it.
What is voltage sag?
Voltage sag is what happens when a battery is being used and actively drained of it’s capacity and will vary depending on the type of the battery, size of battery and condition of battery and how much power the motor is trying to pull from the battery.
For example. If you have a 52v Shark Pack with a voltage of, say...51v while in a resting position and you hit the throttle to accelerate, you would see the voltage “sag” or “drop” to about 47-48v until you let go of the throttle again, where it will raise back up to slightly less than before. If you are using a high power controller such as Ludicrous this will pull more current and the sag will be greater than it would otherwise be. If you are not downshifting on hills this will also pull more current than it would otherwise and would also cause greater sag.
So let’s say if you’re near 46v or 47v of capacity, well that means you’re pretty much dangerously close to hitting the auto-shut off mode because if voltage sags by about 3v - 4v while climbing a hill, you’ll just randomly cut-out with no explanation or warning. Once you hit about 47v, you should consider yourself low on battery and start “limping” home using minimal power with as much assist as possible to save yourself any juice for an emergency, or to keep the batteries condition at peak performance since discharging them near the cut-off also reduces the their total lifespan quicker. See this link for a more detailed description of sag.
Mods and upgrades
Waterproofing
While they are water resistant, the bikes are not 100% waterproof. They are partially water resistant in certain areas like the motor itself but don't go riding it in the ocean, or ride through any tidal pools where it can be submerged even for a brief moment. Stay especially away from salt water (including road salt used during wintry conditions) and don’t store the bike outside unless you live in very dry, non-humid conditions. If you happen to do a lot of biking around water then please consider the additional waterproofing guide linked below.
Waterproofing involves understanding where all exposed parts are and prefilling them with proper grease/tape/seal them off. You should be able to ride through the rain and puddles without any problems. However, dress prepared because you will get soaked!
Waterproofing for Luna BBSHD and BBS02 ebikes
Do Nots
DO NOT DRILL INTO THE BATTERY PACK
DO NOT OVERTIGHTEN THE SEAT POST CLAMP
DO NOT PUNCTURE THE BATTERY PACK
DO NOT SHORT OUT THE BATTERY
DO NOT CHARGE A FROZEN BATTERY
DO NOT CHARGE YOUR BATTERY IF IT'S OVER 113F (45C)
DO NOT SHORT OUT THE BATTERY CHARGE PORT AGAINST ANYTHING METAL SUCH AS RINGS OR TOOLS
Attached Files