Help! Looking for an alternative to Swytch and would appreciate some advice in Conversion Kits General Discussion.

[guerney]

You can run it at 48v and around 22A, It would blitz any bike/motor running at 36v and 15A on any road you're likely to encounter. There's also the Xiongda 2-speed, which is like a winch when you run it with 48v.

Front hub-motors are no good for very steep hills because they lose traction.

Thanks, that's good food for thought.

A Dahon converted using a Xiongda 2-speed, but not 22A:

Xiongda 2-speed hub motor Review – First impressions

Foreword I wrote the page below a few years ago, when I first installed a Xiongda 2-speed motor in my folding bike. Since then...

bruceteakle.blogspot.com

 

[peterjd]

thousands of bikes with front hub motors are sold in the UK every year. They may lose traction on gravel but even CD bikes and bikes with rear hub lose traction there too. On normal roads, they behave like normal e-bikes. Just let the OP try and ask him later.

I've been thinking about hill climbing and traction with my Swytch -ish converted lightweight (see photos elsewhere) recently, mainly because of partly off-road cycling holiday in Norfolk with my Decathlon rear hub drive. My front hub lightweight I know would have been scary (for me) on those tracks.
So I have a couple of redundant rear wheel friction drives (from experiments with the folder I have now sold). I'm thinking of experimenting with a friction drive hung off the rear pannier rack of the lightweight, with it coming into play when speed was low and dropping out as the speed picked up. If it worked it would be useful on steep hills and might also be useful off-road. Synchronisation of motor assistance might be a problem but perhaps less so at low speed? Worth simple experiments I think? Peter