Building a bike for heavy hill climbing on country roads.

[Ash21014]

Thanks. And yeah I could have done without the thread hijacking... makes it difficult to find answers to the questions I'm asking.

I find it interesting that no one has mentioned one of the big advantages of a hub drive over a crank drive yet. With a front hub motor, the bike is 2wheel drive when you peddle. This gives better traction on slippy surfaces like mud, wet tarmac and ice and thus better handling in poor conditions with less chance of spinning out. It also makes tyre wear more even than if all of the drive is coming through the rear wheel. (For this reason alone I will not consider anything but front hub drive.)
Puncture proof tyres make changing a tyre so rare that the requirement for a spanner is not an issue either.

James

That's something interesting to think about as there are a couple of gravelly paths I have to go down on my commute.

 

[Deleted member 4366]

Thanks. And yeah I could have done without the thread hijacking... makes it difficult to find answers to the questions I'm asking.

It's been made realy easy to answer your question now that the price has been slashed on the Oxydrive kit, which is a real quality kit. It has high torque for hill-climbing and it's the only cassette motor in that price range, so you can have nice gears and changers. Most hub-motors have the threaded free-wheel boss, which limits your choice of gears, while as this one has the cassette spline.

You can have a look on Ebay, Gumtree or Facebook ads for a suitable donor bike. For £250 you should be able to find a nice mtb with suspension forks and disc brakes (hopefuly hydraulic) - something like a Carera Kraken or the equivalent Diamondback. Don't worry about mudguards and light? A pair of SKS Beavertails are only £14 and good lights cost virtually nothing from Ebay or Banggood.com.

Here's a Kraken with the same motor, mudguards and lights that I converted, so you can see what it looks like. You just have to imagine the nice downtube battery:

 

[danielrlee]

It's been made realy easy to answer your question now that the price has been slashed on the Oxydrive kit, which is a real quality kit.

Bloody hell, that's an amazing price for such a good kit. If I hadn't already had my heart set on a Crystallite kit from Grin Cyclery for my next build, (looking for something that will take some serious abuse and still be reliable) I would be ordering the Oxydrive kit NOW.

 

[Ash21014]

It's been made realy easy to answer your question now that the price has been slashed on the Oxydrive kit, which is a real quality kit. It has high torque for hill-climbing and it's the only cassette motor in that price range, so you can have nice gears and changers. Most hub-motors have the threaded free-wheel boss, which limits your choice of gears, while as this one has the cassette spline.

You can have a look on Ebay, Gumtree or Facebook ads for a suitable donor bike. For £250 you should be able to find a nice mtb with suspension forks and disc brakes (hopefuly hydraulic) - something like a Carera Kraken or the equivalent Diamondback. Don't worry about mudguards and light? A pair of SKS Beavertails are only £14 and good lights cost virtually nothing from Ebay or Banggood.com.

Thanks that's a really useful suggestion, I already have lights and hydraulic disk brakes that I can use because I bought them for the Sirocco CD. With regards to the beavertails how good are they relatively? Obviously mud and water is something I encounter a lot in the winter, yet I've had to remove previous mudguards because they ended up touching the Tyre at some point.

Now with respect to tyres, which ones to get? I guess tyres with a large diameter would give better stability and traction?

 

[selrahc1992]

Thanks that's a really useful suggestion, I already have lights and hydraulic disk brakes that I can use because I bought them for the Sirocco CD. With regards to the beavertails how good are they relatively? Obviously mud and water is something I encounter a lot in the winter, yet I've had to remove previous mudguards because they ended up touching the Tyre at some point.

Now with respect to tyres, which ones to get? I guess tyres with a large diameter would give better stability and traction?

i had beavertails on a (now stolen)MTB because I got fed up with the old mudguards rubbing the tyre, for me they worked great, never a problem with mud, aesthetically they may look a bit aggressive, but practically they're unbeatable

 

[Nealh]

My Recons on my Mtrax have no eyelet for bracket so for good cleareance I have cable tied SKS above the bridge.

 

[Deleted member 4366]

For some reason high end forks don't have a hole or thread for mudguards, but it's dead easy to fix a Beavertail with a couple of cable-ties. It sounds wafty, but it makes a very secure fixing.