Old guy e-bikes

Parts came in and the electric mountain bike is a ride. I'll take a few photos today. It rides and performs great. The 2.4" Maxxis Holy Rollers were worth the money. Fine tuning the suspension today, really easy task with the air shocks, correct preload setup is about it on the street.

After the first fifty miles of operation I'm quite impressed with the lithium pack, not surprised, just impressed and it was also worth the money.

Rick C.

That's a great looking trike Tom! One stat is 31" width which is pretty wide, more than half as wide as the wheel base. As trikes are typically tippy. 20"x4" tires will help with that. I'd think the speed quoted is as much as a prudent Old guy would really use & the battery is about on par with some I've seen at higher prices & the battery is located quite low in the frame which is another positive.

It appears to be a single speed pedal setup & at 99 lbs. I'd suggest you look into a multispeed pedal drive train. My fat tire bike is 70 lbs. and is a single speed drive train, but if the battery goes dead I'm unable to pedal up even modest inclines without standing up and pumping. My 8 speed MB frame on the other hand can take on the hardest hills around here while I'm seated with no motor assist at all. The multi speed drive train really helps the motor at pace with what feels like little effort on my part. If I were to start over on my fat tire bike I'd begin with a 7 speed frame for sure, but I had the single speed already & I'm having great fun with it on motor assist.

I will be upgrading my Fat tire bike to lithium 48V. 18 or 20 amp battery. It's a 1000 watt motor, but if I had it to do over again I'd probably order a 500 watt or no more than a 750 watt. The 500 watt with 36 volts would be fine on the fat tire bike as well.

Prices are all over the place as I'm sure you've seen and I've no input on that part of the dynamic. I really like the look of the one you asked about.

Rick C.

Geez Louise, the Old Guy's lucky and dumb. dumb luck?

I proudly tooled out on my electric mountain bike yesterday and after a couple of blocks looked down to see if the new Holy Rollers were running true, when I noted the fork drop on the brake side looked a bit angled. I pedaled slowly back to the barn and removed the wheel and found I'd cracked the aluminum fork drop, almost certainly due to incorrect assembly/mounting of the motor hub to fork. I was one spacer shy of correct and aluminum isn't forgiving like steel, cracking before bending. A few hundred dollars mistake for sure my fault & thus the dumb, but still fortunate to have noticed something not quite right before a catastrophic failure occurred which would eventually have been a certainty and that's the lucky part, coupled with a lifetime of riding experience and habitually checking and questioning the bikes roadworthiness.

Fortunately I do have an almost new Rock Shox fork to replace it with....One step forward followed by two to the rear & I call that progress, coupled with a degree of necessary reconsideration!

Rick C.

Now I'm on the same page with you on factory utilization of the trike & all the boxes checked for flat floor usage & 10 amp at slow speed will be a lot. !8 mph is probably 12mph over safe shop speed as well. I checked a variety of trikes & the price quoted is really quite good. If I were to attempt to build a trike, using a factory built frame and using all new & comparable components with the intent of duplicating the bike under consideration; I'd be hard pressed to save more than 2 or 3 hundred dollars: if I got my design and materials correct the first time. Make a mistake & any advantage price wise is lost. As a hobby my time doesn't much count, but I feature to most it does. So the price seems about right. I'm quite sure you'll end up modifying the trike to suit your personal requirements...that's just what we do!

The trike may pay for itself in health benefits alone. My orthopedic surgeon prescribed back surgery as my only alternative & much of that expense would have come out of my pocket fifteen years ago. My personal Dr. had a second opinion which was riding a bicycle daily, year round and I'm so glad I took his advice. It completely changed my life for the better! Now my lower back problem is unique, but the hard factory/shop/warehouse floors are lower body killers, year end and year out.

Rick C.

I replaced the front fork on the Mountain e-bike and used a new RST suspension fork I'd forgotten I had on hand rather than the used Rock Shox. No real reason just did and it's preforming well initially. The real proof is how well it holds up in the coming year. I've not rebuilt any RST forks so I'm not familiar with parts availability etc., I'm an old hand with Rock Shox though....we'll see.

I did get the order in for an 18 amp 48 volt li-on battery & charger for the 1,000 watt fat tire bike...I just couldn't see paying an additional $80. for the 20 amp pack. $40. per amp sounds a gouge!

Rick C.

Tom I think you're are in for a treat with the trike. I'm amazed that I've taken to the electrics so quickly and enjoy the experience so much. I'm still an I.C. vintage guy but I've definitely added electric to my stable of rides as a transition from pure pedal power, while still pedaling & enjoying the silence at stately speed.

Rick C.

Tom there are still skill jobs for old guys in plants, but young replacement skill workers aren't coming up & that's understandable given the bleak outlook for humans in the long term reality of the robotic manufacturing revolution. In the meantime "real" skill in the form of older workers should be valued and preserved by astute management & floor transport is one way to prolong the practical working life of older employees in large physical plants. I'd say your employers in Wisconsin were at least ten years in front of the curve with the e Schwinn's!

I actually retired in 1990 and already the walking was effecting me in negative ways

Rick C.

Pretty cool factory ride Tom!

48v. li-ion pack came in today for the fat tire & took a charge with no problems hope to get it mounted on the rear rack tomorrow.

Fat tire bike has a 48 v. 18 amp li-on installed on the back rack and I rode it a few miles yesterday on a torture test of hills and no pedal assist starts and full load riding and I'll give it a thumbs up review. I promised photos of both bikes though neither one boasts any real innovations. I'll take some when the rain lets up. These two bikes are intended as riders, learners and motivators for future electric projects, but I'm really enjoying them both during frequent daily rides. I'm still absorbing info on controllers and batteries at his point, but these two direct drive brushless motors, a 500 watt 36 v. and a 1,000 watt 48v. are what will determine my decision on how powerful a motor & the voltage selection for my next e-bike build. I like to experiment as I go and my use of sealed lead cells for the fat tire bike is an example. It's not that I didn't believe that li-on tech was superior; just that I needed some real world baselines to make comparisons & that goes with internal combustion power vs. electric powered bikes as well. Reading is learning, but doing is experiencing!

My future electric project will be a board track style build and I'd like to see dependable 45 mph performance capability, with unstrained 35 mph cruising. 3kw to 5 kw at 72 v. Does this sound about right? With 1.34 hp per 1,000 watts, four 4 hp equals 3,000 watts & at 72 v. I'd think 40 mph + would be attainable with 3kw through a traditional drive train. Direct drive hub powered 26" or larger wheels as well. I don't want to overpower this because it's supposed to be a bicycle with an e- motor unlike the first I.C. powered machines but even the first V twin power plants only made 5 hp or so, and these engines propelled the road bikes at an advertised speed of fortyish m.p.h.

I've some research to do on power. I confess to liking the idea of hub drives on vintage style e-bikes. They look so much like the large drum brakes which started to come in vogue during the twenties on cycles. I intend to continue building pedal bikes & for that purpose I'm favoring the hub drives over the mid motors, not only because a broken chain means a push or lift home (or roadside repair) with a mid drive. With the hub motors you can pedal on to your destination! As power increases to the small, shared drive chain, on the mid drive setup, the probability of chain failure exponentially increases as well. The mid drives do have their positive attributes and I'm actually a fan, but for my purposes I'm leaning towards the hub drives.



Rick C.

As advertised my two e-bike conversions are quite simple but are great to ride!

The fat tire bike has several not so obvious additions to make it easier for me to ride. the bobber style saddle is sprung and is mounted on a gas filled dropper post so I can adjust my ride/ saddle height on the fly which allows more power to the pedal levers the higher the seat position. The wide saddle is quite comfortable on rough roads especially, but this comes at a cost on long rides because the extra width of the saddle rubs the back of the thigh while pedal assisting. My remedy for this was to install wide pedal levers (bent) like we use to clear motor cases on I.C. builds. This mod requires a slight amount of bow legged pedaling which eliminates most of the pressure of seat on thigh. Though a road bike purist will no doubt point out the errors in maximizing power transmission, with good reasons, in this style; the e-assist more than offsets the loss of power in the stroke and extra strain on the legs. I also used folding pedals to reduce the extra stick out of the wide levers when the bike is on stand, which helps limit tripping over the pedals.

The handle bars are mounted on a "tool free" adjustable ahead stem; that doubles as a handlebar shock absorber with 3/4" of travel. This is a great accessory if one has hand, elbow or shoulder problems. I have all three & it's a wonderful help. I bought 3 of these, several years back, made by "Kind shock", but think they are no longer manufactured.

The rack is steel and well made with multiple attachment points, but definitely not a unit that will just bolt up out of the box some simple fab work is necessary, but this one is specific for 4" wide tires and no bending was necessary. The battery case design has a locking slide that is edge mounted and this required making an additional backing plate to bolt slide to rack...easy project. I'd prefer the li-on pack to lie flat rather than on edge & mounting in that position would be easy as well, while retaining the key lock function, but access to charging ports and controls wouldn't be easy to access. Also ports facing either up or down are entry points for moisture. Water resistant don't mean water proof. With time I'll adjust to the look of the battery case I suppose.

Other additions are the drive off stand and a pedal chain tensioner, I'm a fan of tensioners, especially the spring loaded ones.

Rick C.

While riding the fat tire e-bike this morning I really noticed that I was basically soundless underway and my recognition of this was a bit disconcerting. I'm missing the sound of riding an I.C. powered motorized bike while conducting an e-bike! I don't miss the engine noise while riding a straight pedal bike; so what's the deal here?

Rick C.

I stubbled over my Cannondale m.b. this a.m. and decided it would get the fixie e-bike conversion as well or go in storage...36 volt 500 watt more than likely rear hub motor this time and disc brakes front and rear. Full suspension bike in awesome condition, but v brake equipped & 25 years young.

Rick C.

Cannondale Super V 1000 that will receive an electric hub upgrade and become a fixie as well.

Rick C.