New Project - Help Please!

Normally I'm all about the 2 stroke gas engine setups but if you need to be able to transport the bike on an airliner you may need to go electric, and the bike you have in the pictures would do good with a set of hub motors but the battery pack and motor controllers would have to go inside the frame where you got the frame bag.

The easiest conversion would be to get the hub motor, or motors if you need a little extra oomph for the hills and lace them in yourself or find a shop that could lace the motors into your 29" wheels. I'm not big on electrics myself but I'd imagine you would want around 1000 to 1500 watts of motor power to assist up the steeper hills, but I may be corrected on this part. If you need to keep all your gears for pedaling the easiest thing to do would be put a single motor in your front hub and that way you could leave the back of the bike alone.

Sounds like a heck of a trip! Have you done any cyclotouring before or are you starting big? Putting a motor into this situation is going to require some planning. A gas motor setup would likely be problematic since you intend to pedal most of the way and most gas systems leave some kind of drag on the drivetrain when not running. There are a few ways to decouple the system, but I doubt you'd want to deal with all the extra overhead of a gas system if you're just looking for an occasional boost.

You may run into trouble on the electric side with flying with the battery banks. Airlines are all introducing new rules about batteries in baggage due to explosion risk, so something more to look into there, I'm not real sure what the rules are right now and they are changing. You may need to ship the batteries to yourself outside of normal passenger airline handling. You could make room for a battery on your current set up by adding a front lowrider rack made for touring, this will also help balance out your load in general. Adding a hub motor would be fairly trivial like Davezilla said.

Charging could be an issue as well if you are planning on camping, do you know you'll have access to power along your route? Are you staying in central america or heading south as well? If you're getting down to south america, there are different voltages, but everything in CA uses 110v with our same plugs.

In terms of a tour that long, you are likely to break something. You will certainly have flats. You can use 26" tubes in a 29er in a pinch but it's not ideal. 26ers are still more common just about anywhere than 29s. You'll want to be carrying a number of spares and a patch kit no matter what wheel size you use. For safety sake I would also carry actual spare tires and not just tubes. Unless you're planning on a majority of dirt roads, I'd be looking at slicker tires to decrease rolling resistance over the long haul. I'd also look at putting barends on your bars just so you can change up your hand positions occasionally. I'd also be looking at full fenders for your bike rather than just the "crud catcher" style you've got on now. They will keep not just you, but your components cleaner if the weather gets messy. Got lights on that bike?

without addressing the many other issues, I'd advise checking airline regs about loading anything with a fuel tank - you may be limited to electric power only

jayneedshelp said:

I get the feeling some of you do not think I'm equipped for this trip , if you go halfway down in the link below

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Welcome to the forum Jay.

I didn't get that same feeling at all. In fact, those members seemed quite interested in, and supportive of, your endeavor.
Do you read those responses differently?

Trey

I'm with Dave on this one . You are going to have to E bike it.
Probably have to ship your battery's to your starting point and hunt for charging opportunities. There are some long, long up hill pulls in CA. You will need to charge more frequently than you think.
A 2 stroke would be more trouble than than it's worth in your situation.
3000 miles is a long trip on mostly dirt roads for a CG.
I'm not saying it can't be done.... I sent a guy from Oregon to ( last I herd ) Texas on a new build cg . But that was pavement all the way , and rarely out of walking distance from a major US town.... ( think replacement parts)
CA is a bit of a different story.
Sounds like an epic trip .Have fun.

jayneedshelp said:

I know for some this seems like a big cheat but I don’t care, my sponsors for this trip understand what I am doing and fully support it.

BTW, I reached out to Golden Eagle Bikes, I thought their setups were cool; I have never met such an arrogant bunch of people in my life. They sniffed at me when they found out my bike had “29s”

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The Golden Eagle Bike kit or a similar set up would be your best choice.
The GEBE sheave is designed to clip onto 36 spoke wheels.

Lightweight small 35 cc 4 stroke motor that gets great gas mileage.
An easily disconnected drive belt so you have zero drag pedaling.

Electric hub and battery will add a lot of weight, most ebikes are 60lbs ++
the charge won't last long on hills and where are you going to charge when
you really need it?
3 to 5 hours to charge.

The Golden eagle is a nice little product ( except ) you will loose the rear cargo room you need for the trip, can't be carried on a plane and it probably won't survive the rigors of a 3000 mile off road trip.....
A gas engine of any kind is going to require you to expand your tool load exponentially.
Plus add all of the spares you will undoubtedly need and the weight difference disappears..........
I'm not a huge fan of "E" bikes. But in your case , to me , it is your only VIABLE option....
And the 4 -6 hour charge time is a factor , but you have to sleep sometime......

jayneedshelp said:

2. I will be lighter and able to handle most obstacles/ push easier on hill that I cannot climb on the bike

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After a few weeks in the saddle, you won't find many hills you can't climb. You'll break down some bits of your body you didn't know were there, but you'll be amazed how fast you get stronger in those riding specific muscles while riding loaded every day. I just read your shakedown posts. From what you said about your bike feeling tippy out of the saddle, a good set of front lowriders will really help you out. Safe journey to you!

best of luck to you brother

Sounds like you made your choice... and probably the best choice to be made is to lighten the load and work your way up to becoming able to make those hills and tough spots so an engine or motor won't be needed.

I remember when I was 24 years old I just out of the blue decided to buy a mountainbike to help me get back in shape after doing my mile and a half run for the Air force and ending up so sore for almost a week... I used to run 10 miles a day in high school and when I went thru boot camp at 19 years old a mile and a half could be done still breathing normally as I crossed the finish line... I just couldn't beleive how sore I got after that PT test... and that I did the mile and a half in 13 minutes when I used to do it in about 8...

Anyway, after that humiliating reality that I was that far out of shape (funny how that's considered out of shape at that age) I decided to get myself back into shape... I bought a cheap Huffy mountainbike and decided to start riding it to work and leaving the car at home... Work was about 7 miles from home but I could cut thru fields and such to get there a little quicker... so that's what I did at any chance, but this only shortened the whole trip by about 1/2 mile....
Then... there was this Huge steep hill that linked Kelly AFB to Lackland AFB and this was my place to see how fast I could go on this biuke... I think my official record was 47mph but unofficially I was probably doing above 50 since I had to duck out of the airstream to hit the speeds I was shooting for, but raise my head way up in order to see how fast I was going, and no matter how quick I could raise my head up then try to focus on that little digital readout I would always see 47, 46, 45, 44, 43, 42, and so on in very rapid succession...
Then I would work the day as an F-16 crew chief and time to ride back home... um.. remember that hill ya had to come down to get here? ... GUESS what's facing you if ya wanna go home... Yup, That's right... right there in front of me I got this hill that's about 1/2 mile or so up hill and quite steep... I tried it pedaling as far as I could and had to get off the bike and push the first few days heading home... Then before the week was over I decided I was NOT getting off the bike to push it up the hill (remember, I was 24 years old and should be in a lot better shape... so I thought at that age... ) Well, to my satisfaction, I made it!!!
I ended up shifting down to those ultra low gears and told myself "DO NOT get off this bike" and I made it... I was beat by the time I crested the top, but I made it. Next day I did the same but realized half way up the steepest part that I was wasting a LOT of energy staying in the lower gears so I kept it in low on the middle chainring instead, I made it... again, but with energy to spare... I was wearing myself out the first few tries because I was in too low of a gear to pull that far, but plenty strong enough to pull the hill in the higher gear ranges.
As the weeks went by, this hill became easier and easier.. most the time I just kept the front sprocket on the big chainring and down shifted just to the middle gears, and didn't even bother going to the lower gears... I was also able to pull this hill and maintain about 7mph when I was at my prime and in tip top shape... I lost about 16lb in about 2 1/2 weeks, then gained back about 8 lb in the following months. My calves got huge at this time too... but all good things came to an end and I ended up working somewhere else where it actually was too far to ride unless I got up an extra hour early... and I was never a morning person.

So after this long winded story, what I'm trying to say is that you can do this too... just ride every day and try to go a little further each time you're out, try to go a little further up that hill you need to get off and push your bike up, keep it up and you'll eventually make it to the top...

I think you made the right decision.
Take as many spare 29"tires as you can .... Some parts are hard to find south of the boarder ....

As for the Golden Eagle kits, I wonder if you could adapt them to run with a GXH50, to gain a bit more power and speed over the GX35 kit they already offer, or if it would be better to stick to the GX35. Asking because now I'm thinking of going for one of their kits or a friction drive kit for the sake of quickly throwing something together, and for the inherent simplicity of both drive types, instead of attempting in-frame, which would be a bit more complex to deal with.

Plus at this point, I don't really care about looking cool more than just throwing something together to gain a better way to get back and forth to work every day. Public transport/paying coworkers to get back at night is starting to reach the very limits of sustainability at this point....