The odo on my Electric Bike Conversions kitted bike turned 500 miles on Monday.
Originally it's a Batavus Winner dating from around 1990. I bought it in Holland last year, pretty much on a whim, liking the Sachs drum brakes and stainless steel rims. Then earlier this year I decided to look into an E-bike as a possible replacement for an increasingly troublesome motorcycle on my 25 mile daily commute. With distinctly limited budget I looked around the cheaper end of the E-bike market, considered buying used but didn't really like the bikes I was seeing.
Meanwhile I was finding the Batavus pleasant to ride. So I decided to look into converting it into an E-bike. I settled on the E.B.C. 250W kit as it seemed to be the most complete in that price range and not knowing a great deal about E-Bikes I didn't want to risk putting together a set of components myself.
I wanted to leave the existing drive train alone, so picked a front motor kit. It's quite common on this type of bike to carry loads over the front wheel, so I decided to put the battery there. I'd found the bike a bit light on the front, so hoped this would help traction as well. I bought a heavy duty Dutch style front rack in anticipation of mounting the battery on it, but when the kit arrived I discovered I could mount the kit's battery rack backwards at the front. Front mounting everything also minimises the amount of wiring passing the steering head, which can be a trouble spot on motorbikes.
Next challenge was a front brake. The original was drum, which wouldn't fit with a motor. Obvious replacement was disk, though it might have been simpler to fit a rim brake. My original plan was to make a plate to use the drum brake mounts for a disk, but I found a disk fork on EBay and decided it was simpler to change the fork. It would have been if the disk mounts on the "disk fork" had actually been in the right place. As it was I had to change to a larger disk and pack the mountings to get the cable operated calliper aligned properly.
It took a bit of fiddling to get the pedelec sensor fitted on the left; avoiding the full chaincase. Finally I realised I could bend the ring the sensor is mounted on over and use it as an arm to present the sensor to the magnet ring with the sensor inverted. This gets the magnets moving over the sensor in the right direction.
The bag on the right side of the battery rack houses the controller, plus rather a lot of excess cable. The smaller one on the left is the battery for the front lamp. I know I could run my lights from the battery, but having had both lighting and traction batteries go flat on me I prefer to keep them separate.
There was a thumb throttle in the kit and I fitted it to the left bar. Left side because I wanted to try it and to make it distinctly different from a motorcycle.
Finally it all worked and I started riding it only to discover the rear drum brake was grabbing. This got so bad it bent the chainstay, putting the rear wheel out of line. I managed to press the stay back straight with G clamps and eventually replaced the backplate and shoes (sandpaper worked but only for a while). The new SRAM backplate looks different, but is a straight swap.
I haven't ridden any other e-bikes so I can't really comment on how this rides in comparison. It's little different from the unassisted bike, just faster and easier, especially up hills. I like the "four wheel drive" effect of the front motor on slippery surfaces, a little touch of the throttle adds a lot of stability. Generally I use assist setting 3 (of 5) but override it with throttle to "finish off" a climb or move off from a stop, particularly in traffic. Riding like this I have one bar left on the battery meter after 25 miles, so the range is about 30 miles.
The motor is almost silent at "cruise" (15mph, about 100W) but whines slightly when working harder on a climb.
Recently I decided the Sensamo "speed" tyres were to puncture prone for regular commuting and changed to Greenguard Marathons. I also got fed up with adjusting the cable disk brake and fitted a hydraulic calliper.
Originally it's a Batavus Winner dating from around 1990. I bought it in Holland last year, pretty much on a whim, liking the Sachs drum brakes and stainless steel rims. Then earlier this year I decided to look into an E-bike as a possible replacement for an increasingly troublesome motorcycle on my 25 mile daily commute. With distinctly limited budget I looked around the cheaper end of the E-bike market, considered buying used but didn't really like the bikes I was seeing.
Meanwhile I was finding the Batavus pleasant to ride. So I decided to look into converting it into an E-bike. I settled on the E.B.C. 250W kit as it seemed to be the most complete in that price range and not knowing a great deal about E-Bikes I didn't want to risk putting together a set of components myself.
I wanted to leave the existing drive train alone, so picked a front motor kit. It's quite common on this type of bike to carry loads over the front wheel, so I decided to put the battery there. I'd found the bike a bit light on the front, so hoped this would help traction as well. I bought a heavy duty Dutch style front rack in anticipation of mounting the battery on it, but when the kit arrived I discovered I could mount the kit's battery rack backwards at the front. Front mounting everything also minimises the amount of wiring passing the steering head, which can be a trouble spot on motorbikes.
Next challenge was a front brake. The original was drum, which wouldn't fit with a motor. Obvious replacement was disk, though it might have been simpler to fit a rim brake. My original plan was to make a plate to use the drum brake mounts for a disk, but I found a disk fork on EBay and decided it was simpler to change the fork. It would have been if the disk mounts on the "disk fork" had actually been in the right place. As it was I had to change to a larger disk and pack the mountings to get the cable operated calliper aligned properly.
It took a bit of fiddling to get the pedelec sensor fitted on the left; avoiding the full chaincase. Finally I realised I could bend the ring the sensor is mounted on over and use it as an arm to present the sensor to the magnet ring with the sensor inverted. This gets the magnets moving over the sensor in the right direction.
The bag on the right side of the battery rack houses the controller, plus rather a lot of excess cable. The smaller one on the left is the battery for the front lamp. I know I could run my lights from the battery, but having had both lighting and traction batteries go flat on me I prefer to keep them separate.
There was a thumb throttle in the kit and I fitted it to the left bar. Left side because I wanted to try it and to make it distinctly different from a motorcycle.
Finally it all worked and I started riding it only to discover the rear drum brake was grabbing. This got so bad it bent the chainstay, putting the rear wheel out of line. I managed to press the stay back straight with G clamps and eventually replaced the backplate and shoes (sandpaper worked but only for a while). The new SRAM backplate looks different, but is a straight swap.
I haven't ridden any other e-bikes so I can't really comment on how this rides in comparison. It's little different from the unassisted bike, just faster and easier, especially up hills. I like the "four wheel drive" effect of the front motor on slippery surfaces, a little touch of the throttle adds a lot of stability. Generally I use assist setting 3 (of 5) but override it with throttle to "finish off" a climb or move off from a stop, particularly in traffic. Riding like this I have one bar left on the battery meter after 25 miles, so the range is about 30 miles.
The motor is almost silent at "cruise" (15mph, about 100W) but whines slightly when working harder on a climb.
Recently I decided the Sensamo "speed" tyres were to puncture prone for regular commuting and changed to Greenguard Marathons. I also got fed up with adjusting the cable disk brake and fitted a hydraulic calliper.
