Best mountain bike to go with an Oxydrive kit?

[AndyOfTheSouth]

Hi folks. Haven't posted for a while, but I've been reading the site from time to time, particularly recently. For the past few years I've been using a Heinzmann powered mountain bike. This, alas, has been stolen, so I am looking for a replacement.

I'm very probably going to use an Oxydrive kit plus a mountain bike. But which bike?

This is a very positive review:

http://www.mbr.co.uk/reviews/hardtail/voodoo-bizango-29er-review-2013

Though it has hydraulic brakes which may pose a problem with the Oxydrive.

A different approach is to get a hybrid and fit big tyres, like one of these two:

http://www.evanscycles.com/products/pinnacle/lithium-one-2015-hybrid-bike-ec105727
http://www.evanscycles.com/products/pinnacle/neon-one-2015-hybrid-bike-ec054675
http://www.evanscycles.com/products/pinnacle/cobalt-one-2015-hybrid-bike-ec071288

Their appeal is their very low weight, around 10 kgs for the rigid forked ones. I know there is a school of thought that weight is unimportant with an ebike, but I do not subscribe to it. Most of the time I pedal unpowered and often have to lift the bike eg over gates.

But what exactly is the disadvantage of a rigid front forked hybrid vis a vis a proper mountain bike over very rough ground, bearing in mind that I'm not going to be doing jumps, etc?

All suggestions welcome, thank you...

 

[baldylox]

I applied an oxydrive kit to my Giant Trance X2 (2010 model) and apart from the issue of not being able to fit the PAS easily ( am awaiting a solution from Austria) it has been a fantastic ride off road over some particularly rough terrain. All up weight is a shade over 20kg so comparable with KTMs and Haibikes.
Don't worry about hydraulic brakes, there are solutions to deal with them. Check out the oxydrive thread for info/pics.