ALW

I recently completed my second Woosh kit conversion, on my wife's elderly but well-maintained Claud Butler Valetta. I went with the front wheel conversion and rear rack on her bike for simplicity, weight balance and to allow a larger battery pack than would have likely fitted within the triangle of her smaller bike frame. This was a really easy installation, I was fortunate to be able to use the integrated left side pedal sensor from Woosh, which makes for a fabulously neat installation, whilst the rear rack can accommodate a rear bag we acquired with a recent second hand folding bike acquisition, which is where this whole idea started. She had really got back into cycling using the folding bikes and the ability to travel somewhere for a ride via car or train, but then wanted the ability to ride in the hillier areas near to where we live. With the great success of my own XF08 conversion, another Woosh kit was a no-brainer. The bike has in her words been a revelation, the hills and climbs no longer pose a threat and we've been gradually increasing our ride distances together, culminating in her first 100km ride last weekend. Like me, she is mostly riding with minimal assistance, which means we get insane mileage from the large battery packs we have (20Ah on hers). I've done two weekends now with >100miles of riding from a single charge and still a full charge indicator (dropping one bar on a heavy climb). It's reassuring to know there's reserve when required but that in all likelihood the battery pack will last longer owing to the fewer charge cycles we'll need. I did have reservations about the lack of disk brakes and another reason for a front wheel conversion was to re-use my bike's rear disk wheel and upgrade to disks, but with a decent set of fresh pads we've had no issues at all, so haven't bothered to look at that yet. I've done some other comfort upgrades for her, similar to my bike, so handlebars with some rise and sweep, new grips and a new saddle. The only issue I'd overlooked prior to this build was her saddle height, relative the the rear rack position and height, but an appropriate riding position has been achieved, with just a slight downward tilt on the rear rack. We even cycled from our home in Kent into London recently and home, something I'd never have considered doing previously. Our rides are always accompanied by a flask of tea and a picnic and it's been such a wonderful experience to be able to cycle together with neither holding the other back. The weight loss I've achieved is an equally strong motivator too, currently I've lost around 27kg, even with the occasional cake on route

My son has a bike with the previous gen Swytch kit. The switch kit has just started to fail, I suspect owing to battery age, although I've not attempted to open the cell pack to measure cells, it does not appear to hold a charge dropping very rapidly under load. I'm not inclined to replace the pack via Swytch, but given the motor is OK, can anyone point me to a good source of information on swapping out the controller/battery with more generic products? I've no experience of this and it seems from what I've read there's a configuration element required for individual motors. I'm an electronic engineer and IT literate so more than confident in my abilities, I just haven't yet found a good concise source for information on the work that's required. The other option is I believe the internal battery pack connection in the Swytch battery bag is an XT type from memory, so given the Swytch Lishui controller appears to be OK, adding an external battery pack could be a much simpler idea to get it back up and running? Thoughts, advice or links will be gratefully received! Thanks, Andy.

I have the 85SX from Woosh and it's great. Very quiet and smooth.

Are both of those suited to a 3x8 system? They appear to be 3x9.

The 85SX kit from Woosh was £599 with the 17Ah battery, that's really all that was necessary for the bike conversion. There were some challenges fitting the cadence sensor, which without a 3D printer I'm not sure I'd have easily resolved. I also changed handlebars and saddle for comfort, and originally added the Continental Double Fighter tyres and a new set of inner tubes as the bike had knobbly off-road tyres which weren't much fun on-road. As above I've since changed to the Schwalbe's. Then there's the new bluetooth smart helmet (fabulous for listening to podcasts whilst riding but still being able to listen to surroundings), brake pads, front light, phone mount etc. As for brakes I've been looking at this, but it's not an easy option. The bike has integrated Shimano brakes / shifters and there simply isn't room on the handlebars for separate shifters and brake levers, because of the rise and sweep on them. My brother has brand new unused set of hydros that I could have for free, but I haven't yet found a solution to the gear change that doesn't involve spending a fair bit on a new groupset. Brakes are the biggest issue, I'm older and less resilient than I was as a youngster so they tend to get used quite a bit to keep speed down on long downhills, I've had one near miss where there was smoke pouring from the front pads and the front disc went a funny colour The simplest option at the moment seems to be twin pot cable brakes (TRP SPYRE) or cable operated hydraulics (TRP HY/RD or Juin Tech R1 and their clones). The HY/RD seem best as they are self adjusting like proper hydraulics. Any ideas or other advice will be gratefully received though, it is an area I want to improve.

Hi there, I'm Andy and have recently converted a 14 year old Marin Bobcat Trail to an ebike, using the 85SX kit from Woosh. It's been an utter revelation and I'm back in love with cycling and getting stir crazy when I can't go out! A bit more about my journey into the world of ebikes can be found on my blog: https://alw-audio.co.uk/?p=769 Since writing that I've changed tyres to Schwalbe Marathon Plus (fitted yesterday, so not ridden on them yet) based on advice from this forum and the fact I've already had a puncture in the rear tyre! Andy.

As has been said, a certain amount of the discomfort will be jus not being used to being in the saddle. That said I changed my old saddle on my converted MTB for a Fabric Scoop Radius Elite and it's been a revelation once set up correctly. I changed handlebars to get a more upright positon and this saddle has been perfect for that.