Ebike Conversion

[Pale Rider]

I signed up on Pedelecs and have been asking ebike questions over there.

I quite like the look of the Whoosh Aikema hub kit for my friend's bike. If I were doing a conversion for myself I would go for something like the Bafang BBS01B crank drive kit because I prefer a high cadence and am happy changing gear to suit. My friend always seems to choose too high a gear and then struggles. I think the extra oomph from the hub motor should get her up most of the hills she currently walks up.

The Aikema motor is whisper quiet, but not known for its power.

I reckon the Bafang crank drive would feel more powerful.

Bafang make a nicely grunty hub motor called a BPM, which became known as 'big powerful motor', because it is, having a diameter several centimetres more than the Aikema.

In general, Bafang also appear to be slightly more reliable than Aikema.

Set against that, hub motors tend to me more reliable than crank drives if for no other reason than there's less to go wrong.

The rating of the controller also plays a big part in the amount of power the rider feels, so it quickly all gets rather complicated.

I see you've found Woosh, who are as good a supplier as any.

In your position, I would ring them, speak to Andy, and be guided by him as to a suitable controller/motor combination for your requirements.

 

[ColinJ]

The Aikema motor is whisper quiet, but not known for its power.

I think that I discussed that on Pedelecs. The general opinion was that it should be ok for a 63 kg woman on a 19 kg bike. And she is VERY concerned about motor noise. (We watched one ebike video and my reaction was that the ebike seemed to be giving the rider plenty of help; hers was that it sounded awful! I hadn't noticed until she mentioned it, but then I realised that she was right.)

I reckon the Bafang crank drive would feel more powerful.

Crank drive would be my choice too, but she has an eccentric approach to gears and cadence. She seems to drift towards 40-50 rpm and refuses to go above about 60 rpm. I'm not sure that would be good with a crank drive motor?

 

[Pale Rider]

I think that I discussed that on Pedelecs. The general opinion was that it should be ok for a 63 kg woman on a 19 kg bike. And she is VERY concerned about motor noise. (We watched one ebike video and my reaction was that the ebike seemed to be giving the rider plenty of help; hers was that it sounded awful! I hadn't noticed until she mentioned it, but then I realised that she was right.)


Crank drive would be my choice too, but she has an eccentric approach to gears and cadence. She seems to drift towards 40-50 rpm and refuses to go above about 60 rpm. I'm not sure that would be good with a crank drive motor?

Crank motors - as with geared hub motors such as the Aikema - are geared to provide torque at a relatively low cadence.

However, crank drives do work best if you are in something close to the 'right' gear, particularly if they have a torque sensor.

I agree the Aikema would work well in this application - only 63kg of rider will make a big difference.

Given the concerns about motor noise, I think the Aikema is the one to go for.

I believe you can get controllers that mimic a torque sensor.

I've not tried one, but I'm told they work fairly well.

Such a controller would deploy the power in a more natural cycling way.

A good benefit for someone who is already a cyclist.

 

[Pale Rider]

Another couple of thoughts.

Every drop of power you can extract from the battery is precious.

A hub installation means there is a relatively long cable run from the battery to the motor.

You don't want to waste power warming a high resistance cable, so I would make sure the cable is sufficiently beefy and of sufficient quality to do the job.

The supplied cable may be fine, but it might be capable of improvement - I believe you have the electrical knowledge to make that judgment.

You will also know to make that run as short as you can.

Good electrical interconnects elsewhere are critical for a reliable installation.

I reckon most ebike conversion breakdowns/reliability problems are down to poor wiring rather than component failure.

Thinking about it, your combination of cycle maintenance and electrical skills is almost ideal for an ebike conversion.

When you post pics of the finished bike I'm expecting a high quality job.

Next sub-topic, which cells to have in the battery for best performance?

 

[ColinJ]

A hub installation means there is a relatively long cable run from the battery to the motor.

You don't want to waste power warming a high resistance cable, so I would make sure the cable is sufficiently beefy and of sufficient quality to do the job.

The supplied cable may be fine, but it might be capable of improvement - I believe you have the electrical knowledge to make that judgment.

Hmm, I was working on the assumption that nobody would supply a wimpy power cable! Now you have me wondering whether people cut corners on important things like that...

Good electrical interconnects elsewhere are critical for a reliable installation.

Yes, I definitely don't want connectors coming apart, getting water in, or burning out.

I had a convection heater fail in the Spring due to a dodgy connector. I don't want something like this to happen on the converted bike...

Next sub-topic, which cells to have in the battery for best performance?

Aargh... Again, I was hoping that buying from a reputable UK supplier would cover that kind of thing! I explained to the bike owner that I didn't want to be involved with buying kits direct from China to save money because I wouldn't be sure of what we would be getting, and any problems could be a nightmare to deal with.

A question for you, knowing what you know about ebikes and what the terrain round here is like... The 63 kg rider, the 19 kg bike, that hub motor, and a 500 Ah battery. Rider supplying 90% of power on the flat doing 15-20 km/hr, but supplying 50% of power and doing (say) 8 km/hr on any hills, freewheeling and/or just pedalling downhill. Let's say an average of 15 m of climbing per km. What kind of range could reasonably be expected? (I'd be hoping for a minimum of 50 km, and ideally significantly more than that.)

 

[CXRAndy]

Rider supplying 90% of power on the flat doing 15-20 km/hr, but supplying 50% of power and doing (say) 8 km/hr on any hills

Your wife will be doing 15 mph on the flats, I can almost guarantee it. Hills, she will not be that slow, more like 6-8 mph even upto 10%


Connecting the battery use quality connection XT60 type. Joining wire solder and heat shrink. Dielectric grease on vulnerable points will help significantly for long problem free setup
Buy from USA

 

[ColinJ]

Your wife will be doing 15 mph on the flats, I can almost guarantee it. Hills, she will not be that slow, more like 6-8 mph even upto 10%

A friend rather than my wife/girlfriend!

She probably WILL do that speed on the flat on the rides that I do with her because I won't want to hang around all day, and she can wait for me at the tops of the climbs!

I was being conservative with the speeds because I was wondering how far it likely that she will be able to ride and still have motor assistance.

I will try to avoid the nightmare scenario of us being on the wrong side of a huge hill when the battery runs out. It wouldn't be a problem to have even 5-10 miles of flat roads at the end of a lumpy road so I will plot our routes to have the hills concentrated earlier on rather than a flat start leading to a hilly finish.

She said that she could always walk the last hill, but I can think of hills round here that it would take 1.5 - 2 hours to walk a heavy bike up!

 

[Pale Rider]

Calculating range is notoriously difficult, but hills really suck the battery.

Unavoidable on your patch, unless you do what I saw a few carbon roadies doing and hammer up and down the valley bottom - how dull is that?

I reckon your expectation of 50km ought to be easily met, more like 60-70km, but not a lot more unless she can manage on a very low assistance level throughout.

As ever, fit the biggest battery you are happy with - you can never have too much capacity.

The Aikema motor is what you want, so I can't see the point of shopping Stateside to get one.

Sound electrical advice from Andy above (not that I fully understand all of it).

Woosh are regarded as a reliable UK supplier.

Assuming they have Aikemas on the shelf ready to go, and they can supply a quality cell battery, I reckon you are all set.

Oh, Just a moment, have you sorted a controller?

As I mentioned earlier, type of controller can have a big impact on performance and user experience.

 

[Blue Hills]

hell this is all rather more complicated than I had hoped.

Am hoping for a small selection of idiot versions before I need one.

Or hoping palerider is still around to talk me all through it.

 

[Pale Rider]

hell this is all rather more complicated than I had hoped.

Am hoping for a small selection of idiot versions before I need one.

Or hoping palerider is still around to talk me all through it.

Ha-ha.

I suppose there are plenty of idiot versions in the shape of ready made bikes.

You cannot go far wrong with a Bosch powered bike.

They still set the standard for smoothness, and an accurate rendition of push bike cycling.

Plenty of choice from around £1,500, which I reckon is good value for what you get.

There are limitless combinations in kits, although most of the choices don't make a great deal of difference to the user experience.

Looks like Colin has a sensible and reasonable customer.

She has identified a key priority - a quiet motor - and wants something that will enable her to accompany him on his shorter day rides.

That's eminently doable with an Aikema motor connected to a decent quality battery and controller.

Colin's tech skills will do the rest.

 

[CXRAndy]

My wife's bike has a 740W/h battery. I initially charged it up to max and she did several rides totalling near 90 miles on flat roads.
We have done 30 mile rides on rolling terrain with a max charge of 85% and she had 30% left. Another ride was 46 miles flat but quick, well for her and she ran out 200 yds from home- again 85% charge.

Last weekend 23 miles bumpy lumpy half off road 40% left

I would personally build up a ride log of distance, terrain, weather and charge level, start and finish. This will give her confidence of the range.

There is a way to eek out as much range and still keep the battery from dying. Reduce assist as much as possible, don't put any sudden demand on the motor, I mean no rapid acceleration. This helps the system from abruptly shutting down due to minimum battery threshold.

My wife's long ride battery death, we knew 10 miles from home it was critical by seeing the voltage dip at any demand by acceleration. We reduced and evened out our pace.

Anything more than 35 miles I will charge to 100% in future

 

[fromjusttheking]

Hi Alan

My first kit was for my wife's shopper/mild gravel bike in the first post. I bought this motor kit from another USA supplier Electrifybike(from memory). I had to get my battery from a Chinese wholesaler due to HAZMAT regulations sending batteries from the USA.

I had never ridden an Ebike before, but was extremely pleased with the ease of install and performance from such a little motor. I set my wife's bike up with very modest assist power levels- more for range than outright speed. I did test it for more performance once and it would happily drag my weight over 20mph if I had left it with higher settings.

I presume you will set yours for around 20mph assist speed?

I left the blue gear in and gave instructions for my wife not to try and accelerate from slow or stop situations in a higher gear and power setting. So far the gear has been fine. The newer TSDZ2 have a main helical cut gear for less noise and on ours its very quiet indeed.

I ordered the brake cut offs too, but didn't fit them, because the 'open software' does such a good job of controlling the motor, they became redundant.

I hope you like the newer display, I've read a lot on the 'Endless Sphere' website about the development of the software and issues which came up and what the community did to overcome them.


Your location reminds me of time our family had a little tour of USA for my fiftieth. We had landed in Nashville after spending a few weeks on the west coast LA/SF and Las Vegas. We wanted to drive up the Blue Ridge mountains route to a place called Roanoke before going onto Washington. Unfortunately the organiser of our trip booked a different Roanoke, there are two, one in Virginia and another in West Virginia. By time we noticed that the route was more freeway than lovely winding road, it was too late to divert. Oh well another trip will be needed. Great times and beautiful part of the states where you live. I will return when all this Covid finishes.

Let me know how you get on regards

Andy

Hi Andy,

I finished my TSDZ2 install today (Saturday), tomorrow I'll go over everything, make sure everything is on tight, and all cables are securely routed and not stressed. Fired up the 860c display, tapped a few buttons and the motor kicked in for a moment or to, at least enough to tell me that everything was connected and apparently working. Then off the trike stand it goes and will try it out for a check ride. This will be my first time ever riding an E-powered bike or trike. Should be very interesting. Then I'll do it all over again on my wife's Catrike Trail. I just got the 806c display manual, so I have to check it out to see what the max speed setting currently is. The initial settings were mostly wrong, so I reset those. I'm going to try it out to see how it goes first before I switch over to OSF. The display says my Hardware version is: E 1.0, and Software version is: 1.0T-V1. Are those the latest versions for my system NOT using OSF? If not, where would I or should I go to to get the latest updates, again NOT using OSF? Possibly on Dave's website at Eco Cycles?

I have no expectation of setting max assist speed any higher than 20mph but don't know what it is set for at the moment. Haven't had the time to go into Advance Settings to see what it is.

You mentioned: "The newer TSDZ2 have a main helical cut gear for less noise and on ours its very quiet indeed." Since I got our 2 systems from Dave about mid July, wouldn't I have the same helical cut gear that you have? I was unaware that there was a newer gear other than the blue plastic one and the metal one that is much more noisy. I did install the "brake cable pull thru" brakes, and they seem to work just fine, especially since the system came with them, also the speed sensor and throttle. My battery is a Hailong base Jumbo 48V-14.5AH with Samsung 29E cells.

I had no idea that there even was a Roanoke, WV. I've been in Roanoke, VA. That is funny though, but hopefully, next time. There are many bike paths and trails out here on the east coast.

Will keep you updated on my progress.

Alan

 

[Pale Rider]

My wife's bike has a 740W/h battery. I initially charged it up to max and she did several rides totalling near 90 miles on flat roads.
We have done 30 mile rides on rolling terrain with a max charge of 85% and she had 30% left. Another ride was 46 miles flat but quick, well for her and she ran out 200 yds from home- again 85% charge.

Last weekend 23 miles bumpy lumpy half off road 40% left

I would personally build up a ride log of distance, terrain, weather and charge level, start and finish. This will give her confidence of the range.

There is a way to eek out as much range and still keep the battery from dying. Reduce assist as much as possible, don't put any sudden demand on the motor, I mean no rapid acceleration. This helps the system from abruptly shutting down due to minimum battery threshold.

My wife's long ride battery death, we knew 10 miles from home it was critical by seeing the voltage dip at any demand by acceleration. We reduced and evened out our pace.

Anything more than 35 miles I will charge to 100% in future

Worth remembering none of the capacity meters can take full account of battery sag.

Meters that give a percentage capacity read out are particularly misleading.

The first 33 percent of battery use will give a lot more miles than the last 33 percent.

Thus if you finish a ride on '33%' remaining you have nothing like a third left of the distance travelled since full charge.

My Bosch bikes use a blob system, but it's just the same to a greater or lesser extent.

It might be 15 or so miles before the first blob goes out, but the last blob might only take me five or six miles.

The answer, such as it is, is to fully charge before every ride, unless you are literally only going to do a handful of miles.

That's also better for battery health.

 

[CXRAndy]

Hi Andy,

I finished my TSDZ2 install today (Saturday), tomorrow I'll go over everything, make sure everything is on tight, and all cables are securely routed and not stressed. Fired up the 860c display, tapped a few buttons and the motor kicked in for a moment or to, at least enough to tell me that everything was connected and apparently working. Then off the trike stand it goes and will try it out for a check ride. This will be my first time ever riding an E-powered bike or trike. Should be very interesting. Then I'll do it all over again on my wife's Catrike Trail. I just got the 806c display manual, so I have to check it out to see what the max speed setting currently is. The initial settings were mostly wrong, so I reset those. I'm going to try it out to see how it goes first before I switch over to OSF. The display says my Hardware version is: E 1.0, and Software version is: 1.0T-V1. Are those the latest versions for my system NOT using OSF? If not, where would I or should I go to to get the latest updates, again NOT using OSF? Possibly on Dave's website at Eco Cycles?

I have no expectation of setting max assist speed any higher than 20mph but don't know what it is set for at the moment. Haven't had the time to go into Advance Settings to see what it is.

You mentioned: "The newer TSDZ2 have a main helical cut gear for less noise and on ours its very quiet indeed." Since I got our 2 systems from Dave about mid July, wouldn't I have the same helical cut gear that you have? I was unaware that there was a newer gear other than the blue plastic one and the metal one that is much more noisy. I did install the "brake cable pull thru" brakes, and they seem to work just fine, especially since the system came with them, also the speed sensor and throttle. My battery is a Hailong base Jumbo 48V-14.5AH with Samsung 29E cells.

I had no idea that there even was a Roanoke, WV. I've been in Roanoke, VA. That is funny though, but hopefully, next time. There are many bike paths and trails out here on the east coast.

Will keep you updated on my progress.

Alan

If you've gone with standard software, then its probably best to use the brake cutoff s.

Go back to Eco cycles for advice on latest information.

Its likely you will have a 20mph cut off being sold into the USA. It will be noticeable when assistance is cut, either 15.6 mph or 20 mph.

The plastic gear is a design sacrificial part to protect the motor from likely damaged. Its when the rear wheel is locked up suddenly or huge torque is forced through the pedals.

I will have the same motor as you, been manufactured 18 months now.


Glad it all went well for your first install.

Regards Andy

 

[CXRAndy]

Worth remembering none of the capacity meters can take full account of battery sag.

Meters that give a percentage capacity read out are particularly misleading.

The first 33 percent of battery use will give a lot more miles than the last 33 percent.

Thus if you finish a ride on '33%' remaining you have nothing like a third left of the distance travelled since full charge.

My Bosch bikes use a blob system, but it's just the same to a greater or lesser extent.

It might be 15 or so miles before the first blob goes out, but the last blob might only take me five or six miles.

The answer, such as it is, is to fully charge before every ride, unless you are literally only going to do a handful of miles.

That's also better for battery health.

This is open software, with lots of additional features

I set my wife's to read voltage instead of percentage.

However the open software can be setup to read Wattage, Watt hours, Watt used/ remaining, current etc etc.

With careful analysis of the battery capacity, accurate battery drain can be displayed. I haven't gone into the setup yet. We know that low 49 Volts is time to take care and not put sudden demand on the system. It will then continue down into 47/48V. Potentially lasting a further 10 miles