Hi,
For last 2 weeks I've been reading about electrical bicycles, conversions, etc and became quite obsessed with the idea of building an electrical folder myself. I cannot really throw this idea out of my head
My wife needs to commute to work up to 11miles per day and she asked me about an electrical folding bike. The place where we leave has quite a lot of hills, so the bike should be a quite good hill climber.
I am thinking about building an electric folder from one of the following bikes:
Tern Link D7i
Dahon Vitesse D3
Dahon Ciao D5
All of the selected bicycles have inner hub and I am going to do a front conversion. My rational for this is that inner hub requires less maintenance then derailleur ( I am really bad/lazy with doing maintenance). Also, a bicycle with inner hub looks cleaner when taking it into a public transport. Perhaps, the last statement is very subjective and arguable
Dahon Vitesse D3 seems the most appealing to me due to its low weight of 11.9kg (published on Dahon site) but I am a bit concerned by its 3 gears. IMHO, it should be Ok for electrical bike and I do not think that my wife would ever need more gears whilst cycling in a city traffic but may be I am wrong, as I have not owned folder before. I would really appreciate if anyone could advice me about the optimal number of gears for electric bicycle with pedal-assisting mode in city traffic conditions.
Also, the selected Dahons bicycles forks are made from INTEGRATED PATENTED FUSION TECHNOLOGY. Does anyone know whether it is a special kind of steel and is it Ok to use them with front hub motor?
After some researches (including reading this forum) I found that a conversion kit from greenbikekit.com seems like meeting my needs: 36v 250w 85f v-brake electric bicycle kit. It fits into 83mm fork drop-outs and it waits only 1.6kg.
I am thinking about buying a li-ion battery 36V 9Ah. It looks like 9ah should be Ok but I am wondering whether I should go with 11Ah battery. I am more worrying about hill climbing rather then having bigger distance to go on a single charge. It looks like 11Ah should also give more power to the motor but I am not sure about it.
Another battery I am also considering is 36V 10Ah LiFePO4 but it is heavier then the first one on 1.3kg and I would like to keep bike weight as low as possible.
Unfortunately, this version of the kit is not coming with the mounting instructions but I suppose that they should be quite similar to the instructions coming with cyclotricity conversion kit here or video instructions for ELFEi Conversion Kit
Please, correct me if I am quite naïve with this assumption and the things are not really so simple as they look like
At the moment, the only thing unclear for me is how to mount a battery into usual bicycle rack? Should I purchase a special rack with a battery compartment in order to increase the reliability of battery fastening? If so, has anyone tried to fit on 20” bike the rack for 24” wheel from greenbikekit ? I just do not want to have another order from China having a rack only. I could not find any place in UK to buy such a rack.
If I go with Dahon Vitesse D3 and without buying a special rack I might get an electrical bike with weight of 17-18kg (taking that Vitesse D3 waits 11.9kg) but I am not keeping my hopes high about it
I am expecting in result of conversion to get an electrical bicycle capable of cycling up to 30 miles on a single battery charge. The approximate mileage per year will be around 1500 miles. I assume that the bicycle will serve at least 2-3 years without any need to replace any electrical or mechanical part.
I greatly appreciate any advice or/and suggestion w.r.t. GTK conversion kit and the folding bicycle front wheel conversion.
Kind Regards,
Alex
For last 2 weeks I've been reading about electrical bicycles, conversions, etc and became quite obsessed with the idea of building an electrical folder myself. I cannot really throw this idea out of my head
My wife needs to commute to work up to 11miles per day and she asked me about an electrical folding bike. The place where we leave has quite a lot of hills, so the bike should be a quite good hill climber.
I am thinking about building an electric folder from one of the following bikes:
Tern Link D7i
Dahon Vitesse D3
Dahon Ciao D5
All of the selected bicycles have inner hub and I am going to do a front conversion. My rational for this is that inner hub requires less maintenance then derailleur ( I am really bad/lazy with doing maintenance). Also, a bicycle with inner hub looks cleaner when taking it into a public transport. Perhaps, the last statement is very subjective and arguable
Dahon Vitesse D3 seems the most appealing to me due to its low weight of 11.9kg (published on Dahon site) but I am a bit concerned by its 3 gears. IMHO, it should be Ok for electrical bike and I do not think that my wife would ever need more gears whilst cycling in a city traffic but may be I am wrong, as I have not owned folder before. I would really appreciate if anyone could advice me about the optimal number of gears for electric bicycle with pedal-assisting mode in city traffic conditions.
Also, the selected Dahons bicycles forks are made from INTEGRATED PATENTED FUSION TECHNOLOGY. Does anyone know whether it is a special kind of steel and is it Ok to use them with front hub motor?
After some researches (including reading this forum) I found that a conversion kit from greenbikekit.com seems like meeting my needs: 36v 250w 85f v-brake electric bicycle kit. It fits into 83mm fork drop-outs and it waits only 1.6kg.
I am thinking about buying a li-ion battery 36V 9Ah. It looks like 9ah should be Ok but I am wondering whether I should go with 11Ah battery. I am more worrying about hill climbing rather then having bigger distance to go on a single charge. It looks like 11Ah should also give more power to the motor but I am not sure about it.
Another battery I am also considering is 36V 10Ah LiFePO4 but it is heavier then the first one on 1.3kg and I would like to keep bike weight as low as possible.
Unfortunately, this version of the kit is not coming with the mounting instructions but I suppose that they should be quite similar to the instructions coming with cyclotricity conversion kit here or video instructions for ELFEi Conversion Kit
Please, correct me if I am quite naïve with this assumption and the things are not really so simple as they look like
At the moment, the only thing unclear for me is how to mount a battery into usual bicycle rack? Should I purchase a special rack with a battery compartment in order to increase the reliability of battery fastening? If so, has anyone tried to fit on 20” bike the rack for 24” wheel from greenbikekit ? I just do not want to have another order from China having a rack only. I could not find any place in UK to buy such a rack.
If I go with Dahon Vitesse D3 and without buying a special rack I might get an electrical bike with weight of 17-18kg (taking that Vitesse D3 waits 11.9kg) but I am not keeping my hopes high about it
I am expecting in result of conversion to get an electrical bicycle capable of cycling up to 30 miles on a single battery charge. The approximate mileage per year will be around 1500 miles. I assume that the bicycle will serve at least 2-3 years without any need to replace any electrical or mechanical part.
I greatly appreciate any advice or/and suggestion w.r.t. GTK conversion kit and the folding bicycle front wheel conversion.
Kind Regards,
Alex
