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Six part report about my electrified Utopia Kranich with Rohloff gearbox at http://coolmainpress.com/BICYCLINGbuildingpedelec1.html 1: ELECTRIC MOTOR CHOICES FOR A PEDELEC 2: CHOOSING YOUR KIT, AND ITS SUPPLIER 3: HOW I BUILT MY ELECTRIC BIKE IN A COUPLE OF HOURS 4: FITTING THE BATTERY AND CONTROLS 5: CAR STRENGTH LAMPS FOR 36V ELECTRIC BICYCLES 6: SETTING UP CAR STRENGTH LIGHTS ON AN ELECTRIC BIKE http://coolmainpress.com/miscimage/pedelec/220_test_ride.jpg Start at http://coolmainpress.com/BICYCLINGbuildingpedelec1.html

Thanks again, Nealh. That looks like a decision then.

How did your GSM "put paid to them"? Is the battery somehow physically or electrically fragile? I'd like to get several years of life from the battery I choose.

Thank you, gentlemen. Since there is no significant difference in price here, this is starting to sound like a no-brainer. The only thing I can see that the bottom battery has going for it is a more integrated, neater design, totally outweighted by the practical advantages of the top battery. Any more facts or opinions I need before I decide?

Thanks, Trex. I don't mind drilling a hole but I do use the on/off switch on my current battery (a bottle 8.8Ahr job left over from A QSWXK installation) and the USB port on the top one would also be useful. That's two counts for choosing the top one already. Anone else? Anyting else I should know or consider before I put in the order?

Anybody have any experience of or opinions on the choice between these two batteries: http://eclipsebikes.com/images/Samsung.jpg 36V 14.5Ah Lithium Ion Frame Battery 29E Samsung Cells http://eclipsebikes.com/145ah-lithium-frame-battery-samsung-cells-p-1104.html This one has a USB port. £280. http://eclipsebikes.com/images/NewBattery.jpg 36V 14.5Ah Lithium Ion Frame Battery 29E Samsung Cells + 2A Li Ion Charger http://eclipsebikes.com/145ah-lithium-frame-battery-samsung-cells-p-1119.html No USB. £275 Whichever one I choose is for use with a Bafang BBS01 350W centre motor. Experience of either, or opinion about my choice welcomed. Thanks for your help.

Yo, Dave, I also had a good experience shopping at EM3-EV http://em3ev.com in China; I shopped with them for the first time since they had the lefthand throttle in stock and therefore bought the 44T chainring that is Hebie Chainglider compatible from them too.

Thanks, Flecc. Actually, earlier on, back up the thread or in the material that the stupid programmer lost, I said "Bosch-Panasonic".

A chainline of 53.5mm, I think, spot-on. You won't get it closer than that!

Hang on a moment, Bill. If you're fitting a Rohloff gearbox to the installation you describe, with a 73mm bottom bracket, then you want zero (0mm) in spacers. In fact, you will have 2mm too far in spacers. I don't think it will matter all that much, and you can't do anything about it anyway, but you don't want to aggravate the distance by adding to it unnecessarily.

I have a couple of low-mileage worn-out Shimano boxes, so I had to decide between proper German engineering that lasts forever (and comes with what is effectively a lifetime guarantee) and buying five or six Shimano and being left with nothing. It was a no-brainer, helped along at that time by moving into a house my wife liked on the steepest hill in a town called the "Rome of Ireland". Perhaps you're happy to put so much power through a Shimano box that I wrecked with nothing more than my legs to power it, because you have a gentler touch. We'll see in a few years whether your optimism is justified. I hope you're right, because a Rohloff is outrageously expensive. Actually, Bafang at first tried to pretend that the rotation counter was a torque sensor of some magical kind. The point I'm making by "pseudo" is that only the Bosch item (and a not-very-common aftermarket item available from China) is atrue torque sensor, and none of the pretenders, including Bafang's, whatever they call it now, is real. Your Bosch is a Big Brother Machine, BAK48. It doesn't work for you, it works for the German government. It measures carefully how much torque you provide by leg power, and adds precisely the same, not an iota more, because the German mindset is that whatever isn't permitted is streng verboten. By contrast, the Chinese probably have an Italian consultant who noticed how loosely the EU wrote the most recent peddle total power spec (basically it is what the manufacturer says it is, which is a good reason to buy Bafang, because they make very modest power claims!), and very likely decided they could also try it on with the ratio between user power-input and what the motor provides. I'm not going to complain! Are you?

Whenever you're ready, Bill, just ask.

Bill, I answered these questions at Rohloff Speed 14 hub gearbox with Bafang BBS mid-motor and there's some opinion at Rohloff Speed 14 hub gearbox with Bafang BBS mid-motor: installation and use

The next problem is the tooth count of the chainring. The motor is wide, so the chainring is dished to fit over it and give a tread (the trendies and poseurs call it the "Q factor" so they can express surprise when you don't know what it is -- it's the width over the outside faces of the cranks where the pedals screw in) within reason; roadies like the tread to be as narrow as possible The dishing, with the size of the motor, limits the tooth count. The smallest chainring from Bafang, last I heard, is 44T. Smallest available in the aftermarket, last time I looked, was 42T, pricey but beautiful, carved from solid aluminium in Italy. If you like the 38x16 Rohloff gearing that a lot of tourers have followed me into, tough. I like steel chainrings, so I fitted Bafang's own 44T dished ring, for two further reasons, one already described above: it's an easy fit and fix for a hyper-correct Rohloff chainline. The other reason is more esoteric. Because I ride in street clothes and don't like trousers clips, and have anyway developed a near zero-maintenance bike, I use a Hebie Chainglider on my everyday bike. The Chainglider must use the special Rohloff rear end, and the Chainglider front ends that work with the Rohloff rear end are limited in tooth counts, coinciding with the Bafang tooth counts only at 44. So I could fit that one or go custom... Maybe later I will have a custom ring machined out of stainless, because I had good experience with the 38T Surly stainless ring, maybe I'll stick with the Bafang pressed steel chainring. We'll see. The point is, the Bafang 44T got me going almost instantly, without waiting for custom work. Nor did it, with the torque of the motor, seem a hard choice after being accustomed to the soft option of 38x16; motor just filled in. And, of course, with 14 evenly-spaced gears in the Rolloff, it wasn't ever going to be as big a problem as at first I feared. Wonderful what we discover with 20-20% hindsight. Before the Chainglider-compaitble chainring arrived from China, I tried riding in street clothes without chain pretection. I didn't get very far before my trousers were twice caught up in the chainring and chain. I gave it up as recipe for broken bones.

This: http://coolmainpress.com/ajwriting/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/andre_jute_bombing_downhill_at_kilbrogan_12_sept_2015_800pxh-573x510.jpg Bombing down the hill at Kilbrogan The idiot software of this board just lost my complete description of the installation and use of a Bafang BBS midmotor with a Rohloff hub gearbox because it claimed it was over 10K words. What sort of a motherless programmer writes a deadend loss like that with no return path? I don't have time to rewrite all of that for five people to read, Bill, so I'll just answer your specific questions and in future place my complete review someplace safer. *** Bill "need(s) info re alternate chainrings/chainline etc" The Rohloff chainline demanded by Bernd Rohloff is within 1mm of 54mm, measured from the centreline of the hub (on a well-built from from the centreline of the seat tube!) to the longitundinal centreline of the teeth on the chainring, i.e. to the middle of a roller on the chain if it doesn't fit too loosely. The offset of a standard dished chaingring for the Bafang BBS mid-motor is 51mm. I used 3.5mm total of spacers, as 2.5mm and 1mm, mainly because I already had them and they were already painted bike color, between the bottom bracket shell and the rear ride of the motor supposed to rest on the bottom bracket shell's rim. This moved the chainline to within 0.5mm of the desired chainline. Practical measurement is from the far (non-driveside) of the seat tube to the centre of the thickness of the teeth, minus half the diameter of the seat tube. Spacers you can buy from Chainreactioncycles.com, which is where I got mine, as either dedicated bottom bracket spacers or, if you can determine that they have the same inner and outer diameter as your bottom bracket shell, as cheaper and often generic sprocket spacers. I don't know what "etc" is. If you have a specific question, ask here and I'll try to answer. Good luck with your build, Bill.

HEADLINE SUMMARY: The Utopia Kranich, a big, fast, very stiff crossframe design running on 60mm Big Apples at the very low pressure of 2 bar, and the Bafang BBS01 36V/350W turned out to be an inspired combination of bicycle and motor. At first you might think the Rohloff hub gearbox I used in this build (see http://www.pedelecs.co.uk/forum/threads/bafang-8fun-bbs01-installation-eclips-ebikes-gives-service-over-and-above.20718/)isn't necessary, because the Bafang motor's software gives you 9 "speeds" anyway, that a Shimano 8-sp might do as well, but I have experience of Shimano hub gearboxes that last 5000km or 3000m, so it would be a false economy. If you cheap out on the gearbox, you'd better stick to the 250W motor, and my guess is that even then you will have to ride carefully to protect the gearbox. For anything bigger than the base 250W Bafang motor, the Rohloff is very likely essential. IN USE: Such a pleasure, I don't know why I didn't fit a Bafang BBS the day they came out. My bike carries my plein air painting gear permanently in the pannier basket and handlebar bag; I'm no weigh weenie. All up the bike, me, and the usual gear and water (in a stainless steel Nathan bottle that weights a pound by itself) weighs upwards of an eighth of ton. I live in the beautiful but hilly countryside of West Cork (I'm a writer, so I can live wherever I want, but here is pleasant); from my house there is no direction I can go on cycling-safe roads that don't involve constant steep hills. I found my previous motor, a Bafang QSWXK, already a motor known for its good torque, wasn't always happy with the demands put on it, and it burned out in about three years, which I thought good value as it was in constant use. With experience of the Bafang BBS-01 in 36V/350W form, I'm slowly forming the opinion that, unless the rider is an idiot boy racer or really very heavy, the 250W Bafang will probably have enough oomph for most applications. Note that I am more interested in making it to the top of every hill than in top speed as I basically use my bike for exercise, that is as a pedal bike with electric assistance on the steepest hills (see for instance Bombing down the hill at Kilbrogan). HOWEVER, everything is not roses at the very beginning of your relationship with the motor and its controls; you have to learn to use everything smoothly. A complete installation of all the bits that come in the box Eclips Ebikes www.eclipsebikes.com gives you a whole lot of software for convenient operation of the bike. This is just the headlines: you will have both a throttle and a 9-stage or -speed pedelec programme, which you can easily cut down to a five-stage pedelec programme if you're too lazy to press a button or don't care about being in the most efficient speed range or for some reason want an ultra-fast change. The pedelec operation has pseudo-torque control nowhere near as sensitive as on the Bosch-Panasonic bikes, and starting off in pedelec mode, which on switchon defaults to speed 1, max torque (!), will soon rip the aliminium sprocket, cheap chain and ali chainring of a Shimano Nexus installation out of order, and in the long run I can easily see it damaging the Nexus and Alfine gearbox internals too. Even with a Rohloff gearbox, I automatically switch the pedelec setting to zero as I get on the bike, and take off with the throttle, switching the pedelec settings back in at the bottom of the steep hill behind my house. This is all very conveniently done with a three-button switch you can mount wherever you like: I mounted mine under my left thumb on the same side of the bike as the thumb throttle, and both in a position such that I am certain to let go of the throttle when I apply the brake. You learn soon enough not to jerk your chain and gearbox with any of the BBS controls, and to integrate the pedals, throttle and pedelec controls, to minimize both jerking and run-on in traffic. Run-on is when the pedelec oomph exceeds your input by so much that the bike continues to roll forward quite powerfully under its own momentum even after you stop pedaling. In this sense, on the five-speed setup, the top two speeds ae superfluous in rush-hour style traffic... After nearly three years experience with the QSXWK, itself a powerful motor, I learned very quickly to adapt to the BBS, but I can see that complete newcomers to electric motors may want to practice a bit on a totally clear supermarket parking lot before they go out in traffic and perhaps embarrass or hurt themselves. SPECIFICATION CAUTION: Make sure you get a battery that's up to the motor, or you'll soon be spending more money. I had the good, strong 8Ah battery left over from my QSWXK front-motor installation, and found it a convenient format on my particular bike, so I kept it. Thing is, while everyone makes a song and dance about how far the battery will carry you at full speed or half speed or whatever, that's really irrelevant. In everyday use, what limits the operation of any electric motor in its most critical operation (pulling you over the last, steepest bit of the hill after you run out of puff) is the rate (usually called C by the techies) at which the battery can deliver current, and this is, to cut a long story short, for practical purposes a function of the pure size of the battery: mo' Amp-hours are better Amp-hours! An analogy to grab hold of is the pressure in a pipe connected to the bottom of a tank: the bigger the tank (given that it is full), the greater the head of pressure. IS THE ROHLOFF TOTAL OVERKILL? Maybe the CVT NuVinci stepless gearbox, especially in its automatic (torque-sensing, self-protecting) automatic version, will last. Maybe a Shimano Alfine will survive the base Bafang BBS 250W if the owner is vigilant against putting too much torque into the box, especially at start off. I have little faith in these possibilities; I had a full-auto Di2 Nexus 8sp box and wrecked it in less than 3000m (see Andre's Trek Navigator L700 "Smover), and this was a faull auto Di2 made for European commuting and sporting bikes, not the wretched cut-down semi-manual Di2 Shimano sells to Dura-Ace roadies. Frankly, I think that even the smallest Bafang midmotor has enough torque to require the industrial/agricultural strength and German precision of the Rohloff. The alternative in my mind is not another hub gearbox but a single speed bike with the midmotor software used as a pseudo-gearbox. *** The rest of my post was lost by the stupid board software and I don't have time to write it all out again. I've answered your specific question about chainlines at http://www.pedelecs.co.uk/forum/threads/rohloff-speed-14-hub-gearbox-with-bafang-bbs-mid-motor.22386/

No. The centreline measured to the centre of the sprocket is the chainline you want, 46mm. The chainline you have is measured from the centreline of the bike to the centreline of the chainring. With the Bafang BBS you should measure 50mm. It is most desirable, and for some hub gearboxes essential, to have a straight chainline, meaning front and rear measurements the same.

Of course it is! I enjoyed looking around that shop. Here's one you probably already know about, in California: http://california-ebike.com Among other things. they make adaptors to fit standard chainrings to the BBS, to use it with fatbikes, etc.

I don't know about that 46mm. The chainline spec for the Bafang BBS is generally reported as 50 or 51mm. You may like to know that chainline is measured to the middle of the thickness of the ring. 54mm is the standard chainline for the Rohloff Speed 14 hub gearbox. It's fixed by the sprocket position. The OLD (over locknut distance) of the Rohloff is 135mm. It doesn't determine anything about wheel and tire size. But yes, the tyres on my bike are huge, 60mm Big Apple Liteskins on 622mm rims, with a rolling diameter of 745mm. Here's a photo essay of my bike, a Utopia Kranich, on the day it was delivered: http://coolmainpress.com/AndreJute'sUtopiaKranich.pdf

You're a brick, Fordulike.

The correct chainline on hub gearbox is a line parallel to the centreline of the bikr. It's distance from the centreline is determined by what's on the rear axle. The centre of the Rohloff 15, 16, & 17 tooth sprockets is 54cm from the centreline, so you want the centreline of the chainring to be within half a millimetre of that. The centreline of the Bafang chainring is at about 50mm, so on the inside of the desired Rohloff chainline, hence the spacers. If you can find that perfectly flat chainring drilled to fit the BBS motor, that you can bolt without an adaptor or a spacer directly to the motor, like the Bafang chainring is bolted on but without the dishing, it would be a spot-on Rohloff chainline. Unfortunately no such chainring exists yet.

I live in very hilly country in Ireland. Which 36V bottle-type battery, preferably with a suggested vendor, should I fit to my Bafang BBS01 350W mid-motor-equipped bike to ensure that it makes it to the top of all my hills. The bike is a Utopia Kranich crossframe fitted with a Rolloff 14-speed hub gearbox, and the total all-up weight is 125kg when my painting kit is in the pannier basket. According to the manufacturer, "The 36v 350w Bafang BBS01 Mid Drive Conversion Kit can be used with a 36-38v nominal battery that is rated to discharge 18 amps of continuous and 20 amps of max current."

I found that by inserting spacers between the drive side of the motor/bottom bracket unit and the end the end of the BB shell on my Utopia Kranich, I got a perfect 54mm Rohloff chainline. Then I fitted Bafang's 44T chainring, for which you can get a Rolloff-compatible Chainglider, and the Hebie Chainglider. The Chainglider is essential if you ride in street clothes, as I do. Before I fitted it, I twice got my trousers caught between the chain and the wretched chainguard Bafang supplies. It could have been nasty but in both instances I was moving very slowly and managed to stop everything in a quarter turn.

Shimano Hollowtech tool fits perfectly. I use this one, currently on sale for a tenner at CRC: http://media.chainreactioncycles.com/is/image/ChainReactionCycles/template_sample?$detail$&$id=prod55935_Black_NE_01&$offerhide=1&$promohide=1&locale=en X-Tools Pro Shimano BB Wrench http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/ie/en/x-tools-pro-shimano-bb-wrench/rp-prod55935

With the bottle battery in their kits (and perhaps the rack battery) UK 8FUN supplied a pigtail of an air plug with the other end bare. The front motor part of their kit is gone, replaced by a BBS01 mid motor, but after quite a few years I still use their bottle battery, which just keeps marching on. (The original installation of the QSWXK motor and kit UK 8FUN supplied is illustrated in this photo essay.) When installing the Bafang BBS01 to work with the bottle battery from UK 8FUN, I noticed that one of the clamp screws on the plug had fallen out. Everything works fine but I thought it best to have another cable and plug on standby. UK 8FUN, after asking for a photograph of the plug and cable I wanted to replace, sent me an exact duplicate, right down to bullets I had fitted! The cost was a tenner, including postage to Ireland, which is reasonable enough, and from first contact to having the cable in my hand took about eight days; UK 8FUN actually replied to me on a Saturday, which is good service. Thumbs up for UK 8FUN; they sell the good gear at good prices, and their service is very agreeable indeed, even years later. If my BBS01 doesn't work out, I'll probably get another QSWXK kit from UK 8FUN.