Thought it may help (if only as a counselling sessions for me ) to put down in a thread my experience of converting a drop handle bar road bike to an ebike.
Background: I ride a ~12.5kg steel road bike about once a week to work. The ride is 16 miles each way through country lanes and a little bit of an A-road. There's only 1 hill (150ft elevation over 0.5 mile). There's very little stop:starting like you get in urban riding, perhaps 7 or 8 times at junctions. I average about 16 mph on the way and about 12 mph on the way home (head wind, the hill and too many chocolates at work). I weigh 85kg.
Objective: to make the journey to work easier and faster while still getting exercise so that I'll do it more often, while also cutting out car use at other times (10 mile trip across town to tennis).
Conversion:
front v mid v back: My front forks are a thru axle and hub kits are quick release so that was out. Being a commute bike with few hlls i wanted reliable and cheap so I opted for rear hub over mid drive.
legal v illegal: my past is littered with bad ideas where I've pushed the boundaries & paid the price! I didn't want to invest in an illegal hub that the uk.gov then regulate & I find I've got to register/insure/tax/MOT as a motorbike. I also felt that my needs weren't too demanding and that a legally rated 250w hub may be sufficient.
DIY v kit: I'm not technically very capable. I don't have many tools or experience to fix things when they go wrong. With an eye on reliability and not causing myself problems in the future I opted for the Woosh XF08 CST kit with 17ah battery
Outcome:
install time: I enjoyed the experience but it I took way longer than 3 hours. Saying this, I took my time, took the opportunity to learn about my bike and give it some TLC while I did it. I clearly didn't understand even the simple principle of what each part was doing but Woosh were very patient with me when I asked stupid questions and were incredibly fast at responding. I found adding a rivnut quite difficult. I kept things easy by buying a new cassette & disc rotor rather than trying to get them off the old wheel.
feel: The bike now sits at ~20kg, if that contradicts anything Woosh say about the weight of their kit then apologies - that's me not knowing what my bike weighed originally! It was a heavy bike to start with and the extra weight doesn't feel awkward. I'm surprised by both the balance (thought it would feel like all the weight was on the rear but the battery nicely offsets this) and the ease with which it is to still ride the bike unassisted,
speed: Still early days so can't say if i'll meet my objectives yet but will report back in a while. I tested it out of interest derestricted to 35km/h and it was still clearly assisting me so my initial concerns were unfounded (i.e. that the 250w hub would be so weak it would do little more than pull it's own weight). I intend to ride it restricted to see what range I get and what impact it has on my commute time but it is good to know that the power is there if i'm not getting the results I want.
Sorry for the rambling post and thank you to everyone's advice on this forum that helped me on my journey.
Dan
Background: I ride a ~12.5kg steel road bike about once a week to work. The ride is 16 miles each way through country lanes and a little bit of an A-road. There's only 1 hill (150ft elevation over 0.5 mile). There's very little stop:starting like you get in urban riding, perhaps 7 or 8 times at junctions. I average about 16 mph on the way and about 12 mph on the way home (head wind, the hill and too many chocolates at work). I weigh 85kg.
Objective: to make the journey to work easier and faster while still getting exercise so that I'll do it more often, while also cutting out car use at other times (10 mile trip across town to tennis).
Conversion:
front v mid v back: My front forks are a thru axle and hub kits are quick release so that was out. Being a commute bike with few hlls i wanted reliable and cheap so I opted for rear hub over mid drive.
legal v illegal: my past is littered with bad ideas where I've pushed the boundaries & paid the price! I didn't want to invest in an illegal hub that the uk.gov then regulate & I find I've got to register/insure/tax/MOT as a motorbike. I also felt that my needs weren't too demanding and that a legally rated 250w hub may be sufficient.
DIY v kit: I'm not technically very capable. I don't have many tools or experience to fix things when they go wrong. With an eye on reliability and not causing myself problems in the future I opted for the Woosh XF08 CST kit with 17ah battery
Outcome:
install time: I enjoyed the experience but it I took way longer than 3 hours. Saying this, I took my time, took the opportunity to learn about my bike and give it some TLC while I did it. I clearly didn't understand even the simple principle of what each part was doing but Woosh were very patient with me when I asked stupid questions and were incredibly fast at responding. I found adding a rivnut quite difficult. I kept things easy by buying a new cassette & disc rotor rather than trying to get them off the old wheel.
feel: The bike now sits at ~20kg, if that contradicts anything Woosh say about the weight of their kit then apologies - that's me not knowing what my bike weighed originally! It was a heavy bike to start with and the extra weight doesn't feel awkward. I'm surprised by both the balance (thought it would feel like all the weight was on the rear but the battery nicely offsets this) and the ease with which it is to still ride the bike unassisted,
speed: Still early days so can't say if i'll meet my objectives yet but will report back in a while. I tested it out of interest derestricted to 35km/h and it was still clearly assisting me so my initial concerns were unfounded (i.e. that the 250w hub would be so weak it would do little more than pull it's own weight). I intend to ride it restricted to see what range I get and what impact it has on my commute time but it is good to know that the power is there if i'm not getting the results I want.
Sorry for the rambling post and thank you to everyone's advice on this forum that helped me on my journey.
Dan
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