FAQ

No, you should not worry. The motor has a designed operating envelope, it has support from let’s say 20-130 rpm cadence, nominal power of 250 W and peak power of let’s say 650 W, voltage of X and electric current of Y. Nothing you do with a PLANET3 changes any parameters of the motor, we just lift the virtually imposed speed limit. So, your questions can be re-formulated like this: “is the motor durability going to suffer if I ride my bike on uphills/climbs all the time”? The answer: of course it is, so is a Porsche engine – if you pick one up in Stuttgart and keep it in the redline for 5000 km there’ll be evidence of that. The more time it’s used, the more it wears out and the service intervals should take that into account. But the service interval for say a Specialized/Brose motor is 15 000 km and then it should have a belt change and it should be good (they’re not, but that’s down to a manufacturing defect – that’s why they warranty all motors and there’s people on 4th, 5th or even higher number of motor in the same bike). The only time you would need to worry about motor longevity is if you made modifications to the electrical system and were “tuning” the motor to provide more power (like in car engine tuning). Then, you are outside of the design envelope of the motor, everything internally will be more stressed and wear out significantly faster or even break. Only such tool that I know of is the Mountain Tuning Tool and evidence of its use is detectable to the manufacturer (higher current drawn, higher voltage, more thermal stress) and it usually means you can no longer rely on your warranty. Please understand – I am not against this. If you want more power, good. If your bike is out of warranty and you accept the responsibility for tuning – go right ahead. Systems are usually designed with some overhead (safety factor) so you can basically get more performance out for “free”. However, this isn’t what PLANET3 does (in both mechanical and electronic format).

Unfortunately, that’s just how the PLANET3 works – it makes the bike think it’s going up to 3x slower than it is, so it keeps assisting up to 3x higher speed. The only way “around” this is to get an external device to use as a speedo. There are two routes to go: 1. You get an old school speedo with a magnet that you install on the front wheel, set up the circumference of the wheel and you’ll have correct speed readouts. 2. Route is you get a device like a Garmin for example, which connects via Bluetooth/ANT+ to the bike itself and uses the bike’s speed sensor BUT you set up a 3x larger rear wheel circumference in the Garmin itself. Then, the Garmin will display the correct speed and distance readouts using the bike’s speed sensor because the PLANET3 basically divides by 3 and you multipled the wheel size by 3 back to original values. Another option for Specialized e-bikes is to use the BLEvo app instead of Mission Control (no longer available from Specialized, replaced by the new “Specialized” app – which sucks), because BLEvo has an option of a “Speed multiplier” where you set it to 3.00 (or whatever the ratio of your PLANET3 is – in dual configurations it is 1.50:1) and it’ll show correct speed/distance, but there’s no way to achieve this with stock Specialized displays or Mission Control/Specialized app as far as the mechanical PLANET3 goes. This might just be my unpopular opinion: you don’t need to look at the screen all the time, especially for speed and distance. The battery life prediction or estimated range will recalibrate itself after a few rides to show you 3x lower values and you can just multiply by 3 in your head. You’re also a very poor judge of distance so it’s all meaningless. Just look at the battery % left and ride accordingly. One of the reasons I bought a Specialized bike in 2019. was the lack of a display. It was almost like an acoustic bike but with assistance to aid me in my lazyness.

IF you NEED SCREENS and numbers in your life – let me hypocritically offer you another solution: the PLANET3-E chip – more on which you can read HERE and which will display both correct speed and distance. Currently it’s compatible with Specialized non-SL bikes (regular power, Brose motors) and Bosch non-Smart System bikes (older rectangular connectors – up to Performance CX Gen4). It’ll be compatible with everything in the upcoming months, so just shoot us an e-mail if you’d like to know more.

If you read the Terms and Conditions, you should be aware of the following: If it’s Alex’s fault (which is imposible) – material defect is in question, then daddy pays for everything (new parts, shipping, etc.). BUT, if you were a little retard and you didn’t listen to daddy, we will handle this on a case by case basis where you’ll generally get a 50% crash replacement discount for the first time because daddy is a merciful god. After that we should assume that your learining curve regarding do’s and don’ts with PLANET3 is finished and no more freebies for you friendo. In order to know what exactly happened and what replacements need to be made, please send us the photo of PLANET3 internals. KEEP in mind that we want well lit and focused photos with all the teeth, splines and sharp parts visible and NOT blurry photos of only one part taken with a washing machine or a typewriter. Those who supply us with shitty photos will end up on the page of shame.

Please check the PLANET3 compability guide and carefully read the article. If you’re still not sure, please contact us.

As far as lubrication goes, the white planet (magnet carrier) is made out of a self-lubricating softer-touch material than the rest of the device. This was mostly for the audible effects, but suffice to say it’s like a good woman – it brings its own lube. Silicone spray and a dry wipe won’t do any harm and I recommend it only to users in very cold areas during winter (Finland, Sweden, Canada) because we found out one thing: when riding out in the cold and wet and then stopping, ice crystals can form inside the device and cause some damage if you try to start riding again while everything is still frozen solid. Silicone spray helps in this regard since it repels water. However, when summer arrives, couple of squirts of isopropyl alcohol (NOT ACETONE) and another wipe dry and you’re good to go for the summer. Silicone spray in the summer will just attract extra dust inside the device and in some areas which are rather sandy can form a nice friction paste which is not an ideal thing to have inside the device.

Daddy will write God’s honest truth.

Well, it depends. It is and it isn’t. Let me explain.

Well, only if you live in a remote shithole, sry.. “distant paradise” such as a former prison colony, neighbouring island of hobbits or your ancestors stole some land from the Indians. Even then – it’s cheap for what it provides which is THE fastest shipping on the planet. If you want to know how much it’d cost YOU to ship anything via DHL Express, phone them up and ask them or use their quoting tool at https://dct.dhl.com/ It’ll be orders of magnitude more expensive than what daddy arranged in Bosnia. If you want to know more about fees etc. please read our blog post DHL Express.

Of course! Claim your coupon here. Just a note: Coupon codes are only for returning customers, hence it will ask you to supply an AWB number of your last order in order to claim the coupon. 🙂

Of course not! You can find all of my STLs compiled here.

It feels like it’s braking because you’re having to overcome internal resistance of the gearbox inside the motor unit itself. Brose doesn’t have a full “disengagement” system like Fazua (only one for now, as far as I’m aware.. even the new Bosch doesn’t disengage fully). What I opted to do is simply remove the speed limit through mechanical means and not worry about it ever again.

Specialized app doesn’t depend on the PLANET3 at all, however – there’s potentially an issue (if they start checking this in the future):

if you’re recording rides with it, it uses the bike’s speed sensor to show you values of speed and distance BUT it uses GPS to draw the map. This means at some point they might check GPS speed vs. speed sensor speed and then you have a problem. It’d be best to simply use Strava or BLEvo or anything other than the Specialized app. It’s fine to use it for setting the bike up etc, but anything else MIGHT at some point prove problematic. Not that it’s in Specialized’s interest … as they want bikes to be derestrictable, but regulation might force them i.e. cunts like Shimano and Bosch sue them because they can show the court that this check can be done via the app, it’s happened before.