I'm surprised the author spent so much money building on top of a base bike of such low quality. That department store bike is what bike snobs would call a "bicycle-shaped object". You certainly shouldn't not be cheaping out on the actual bicycle for an e-bike, as you're putting the bike (and particularly the brakes) through forces they were not properly designed for. The author even admits such:
> The brakes are often too soft to handle continuous elevated speed. What ends up happening is that I spend more money overtime to upgrade the bike to my desired state. So far I spent about $1500, including parts and tools, this is accounting for a fairly cheap used bike on craigslist ($200). Had I bought a new bike, I would have had to spend probably close to $1900. To make it exactly the way I want it, I estimate that I have to spend an additional $800 to get install IGH, bigger brakes, and more efficient tires with less rolling resistance.
Frankly, the author's setup just sounds dangerous. The several-$K all-in-one bicycles that they refused to get on grounds of cost are expensive because they are actually built to handle the rigors of e-bike usage, and have incredibly useful features like hydraulic disc brakes. The brakes on that department store bike are "disc" brakes, but they're certainly not hydraulic, or even good, at that price point.
Since 3 years and >10.000km I use a self made eBike based on a 250€ bike from Decathlon with a self made controller [1]. It is a sturdy bike with properly functioning brakes - and I have gone up to plenty of mountain passes including the Col de la Bonette (2800m) [2]. The reason to take a low budget bike is that it is less likely to be stolen - and if it happens I'll just buy a new one.
The advantage of a DIY eBike is that you can repair it yourself. Plenty of ebike dealers have no knowledge of the electronics and if something stops working, then the bike gets send back to the factory. As it is a seasonal business you may be without a bike for weeks in summer time.
Yup, the brakes is definitely the limiting factor currently, but other parts of the bike have held up surprisingly well. I didn't really know anything about bikes before starting this, so it was a cheap way to learn. I figured I can always upgrade the parts over time if needed. I had set a max budget of $1500 for the initial purchase and had to make tradeoff somewhere.
You can't easily replace the frame though. You're right that the other parts can be replaced, but you should have at least used a good frame to start with. For only a few hundred bucks more you could have gotten a substantially better bike to work with. The bike you have has a cheap aluminum frame, which will accumulate stress fractures over time from the high speed electric bicycle use exceed its design specs that it's seeing. It may eventually catastrophically fail on you.
At your given budget I would have used a better bike and a smaller motor/battery. The combination of beefy motor on an inferior quality bike could be flat-out dangerous.
It took him ten hours of work the first time. Yes, it'll take him less the second time because he's gotten better at it, but it's still by no means easy or trivial. And we haven't gotten to how much he values his time yet.
People love to go on about the value of their time, but most people cannot arbitrarily decide to work another hour and get paid for it. Most people either have their schedules set by their employers or are on a salary that doesn't change if they add an additional hour.
Don't weight ten hours of learning about bicycle assembly as though it were ten billable hours if it isn't. Compare it against the ten hours you were going to do other things in: reading, watching TV, going out for a walk, whatever.
I think I'd rather read a book than keep monkeying around with a bicycle, though. That's the value of the time I'm referring to. I know some people like endless tinkering with things, but not me; I just want them working. Mechanical repair isn't a leisure activity for me.
Two types of people and all that. OP is clearly a tinkerer. Telling them that they shouldn’t value their time this way seems silly.
If I was the OP, I would do this exact thing: after putting some more miles on the bike and saving up that gas money, get a nicer bike and swap the motor. Better yet, sell this e bike for $2k now that it’s all upgraded and use that money for a full upgrade.
I don't think he'll be able to get $2K for it. It's still built around a bad bike, and any prospective buyer will easily find that out. It's probably worth most as parts.
I got a Liberty CXD and have been using it for over a year now with only some slight modifications -- I replaced the pedals (they were trash) and added fenders, a rear rack, and lights. I chose that bike as a good compromise between performance and not breaking the bank too much if it got stolen.
Were I to do it over again I'd get a nicer model, because in practice I almost never lock up my bike outside anyway so the theft concerns aren't an important factor.
My bike is around 50 lbs. I weight about 150 lbs. I often carry a bag about 20 lbs. So all in, it's about 200 lbs or ~90KG. I think my battery pack can go about 50 miles per charge, but I never went that far on a single charge. I usually charge after 30 miles to ease strain on battery, but that should still be plenty for you to get to work and back.
I can comment on the range. I have a similar bike with a 540Wh battery. Total weight close to 20 kg, maximum practical range approx 30-40 km. Slightly less when sub zero C temp.
Edit: I would consider an extra charger and charge at work for that range, in case you want to stop by somewhere on your way to or back from work.
I get 40km out of a 400Wh battery with similar weight.
About half in cold weather with snow and studded tires. The tires seem to be the main reason for the reduced mileage. This is in sport mode with maximum assistance and going full speed.
You'd be surprised at how little extra momentum (speed or weight) you have to add before disc brakes become essential. For me, the aha moment came when I started pulling a 40 lbs bike trailer - then you really don't want soft brakes when approaching a junction with cars. I installed some Avid Juicy's on 180 mm rotors and they're awesome - even now when the bike trailer is 70 lbs.
They also don't bleed as much braking power when they heat up from repeated or long braking, which is more common at the high speeds seen in an electric bike.
I bought a pretty basic no-frills bike (https://www.feltbicycles.com/USA/2016/Bikes/lifestyle/Urban/...) and used the same conversion kit that the author of this post uses (Bafang BBS02 from LunaCycle - less than $100 for a local bike shop to install). I've been riding my e-bike to work for several months and the caliper brakes that came with the bike have held up fine. They have enough braking power that it feels safe, and don't seem to be wearing too badly. So I don't think you need disc brakes at all.
The only problem I've had with the underlying bike is one incident where I slammed on the throttle from a full stop and the motor wrenched the whole back axle out of its alignment and jammed the wheel at an angle to the body of the bike. I guess the nuts securing the axle had worked themselves loose. Luckily I was close to work and was able to walk my bike in, and bring some tools the next day to loosen and re-tighten the nuts.
Overall I think it's been great. I wouldn't go back and buy a more expensive bike if I could. The nearly car-like prices of "good" bikes are too much.
Good steel frames are not necessarily significantly heavier than aluminum frames but they ride much much better (have more flex). They also can be repaired if required while aluminum is probably toast after anything that damages the frame. In anything that is not a race or cargo bike I’d always prefer a steel frame.
Steel frames are only easy to repair if they're lugged, i.e. the tubes are brazed into lug sockets. This was once a common method of hand building frames, but it's now rare and expensive. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lugged_steel_frame_constructio...
Compared to aluminum frames, all steel frames are more easily repaired. They can be welded without special equipment, put back in shape when slightly bent etc. They also fail less catastrophic - if an aluminum frame or fork receives even a slight bend in a dooring accident it needs replacing since it may just break clean though at the next inconvenient occasion (like hitting a slight bump downhill with high speed)
Cargo bikes require significantly thicker frames to sustain the load, so the weight difference is much more pronounced. They’re also quite heavy to begin with, so shaving an few kilos off is most often worth it. There are some bikes that actually have mixed steel/aluminum frames, Douce bikes for example use steel for the back part of the frame where the rider sits and aluminum for the front cargo section.
It works great. I was specifically looking for a bike without gears since I read that many people with e-bike conversions just leave it on one gear all of the time anyway and I didn't want the apparently-unnecessary additional complexity and failure modes of a derailleur.
Besides, the pedal assist power is adjustable so if I hit a hill I can just press the + button on the controller on the handlebar and I get more power. That functions like shifting into an easier gear, without having to pedal like mad to get anywhere.
This. For the $1500 the author spent, he could have bought a decent bike instead of strapping a motor on a $200 piece of cast-iron junk.
Plus, a 1000-watt motor is ridiculous: that's the kind of power generated by a pro sprinter, and over twice what a pro climber generates on average. A 100-watt boost would be enough of an advantage to make most hills easy, and would probably weigh and cost far less.
I don't think you have tried out an eBike before, 1000W is just about enough to make most inclines easy. If I drop my BLDC controller down to 250W it makes things rather difficult. Remember you are carrying around the extra weight of a battery pack and motor.
Its a DC rear hub motor, I can throttle it fully up and still hold my bike in place. It accelerates poorly and has relatively little torque. I can get my bike up to the same speed manually with the benefit of the gearing all bikes have.
On even terrain I don't have any reason to be driving around at over 15mph (and I don't), but we do have morons who will, and that's why the law is so restrictive in the EU.
They don't bother with ebikes anyway, so they're reckless with a moped, which is way more dangerous.
The 250W limit in Europe is stupid (plus it shouldn't be a European law, it's not the correct scope).
Finally, you can be reckless with rollerblades or a bike, you don't need a motor. I guess it's more a problem of "250W is more than enough for people" just like 640kb was, for politicians.
Lots of things have a boundary, even if the boundary is somewhat arbitrary. In most places there is a voting age, there is an age of consent, and there is a drinking age. These ages differ, because there is no clear-cut boundary.
Do you think there should be no power limit, or that it should be a different power limit?
I don't see why the regulations for electric bikes should be much different from gasoline bikes (aka, mopeds). If your e-bike is powerful enough, then it's comparable to a more powerful moped.
Do you think we prevent people from drive on the sidewalk because they will be reckless? I think the greater the momentum disparity, the more likely it is that an error, like loss of control, results in injury or death. This is a wider brush than "reckless".
Are those two figures comparable though? Is an electric bicycle motor measured by its power draw or by its output? And either way, it's still not the same because at most that'd be measuring at the crank, whereas an ergometer measures at the pedal. So if I had to guess I'd say that a 1000W electric motor is roughly equivalent to, say, 500W output from a human on an ergometer (which of course is still way better than the average person can perform for any length of time).
It's hard to build an inefficient electric motor, and I'd think the headline figure is the motor power rating.
But even if we assume it's the power draw and the motor itself is terribly inefficient, we're still talking 80% efficiency? Chain drive is 95% efficient if badly maintained, but then the human power loses that, too, so we don't need to consider it. So we're still talking 800W, which is 3-4 times as much as needed to sustain 20 mph on flat ground, and utterly out of range of any human for any time period beyond a minute.
The power and speed limit of normal ebikes is a feature. It keeps us from making the same mistake we have with cars, which only ever got faster while driving discipline declined and were at any point beyond human ability anyway.
Correction: The headline figure is the motor’s maximum power rating. I tried an electric bike with a 350W hub motor, and on a moderate hill it did not have enough torque to move. Power = Work ÷ Time, Work = Force × Distance; 0 distance ⇒ 0 power.
I understand that mid-drive motors can deliver much more torque than hub motors. Maybe the OP is being realistic about what he needs in the Arizona hellscape where he lives.
100 watts would turn it back into a manual bike with some electrical assist. There's a place for that, but it's clear the author was looking for something more.
Yeah, I'd count the author's bike as being pretty close to being a moped. Except that it might get regulated as an e-bike, and it is possible to use it as a normal heavy bicycle if he wants or if the motor fails.
The law in many US states and most European countries views the machine in this article as a moped or motorcycle. It is throttle-operated, instead of being proportional to pedal torque, and it has no speed limiter. If it was limited to 20MPH, it could be a "class 2" or "type 2" e-bike in many jurisdictions. If it was pedal-operated and limited to 28 MPH, it could be a "class 3" e-bike. But as built, it's a moped. You need a license, registration, insurance, and a helmet to operate it.
I see a lot of deliverymen around here with beefy e-bikes who never pedal. The question of whether you can pedal seems academic if you never do. These e-bikes I'm talking about are functionally identical to electric mopeds (same power and speed capabilities); they just have pedals that go unused instead of a footrest.
The law recognizes this too, which is why e-bikes are primarily regulated by power output or top speed.
Mechanical disc brakes certainly do not work nearly as well as hydraulic disc brakes in high-power-output electric bike applications. What they "worked" on is manual bikes, but even for manual bikes, hydraulic brakes are superior; it's just that a manual bike isn't pushing the limitations of what mechanical brakes can do as often.
hydraulic mostly provides improved actuation via greater modulation resolution. Think about it - It's a hydraulic system vs mechanical. No cable stretch and no friction along brake housing. However greater modulation resolution is not a major benefit in the context of ebike. The bike is heavier so you just need sufficient braking power. A larger rotor radius would help more than going from mechanical to hydraulic.
hydraulic alone doesn't provide greater braking power vs cable pulled calipers.
I get what you're saying, but in practice, cheap mechanical disc brakes also suffer from less braking force, whereas there aren't particularly cheap hydraulic disc brake systems, so all the hydraulic disc brakes do have better braking force in addition to greater modulation characteristics.
So to simplify the point I'm making, he needs better brakes.
My bad -- the name "IRON HORSE" threw me off. Still, the thing supposedly weighs 37.75 lbs., which is terrible for a bike. For $1500, he could get something with much better parts weighing 20-25 lbs.
That's some heavy hardware! A bike trailer is 3-4 lbs, and a 20-lb road bike is around $1500 new (far less used). You'll pay more in money or weight for a cross or mountain bike, but 40 lbs is still pretty painful.
EDIT: Pro deal is 50-60% of retail, so you can buy a used bike for about half of the sticker price.
You may well pay more in aerodynamic penalty on the bike trailer than you would in extra weight on the bike itself, though. It merits calculation.
Also ... biking with a trailer just isn't fun. I'd much rather bike on a loaded-down heavy bike than on a lighter bike dragging a trailer behind it.
And there's the fact that I'm sure you must be underestimating something, because a bike trailer has additional weight from its frame, wheel, and tire to add on that a fully-loaded bike does not. I don't see how it's possible that, for equal carrying capacity, adding a trailer could somehow reduce total mass.
I don't bike particularly fast, so I'll bring up other factors.
The wheels of the bike trailer add additional rolling resistance, and more I think than putting the same weight on two wheels. That is, the trailer wheels are smaller, which means there's more force against the direction of travel.
Most bike trailers have two wheels side-by-side. If you are biking down a dirt road, then odds are there are packed ruts side-by-side, with a grassy strip in the middle. With a 2-wheel bike, it's easy to go along one of the ruts. With side-by-side wheels it's more likely that one of the wheels will be in the grass.
(My spouse uses a trike, and has this problem.)
I think username223 doesn't understand where the weight comes in, and is estimating what the weight "should" be based on a road bike + trailer combo.
A bike like mine, for bike camping, is heavier than a road bike. I also use it for dirt roads, so it needs to handle more shocks and vibration. The racks and fenders, and of course the gear, adds more weight. There are also not one but two kickstands on mine - the one on the front tire is needed if I'm carrying front panniers, because otherwise the wheel may twist and the weight pulls it down.
This then calls for a stronger frame, which adds even more weight.
Can I just say, it seems weird to me that that bike doesn't have disc brakes given its intended uses for bike camping? How does it handle long descents and/or rain? The serious bike camping bikes that I've seen have both disc brakes and caliper brakes, for redundancy and ability to handle long declines under heavy load that might burn out just a single set of calipers.
In an e-bike assisted context, the extra 10-15 lb, most of which is non-rotational weight is negligible.
A 20-25 lb steel bike with sufficient robustness does not really exist for $1500. Something like a surly ogre is about 30lbs. To shave off that extra 5-10 lbs you're looking at some very performance oriented parts and/or construction with extremely elevated prices.
Yeah, some people don't realize that what you want to electrify is more akin to a hardtail mountain bike. You want big sturdy tires that can handle hitting an imperfection in the road at high speed, and front suspension helps for the same reason. Bigger tires allow for better braking, too.
Riding an electrified road bike at 30 mph all the time sounds terrifying and potentially dangerous.
> The brakes are often too soft to handle continuous elevated speed. What ends up happening is that I spend more money overtime to upgrade the bike to my desired state. So far I spent about $1500, including parts and tools, this is accounting for a fairly cheap used bike on craigslist ($200). Had I bought a new bike, I would have had to spend probably close to $1900. To make it exactly the way I want it, I estimate that I have to spend an additional $800 to get install IGH, bigger brakes, and more efficient tires with less rolling resistance.
Frankly, the author's setup just sounds dangerous. The several-$K all-in-one bicycles that they refused to get on grounds of cost are expensive because they are actually built to handle the rigors of e-bike usage, and have incredibly useful features like hydraulic disc brakes. The brakes on that department store bike are "disc" brakes, but they're certainly not hydraulic, or even good, at that price point.