Kingsong S20/S22 (Confirmed)

[techyiam]

24 minutes ago, SamSuffit said:

yes me, still old suspension system, i did not check inside the motor, assuming the manufacturing assembly check at October 6th should be enough

Really appreciate your reply.

Your motor has a manufacturing date of June 29, 2022. 

So, I am assuming that it would still be a ZX motor. Do you know whether the motor is pinned?

Your S22 has a serial number containing a Oct. 06, 2022 date. If that is the manufacturing date, how could the wheel be shipped to you so quickly from China? Thanks.

 

[SamSuffit]

29 minutes ago, techyiam said:

Really appreciate your reply.

Your motor has a manufacturing date of June 29, 2022. 

So, I am assuming that it would still be a ZX motor. Do you know whether the motor is pinned?

Your S22 has a serial number containing a Oct. 06, 2022 date. If that is the manufacturing date, how could the wheel be shipped to you so quickly from China? Thanks.

 

I don't know if the motor is pinned. I know that Kingsong is saying motor is secured since end June/July.  It was air shipped from China to Paris, because my dealer did not bring enough S22 by boat to meet the orders. So I got a really recent batch.

[techyiam]

8 minutes ago, SamSuffit said:

So I got a really recent batch.

Wow, thanks. Good to know.

[Driftcycle]

5 hours ago, SamSuffit said:

It was air shipped from China to Paris, So I got a really recent batch.

Wait... Kingsong is still shipping out retrofitted motors with pins, I assume they would at least be shipping the ones ZX manufactured with the pins pre-installed in the build thus no need for the updated sticker indicating retrofitted date. 

This means they are getting rid / depleting stock of all pre-pin motors by retrofit before adding the newer ZX motor with pre-installed pin to the delivery queue.

Thus the chance of getting the rumored newest motor from the unnamed company that they switched to is next to Nil. 

Or maybe 🤔 the smaller dealers are allocated the retrofit motors until depleted. 

Edited October 28, 2022 by Driftcycle
.

[techyiam]

12 minutes ago, Driftcycle said:

Wait... Kingsong is still shipping out retrofitted motors with pins, I assume they would at least be shipping the ones ZX manufactured with the pins pre-installed in the build thus no need for the updated sticker indicating retrofitted date. 

Where are you see the sticker with the retrofitted date?

[Driftcycle]

I assume this was in reference to the retrofitted date given this is a pre-july motor? Shouldn't Kingsong be Air Shipping August dated motors at least? 

Edited October 28, 2022 by Driftcycle

[techyiam]

1 minute ago, Driftcycle said:

I assume this was it? Given this was a pre-july motor

I see. But according to supercurio thread, it said motors with a production date of end-of-june onewards should have the fixed. And his motor has a stamped date of June 29.

 

[Driftcycle]

7 minutes ago, techyiam said:

I see. But according to supercurio thread, it said motors with a production date of end-of-june onewards should have the fixed. And his motor has a stamped date of June 29.

 

True - I think he said some of the end-of-June motors, not all of them and best to have a post July to be guaranteed. 

but I agree - this could very be part of the fixed batch, just found it strange they are still sending June motors when we are practically in November. 👀

Edited October 28, 2022 by Driftcycle

[techyiam]

9 minutes ago, Driftcycle said:

Shouldn't Kingsong be Air Shipping August dated motors at least? 

Who knows. But a wild guest would be that they must have placed a crazy large order for motors at end of June.

I went back to reread supercurio's thread again. The said sticker looks different, and is affixed on the motor hub cover itself.

[Driftcycle]

Yep 👍 - just checked @supercurio thread too and it's different as you said.

Most likely @SamSuffit motor have pre-installed pins although I don't think there is much difference between the retrofit and pre-installed pins from factory as I was just trying to gauge delivery of the newest post ZX motors from Kingsong

 

Edited October 28, 2022 by Driftcycle

[techyiam]

47 minutes ago, Driftcycle said:

I was just trying to gauge delivery of the newest post ZX motors from Kingsong

What also intrigues me is the fact that the S22 was one of the best selling wheels at dealer websites that offer the option of sorting the wheels by their best selling status. Other than ewheels, many dealer websites offer that best selling sorting option. That is a lot of S22 sold. Yet this latest batch S22 still has a motor from end of June. It is rather puzzling.

Edited October 28, 2022 by techyiam

[Tawpie]

3 hours ago, techyiam said:

this latest batch S22 still has a motor from end of June. It is rather puzzling.

Remember the shipping delays? I'd bet real actual money that ZX (and all the other suppliers) continued to manufacture at their contracted rate so KS is sitting on more than a few parts. Those motors will find their way into wheels… hopefully after having been reworked. But they're not going straight to the landfill.

[techyiam]

1 hour ago, Tawpie said:

Remember the shipping delays? I'd bet real actual money that ZX (and all the other suppliers) continued to manufacture at their contracted rate so KS is sitting on more than a few parts. Those motors will find their way into wheels… hopefully after having been reworked. But they're not going straight to the landfill.

Supposedly now at Alien Rides, the T4's has the new QS motors, no longer the ZX motors. Using your logic, who are the people going to be stuck with the all the leftover ZX motors? It is hard to understand how Begode manages to find, and change to a new motor supplier so much quicker than Kingsong. There is just no contest.

[Tawpie]

59 minutes ago, techyiam said:

It is hard to understand how Begode manages to find, and change to a new motor supplier so much quicker than Kingsong. There is just no contest.

Typically this has to do with 'just in time' or 'lean' manufacturing, where your suppliers are contracted to deliver parts to you at the moment the parts are needed. This all works very well as long as you, the final assembler, are able to consume the parts that are arriving at your dock.

If, as the final assembler, your line gets stopped because something like your largest customer refuses delivery until you get redesigned battery packs installed, then parts start arriving on your dock that you can't ship. And your suppliers are contracted to keep delivering and if you tell them to stop, you have a different ration of trouble (stopping the supply chain is a huge ordeal and never ever works well). If, during the stop ship you continued assembling product, now you have a warehouse full of assembled and boxed wheels you have to open and rework. It's rather daunting. Either way, you're in a deep, steaming pile. Inventory is death in the era of JIT.

On the other hand, if parts you've received are making their way to their end points per plan, you can call ZX and tell them to take a hike and get CS on contract with incentives to ship "tomorrow"... as soon as you run out of ZX motors make sure that's the day CS delivers their first motor and you're off to the races.

Meantime, that other poor sucker has a warehouse of ZX motors they're trying to get ZX to take back and rework.

The JIT supply chain works really well as long as there are no hiccups (covid, suez canal, clogged ports, no truck drivers, no empty containers etc.)... there's a certain amount of luck and a ton of contingency planning involved and it's not easy to get it right. S22 was ramping while the global supply chain was going down the drain, very unlucky timing. BG got lucky and was able to switch motor suppliers before they were awash in lousy motors.

It is quite possible BG discovered the problem while Liam was hiding in plain sight on a T4 and got an early start on figuring out what was going on. And it's equally possible that KS had their head in the sand, or somewhere the sun don't shine. It's probably some of both.

I do think that KS paid the price of huge pre-orders (tempts you to order lots of stuff from your suppliers) coupled with delayed shipping. It was a strategic error, one that would have worked out if nothing bad happened... but bad things do happen and they didn't plan or act accordingly.

(don't forget that T4 is getting a brand new motor, I'm pretty sure CS didn't have this design in their show room. CS has a good and long reputation, but this is a new motor in a new use case. time as always, will tell)

Edited October 28, 2022 by Tawpie

[Julian-NZ]

Has anybody been 'playing around' with their spring?  I weigh around 180lb fully loaded and am finding the suspension REALLY hard!

I've started printing some of the sliders with bearings which might make a difference to the final spring weight.

As a noob, I'm quite conscious of "a little knowledge can be dangerous"!

[UniVehje]

27 minutes ago, Julian-NZ said:

Has anybody been 'playing around' with their spring?  I weigh around 180lb fully loaded and am finding the suspension REALLY hard!

I've started printing some of the sliders with bearings which might make a difference to the final spring weight.

As a noob, I'm quite conscious of "a little knowledge can be dangerous"!

I’m 72 kg naked and have experimented with 600 lbs and 300 lbs springs. When you have better sliders installed even the original will feel much better. For me the 300 lbs is too weak but works surprisingly well. I’ve now settled for the 600 lbs and it’s pretty good. I could go lower but I feel like the weaker the coil the lower you ride which results in the linkage working in the more progressive end of the range. 

Here’s the result from first test ride:

 

[Elliott Reitz]

10 hours ago, UniVehje said:

I’m 72 kg naked and have experimented with 600 lbs and 300 lbs springs. When you have better sliders installed even the original will feel much better. For me the 300 lbs is too weak but works surprisingly well. I’ve now settled for the 600 lbs and it’s pretty good. I could go lower but I feel like the weaker the coil the lower you ride which results in the linkage working in the more progressive end of the range. 

Here’s the result from first test ride:

 

I have a compressed-to-fit 350 lbs spring and I weigh 165 lbs (75 kg).  And I just now installed the myewheel CNC slider kit (Search - KingSong S22 Suspension KIt (myewheel.com).  For me its perfect.  I don't bottom on an 11.5" drop and if I were I could use some compression.  Note that my 350 lbs spring required spring-compressors to install it.  

In 1st vid at 8 to 12 seconds you can see just the weight of my leg is enough to move the suspension a little.  In this final assembly vid at 1:48 you can see its setup of spring, compression/rebound is near perfect I have it 5 clicks from max compression and about the same on rebound.  On both compression/rebound 5 clicks is about where it begins to have an effect (now that the rollers allow that to be the dominant resistance effect).  

 

Edited October 29, 2022 by Elliott Reitz
Change to modified repost rather than cross post link.

[Elliott Reitz]

So new controller - at least it works, but WFT KS??? What's with this tippy-dippy BS?  Is it for beginners?  Its like soft mode on turns.  Just past 4:40 in this video it tipped-me-off the back when I did a 180 degree 5mph turn.  THAT SUCKS!  My old S18 is better than that BS and its why I'm using a 2YO controller w/o firmware mod on that wheel.  

Also, what a great improvement in suspension.  Just after 20s we did about 22mph Loki is faster, Teddy was just keeping up and I ran out of open field grass so had to shut them down.  

 

[Julian-NZ]

@UniVehje@Elliott Reitz  Thanks guys. This is exactly what I needed.
I'd love to get some of those sliders but they are really expensive when you have to post to the other side of the globe!  I'll have to try the 3D printed version.  It's good to see people giving things a go and modifying their wheels.
Thanks again 

[Elliott Reitz]

1 hour ago, Julian-NZ said:

@UniVehje@Elliott Reitz  Thanks guys. This is exactly what I needed.
I'd love to get some of those sliders but they are really expensive when you have to post to the other side of the globe!  I'll have to try the 3D printed version.  It's good to see people giving things a go and modifying their wheels.
Thanks again 

I paid less shipping for the sliders from overseas than I did to send back a 12" cube-box via cheapest shipping option with shi###-clar#-sea#-sid#s in it.

[chanman]

The dipping in turns I think is the horizontal calibration thing, should be able to fix that in the app, isn't a problem on mine. Also maybe just not having grip on the leaves there?

Edited October 30, 2022 by chanman

[NErider]

39 minutes ago, chanman said:

The dipping in turns I think is the horizontal calibration thing, should be able to fix that in the app, isn't a problem on mine. Also maybe just not having grip on the leaves there?

My S22 dipped hard in turns out of the box. It was really bad and i was afraid it was unridable for me. I did a calibration,  and it went away completely. It rides fine in hard mode now. 

[Elliott Reitz]

41 minutes ago, Elliott Reitz said:

I did 41.8 mph on slight uphill near home today!  The rollers not only make a big difference on the grass (26mph with dogs in the app from yesterday), but today I did my personal max speed ever.  I have a Begode Master that still has a tire that's not round (WTF a tire like that in 2022?) and the bounces couple into speed wobbles over 30 causing me to limit to 37 so far.  Once the Pirelli gets here maybe it will be faster.  But ... there's nothing like this S22 suspension now!  I'm running a 350 lbs spring that's 190mm (requires compress to fit).  I also used the spring compressors this morning to dial in another 1" of preload via the shock-nut.  Its super soft now, better than the V11 I sold (and that was previously the softest).  I also have the 2 rear rubber bottom-out protectors that seem to make it impossible to bottom out.  

[kiitick]

Mine was really that way as well, until I calibrated it. Once calibrated for level, it went right away. I remember thinking it was close to unrideable before that.

[SamSuffit]

On 10/29/2022 at 12:59 AM, Tawpie said:

Typically this has to do with 'just in time' or 'lean' manufacturing, where your suppliers are contracted to deliver parts to you at the moment the parts are needed. This all works very well as long as you, the final assembler, are able to consume the parts that are arriving at your dock.

If, as the final assembler, your line gets stopped because something like your largest customer refuses delivery until you get redesigned battery packs installed, then parts start arriving on your dock that you can't ship. And your suppliers are contracted to keep delivering and if you tell them to stop, you have a different ration of trouble (stopping the supply chain is a huge ordeal and never ever works well). If, during the stop ship you continued assembling product, now you have a warehouse full of assembled and boxed wheels you have to open and rework. It's rather daunting. Either way, you're in a deep, steaming pile. Inventory is death in the era of JIT.

On the other hand, if parts you've received are making their way to their end points per plan, you can call ZX and tell them to take a hike and get CS on contract with incentives to ship "tomorrow"... as soon as you run out of ZX motors make sure that's the day CS delivers their first motor and you're off to the races.

Meantime, that other poor sucker has a warehouse of ZX motors they're trying to get ZX to take back and rework.

The JIT supply chain works really well as long as there are no hiccups (covid, suez canal, clogged ports, no truck drivers, no empty containers etc.)... there's a certain amount of luck and a ton of contingency planning involved and it's not easy to get it right. S22 was ramping while the global supply chain was going down the drain, very unlucky timing. BG got lucky and was able to switch motor suppliers before they were awash in lousy motors.

It is quite possible BG discovered the problem while Liam was hiding in plain sight on a T4 and got an early start on figuring out what was going on. And it's equally possible that KS had their head in the sand, or somewhere the sun don't shine. It's probably some of both.

I do think that KS paid the price of huge pre-orders (tempts you to order lots of stuff from your suppliers) coupled with delayed shipping. It was a strategic error, one that would have worked out if nothing bad happened... but bad things do happen and they didn't plan or act accordingly.

(don't forget that T4 is getting a brand new motor, I'm pretty sure CS didn't have this design in their show room. CS has a good and long reputation, but this is a new motor in a new use case. time as always, will tell)

While putting 3D printed suspension and putting plastic sheet to limit dirt ingress, i noticed 2 additional stickers on the motor with 2 different dates it seems:

 - end june, as the date engraved on the motor (=date of manufacturing of the motor?)
 - beginning of september (=date of the modification of pinning the motor?)

Edited October 31, 2022 by SamSuffit