Well you really would be surprised then. Because of the torque sensor and the sophisticated electronics ( although I opted for the basic kit its still quite sophisticated) It really does ride well. almost as good as the modern bb mounts for full builds. the trouble was that made the cost high so the market for it shrunk and it was a small part of a big manufacturer so they simply dropped it.

[url=https://flic.kr/p/PyGSjN]DSC_0600[/url] by TandemJeremy, on Flickr

TJ it’s unlikely your 8 year old motor will match up to the latest tech these days. 😆

Might do if you only use it for a utility bike on the road, but tbh, a bafang would be perfectly fine for that. You’d really need to stick your motor and battery on a decent mtb and take it off road in anger to find out.

tbh, as I mentioned earlier, as a winch the bafang is sound, i think youse are all a wee bit too precious on your torque sensing, it’s pretty easy to use your left thumb to adjust power! 😆

Bike set up and capability are far more important than the motor.

I think geex should go and have a ride on TJ’s bike 🙂

I think that Geex should stop telling other posters that their advice is rubbish when his advice is to get an e-bike and de-restrict it .

Ramsey Neil

Member
I think that Geex should stop telling other posters that their advice is rubbish when his advice is to get an e-bike and de-restrict it .

Why not derestrict? The 15mph restriction is silly.

OMG!

you’ve bolted a motor to your 20yr old titanium Raleigh XC frame? You’re a brave man … sorry. did I say “brave”… Silly me. What I actually meant to say was “foolish”.
I honestly thought all of those had snapped a decade ago 😉
Good to see you’ve Teej’d the **** out of it too with massively high stem and 60mm too long fork and as large a front tyre a feasably possible so it’s going to handle awfully motor or not. Why not tho? All your bike set ups are a mess. It seems to be your special power 😛

Yes. I’ll take you up on the offer to try it. PM I can easily pass yours in the evening a few nights a week. I’ll bring my shitty 2019 E7000 powered 150mm Emtb hardtail to compare.

* I genuinely do think the E7000 is shit compared with the E8000 so your home made bike should absolutely blow it away

hmm..

Why not derestrict? The 15mph restriction is silly.

Then buy a motorbike .

naw.

TJ it’s unlikely your 8 year old motor will match up to the latest tech these days. 😆

Might do if you only use it for a utility bike on the road, but tbh, a bafang would be perfectly fine for that. You’d really need to stick your motor and battery on a decent mtb and take it off road in anger to find out.

This ^^

But NOT this v v

i think you’se are all a wee bit too precious on your torque sensing, it’s pretty easy to use your left thumb to adjust power! 😆

While riding technical off road trails agressively?
er… think about that a little harder, eh?

Without a torque senser along with the other sensors and software to calibrate output based on the data off road rear tyre grip/control would be a **** lottery.
good luck sorting that out with a thumb lever.

then buy a motor bike

We already have. Do keep up!

what’s that? oh… you can’t?

nevermind

see you tomorrow

Well I’ve not died yet! 😆 so there is that!

Ultimately, you just get used to the power output however it’s set. Being honest, the default mode is 9! 😆

Don’t disagree torque sensing is better, just not £1.2k worth of better! 😆 Plus the extra for the 350wh of extra battery I got too on top of the standard 500wh!

I can live without it.

You can also fiddle with the software, my settings don’t ramp as fast as my brothers for instance. So it is better controlled.

Where did you pluck the £1.2k figure from?

its not in that trim now!

geex

Member
Where did you pluck the £1.2k figure from?

Well I already had the bike, so the conversion cost me £850 delivered form china (750w bbs02, and 850wh battery). A reasonable hardtail probably starts about £2.2k entry level these days…

I just replaced the fork and front wheel on my bike for about £150.

So about £1.2k that I don’t really have (well I did have it but I just bought a road bike for that! :lol:).

Granted the 1.2k would get me an updated bike, torque sensing with better geometry, bigger wheels, but a lesser battery. But I’ve bought in stages, didn’t have all the cash at once, and I wanted the road bike to supplement the ebike.

That’s my bike purchasing done for the next 5 years anyhow, it’s all just about maintenance now. In 5 years time might think about a new purchase, most likely a full sus emtb..

Conversions make complete sense if you’ve already got a bike kicking about.

While riding technical off road trails agressively

The op is unlikely to be doing this on his road bike is he ?

Having ridden a bosch I can see it’s merits off road for smooth delivery.

As seosamh says as a winch the bafang works just fine on the road.

It’s a bit like saying you need a Ferrari to go to the shops when a Skoda will do

A reasonable hardtail probably starts about £2.2k entry level these days…

E hardtail?
Nah a little under £2k got me a mid level E7000 504wh 2019 Alu E hardtail with modern geometry. By mid level I mean a 150mm rockshox fork, novatec/WTB tubeless 27.5 boost wheelset, Maxxis rubber, Decent level finishing kit, Deore 1×10 drivetrain, 150mm dropper, the new 4 pot shimanos.
The non Ebike version of the same bike is only £900ish but it has a few entry level parts (Suntour chainset/basic shimano brakes etc.)
An E7000 motor retails about £900 and the battery about £700, display £150 controller £70 and charger £150 so it felt a no brainer for me.
Chucking £850 at a chinese motor to stick on an old shitter seems ludicrus to me.
ruining a good bike by adding one even more so.
I get that you wanted one cheap though.

When I built mine there was no off the shelf e-cargo bikes availible in UK.

an E bike thread on STW is rarely ever about the good intentioned OP after the first page Tez.
…and if you’re going to bring Ferarris and Skodas into it

😉

I personally find riding motors that just assists based on cadence pretty horrible even on road. Doing it every day I’d absolutely hate. They just feel too disconnected from actual riding to me.
Fine if you disagree.

My conversion’s on a 2011 genesis core 40, 26″. Decent enough bike, got 1×11 slx on there, 100mm brand x dropper, just stuck on a 140mm sektor RL on it, and it’s 2.4 high roller exo I’ve got on there, slx front brake, 203m, and original deore 180mm on the rear.

It’s not really an old shitter, getting on a bit, aye, but, it’s still a perfectly capable bike. There be no ruining happening. 😆 Plus I do always have the option of converting back should I wish too..

Most of the cost went on the battery tbh, 850wh, is immense.

Tips the scale at 22kg.

Why did you want a cargo bike?
Genuine Q.

Moving stuff about seemed a better use of an e motor than saddling my mountain biking with.

PLus shopping and moving jnr about.

Perfectly capable of course. But sorry. I’m afraid a 2011 26″ genesis core would now 8 years later be described as an old shitter in the grand scheme of things. You could probably pick one up for around £150-200 on gumtree. Bigger issue here is possibly having an alu XC frame which was never designed to have 10kg of battery and motor bolted to it. Especially this late in it’s life.
Why did you go for 850wh BTW? for super long rides or more bed/pub time and full torque everywhere?
504wh is more than enough for road/commuting use on mine and will get me 50 miles+ in eco easily or about half that averaging 20mph+ in boost the entire time.
mine tips the scales at just under 20kg with mudguards, bottle cage, tools/Co2/tube

Fair enough.
(belated) Congrats on the wee one.

Willing to accept the old shitter tag, it is well walloped in! 😆

Really weight wise, there really wasn’t much difference in battery tbh when purchasing, so I just went for the biggest option as it was only adding a little more weight.

Lets me batter into the hills with little thought to battery consumption really. which is great, 30/35ish miles easy enough. Yet to run out, though I’ve been close, obviously you can run it down faster more climbing. Keep meaning to head over to the Kilpatricks and just do loops of that big hill to see what kinda height is achieve-able, as that’s always the biggest drainer.

It would go for a silly amount of miles if you set it up as a commuting machine with faster tyres. Never actually tested that.

As for the strength of the bike, it’s plenty strong enough, quite chucky up front those bikes, so no worries there.

Battery wise on an ebike, I think ideally I’d like 400wh on the bike, and then being able to have the ability to piggy back multiple 200wh batterys on. That way you could tailor the battery wieght on the bike to whatever run you are doing. Say allow capacity up to 1KW.

The TSDZ2 is the mid mount motor I’ve seen with torque sensing

Currently undecided but if I do go ahead it’ll be fitted to a surly big dummy cargo bike. Doesn’t do off road, just pottering around locally. But there are noticeable hills locally when you’re loaded up

Hi folks, thanks for all your comments 😀 It’s opened up a whole new world of research. I get that off-the-shelf ebikes will usually be better, but my question was specifically for conversions.

Tja has been the only one to rise to the challenge of posting his/her conversion. Anyone else willing to post their conversion pics? Geex, I couldn’t make out whether you have done a conversion, so if not, maybe post your off-the-shelf ebike pic for scrutiny and comparison?

In terms of what bikes, it’s a 10 year old Ridley road bike with carbon stays (a thought: would carbon stays be affected by torsional twisting from the motor?). The mtb is a Trek Remedy 7, with the specific question being converting that type of frame design.

Personally I wouldn’t be bolting a motor to either of those. I think it’s fairly obvious why.

Mine are a Vitus E Sommet (170mm Enduro emtb) and a vitus E Sentier. (150mm modern geo hardtail)
As its primarily for road use the Sentier has a larger 38t chainring, schwalbe big Ben 2.0×27.5 tyres run at 60psi and mudguards. I run the fork really stiff but being a jumper I do the same on all my hardtails. and it is a bit American with regards to assistance limit. (about the only thing they’re more sensible with).
It’s 44lb all in with an empty water bottle.
Other than fitting my pref grips/pedals/saddle I swapped out the 150m Dropper to a 210mm to make it more fun to manual.

View this post on Instagram

E Urban It's actually alright off road. Sketch AF on wet off cambers and a challenge to make it through wet roots but that all adds to the fun. #Eurban #emtb

A post shared by EMTB Scotland (@emtbscotland) on Jul 13, 2019 at 4:02am PDT

doordonot Member

Here ye go, the oul’ shitter himself!

Complete with poundshop arse protector 😆 , and sellotaped on display(need a new mount)

Ye cannae hide money

😉

Cove hummer with BBS01 and battery, bought the motor/battery kit from Brighton ebikes. I can’t do the pedalling thing so it’s throttle use only, not the most sophisticated set up and it has it’s limitations with power delivery (either on or off really and thumb throttles are not that good) if you take it off road but it keeps me mobile for dog walking duties.

geex

Member
Ye cannae hide money

😉

It cleaned up well i thought! 😆

EWrrmm wrong. if its being fitted now you have to pedal. Older kits both BB and hub could have a throttle. NO distinction in law between hub or BB

err, wrong 🙂

“The Department for Transport has today confirmed to Pedelecs that an ordinary cycle, already ridden on public roads as such and subsequently converted to a ‘twist and go’ electric bike, will not require type approval.

The DfT further clarified that type approval ‘only applies to new vehicles, not converted ones’.”

from this page :

DfT: Pedal cycles converted to ‘twist and go’ exempt from type approval

And then in correspondence with the Dept of Transport asking if that page is correct I have this quote :

“However, my colleagues in International Vehicle Standards have confirmed
that the website have correctly reproduced their comments and the person
writing the website has understood correctly.”

So if you convert a bike with a kit you can use twist-and-go throttles 🙂

Unless there is another reg that has come in since that Jan 2016 one ?

one other issue i’d mention on the bbs units is chainline, if you go below a 42, there’s no dish on the chainring, so it does whack out the chain line a fair whack, with the straight 36(no dish) it is a fair old bend on the chain getting into that 46, still does go, but just something to be aware of.

The 46 is more of an emergency gear mind, but still tis good to have it.

(a thought: would carbon stays be affected by torsional twisting from the motor?

not really sure about carbon stays but they defo recommonded NOT attaching then to carbon bikes. so dunno.

Slightly at cross purposes turner guy but thanks for the clarification.