Thorn Cycles Forum
Community => Non-Thorn Related => Topic started by: pippa on May 04, 2012, 11:37:15 AM
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This will probably get me drummed-out of the Forum before I've even started, but I've got to explore all options..........................
Old age, arthritis and now heart problems are severely restricting my cycling.................. hills, in particular, are causing more and more difficulties................ I've no right to complain - both before and since buying my Raven Tour 5 years ago I've had a great time - but I've got to find ways of easing-up....................
Electric-assist seems one possible answer, but I love my Raven Tour and would be very reluctant to have to change (unless it simply be to the lighter RST).................... is there such a thing as a conversion kit that would effectively do the job? and would any good cycle-shop be able to fit it? (I'm absolutely hopeless at anything technical)................... can one get discrete batteries that disguise the help one is having to call-on? (I don't want to be totally ostracised by the cycling fraternity!)................... are there, in fact, any other options?
I'd be most grateful for members' advice and if any other 'old-uns' could offer suggestions
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Here's a prior thread that would be a good start:
http://www.thorncycles.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=3304.0 (http://www.thorncycles.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=3304.0)
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Pippa me auld flower get an electric front wheel and just use it when the going gets tough. you will still be out cycling doesn't matter how you do it can't see any problems in it so best of luck and worrie not ;)
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Pippa,
jags said it better than I ever could -- the important thing is to get out on the bike, no matter what it takes. I am a firm believer in "whatever it takes" and we all go about things differently. No worries!
Yes! An electric motor in the front wheel would be an ideal way to get that little extra "boost" when needed, and electrified bicycles ("e-bikes") are taking The Netherlands by storm for this very reason. In addition to the thread Jim referenced, here is another where a Forum member made a successful conversion:
http://www.thorncycles.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=3878.msg18961#msg18961
...and the link to a detailed description of his conversion here:
http://www.pedelecs.co.uk/forum/electric-bicycles/11160-thorn-raven-now-converted.html
...and a link to the motor/conversion kit he used:
http://www.8funbike.com/detail.asp/sku=8F26F36B
Paul did a very nice job, and is to be commended. He still has the same fine bike as before...but more versatile and better suited to his needs.
These Google Search links should get you started:
http://www.google.com/#hl=en&safe=off&sclient=psy-ab&q=bicycle+hub+motor&oq=bicycle+hub+motor&aq=f&aqi=g4&aql=&gs_l=hp.3..0l4.1708.8722.0.8991.25.15.4.3.3.0.942.2629.1j10j1j6-1.13.0...0.0.h-G8sfKg_Zw&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&fp=b001bd3a40637c26&biw=1320&bih=688
...and...
http://www.google.com/#hl=en&gs_nf=1&pq=bicycle%20hub%20motor&cp=15&gs_id=t9&xhr=t&q=electric+bike+conversion&pf=p&safe=off&sclient=psy-ab&oq=electric+bike+c&aq=0&aqi=g4&aql=&gs_l=&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&fp=b001bd3a40637c26&biw=1320&bih=688
All the best,
Dan.
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Thanks a million for your quick responses...................... there's a lot of reading to do (so much for thinking that I was alone with my difficulties!!?!)............ it seems to me that, as I mentioned, my problem will revolve around my total lack of technical ability............. I wouldn't know where to start............... any ideas re workshops/dealer-fitters in Northants?
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8FUN Bafang kit as supplied by http://www.8funbike.com/detail.asp/sku=8F26F36B is recommended. 4.5 stars out of 5.
I live in hilly country, and at the top of the steepest hill in town. I've already twice had heart surgery, so it was a choice between giving up cycling and getting assistance. Fitting an electric motor isn't a big deal if you buy the right kit, but unless you are a skilled mechanic, and good with electronics too, putting a kit together yourself from different sources is not advised.
Proceeding from the assumption that you want to keep your Rohloff gearbox in the rear wheel and thus want a front wheel pedelec kit, forgive the abrupt sound of a schoolroom but there is quite a bit of knowledge to impart.
The best value kit is the 8FUN, found at http://www.8funbike.com/detail.asp/sku=8F26F36B (thanks Dan, saves me looking it up again); many of the other good kits are just the same bits for more money. The two keys of this kit are the Bafang QSWXK motor, in which the Q stands for additional quality control to European standards, and the bottle battery, using special Panasonic cells, which seems more capable than its rating might suggest (and which is sold in Switzerland for much more than the entire kit costs from 8funbike). I found the British vendors of this complete kit to be good people to deal with. The Chinese-made instructions supplied with the kit are stupid; you have to ask the vendor for the full colour plain English instructions they have on their computer which they'll copy to you on request. It is very important that if you get any other motor/other kit, you ask what the diameter of the axle is, because the standard electric motor axle in the Far East is larger than the dropouts in your Thorn fork. If you don't want to file your fork, take this kit, or build up a kit with this motor, or make sure whichever motor you choose has the correct axle size so you don't have to file your fork. If you buy another kit, be certain to ask whether it comes with anti-rotation axle blocks because some expect you to provide your own torque washers (!). A firm called BMS Battery in China supplies kits without the battery, which you buy separately, also from them, but it works out more expensive by the time you've paid carriage, and you run the risk of additional customs charges, but you can have a choice of motors. A tempting motor stocked by BMS is the Bafang BPM "Climber", but it is illegal in Europe (over 250W average output), and my remarks about axle size may or may not apply. (There's an expert around here somewhere -- help!) The SWXK is known as the "Little BPM" for its torque rating, which is why I chose it. (Top speed is limited by any legal controller to 25kph, so you may as well choose from whatever is available the motor that works best on hills.)
If you buy the suggested kit, I don't see why you shouldn't fit it yourself. I fitted mine by simply turning the bike upside down, not even putting it on the work stand. You need to fiddle with the wheel a bit before the axle slips past the lawyer's lips, and you MUST mind that the anti-rotation blocks are well seated (their prong is a bit shallow), or the motor will rotate and rip out all the wires, but that's the trickiest bit of the assembly. There's a small problem, in that the wiring for the controls were made for a rear motor, on the assumption that the control box would be fitted on the seat tube. So one of the wires, for the pedelec assistance, is short and needs lengthening, and some of the other wires are too long if you fit the control box in the logical place for a front drive, the head tube. I've just got them all bundled into a leather saddlebag strapped to the handlebars for the time being, while the whole wiring thing waits for me to fit a BUMM front light made especially for using with a 36V battery (the motor sits in the place where the SON hub generator once provided power...). It looks a bit of a mess with so many wires not yet tied down, but I've ridden it for months like that without mishap.
The pedal assistance, which makes the bike a "pedelec", is stupid. The slower you pedal, up a hill for instance, the less assistance it provides. This is contrary to what is required. If you're a spinner, you can mitigate this undesirable effect. I'm a masher, so I use the the supplied thumb throttle instead.
Now that I'm used to the motor, I've been wondering if I shouldn't step up from the very light 38x16 gearing I have on my bike (a Utopia Kranich with 700C wheels and Big Apple 60mm tyres, 745mm rolling diameter, huge) to something a bit faster, say 44x16, because I no longer ride in 11th 1:1 gear but in 14th, just applying a touch of electric at small bumps in the road rather than gearing down, and gearing down below 8th gear only for very sharp, short hills, or massive acceleration at busy crossings. But the pedalpals think I should just slow down, because they're not getting younger either, and they feel I'm going faster now on average than before.
Under 9 Amp hours may not sound huge, but these particular Panasonic cells in the bottle that comes with the kit are pretty good. My standard ride is about 17km or ten miles of hilly country, and I use the motor about half the time but mostly at a part-setting, rather than full out, with short but strenuous full power use to get home up the last steep hill. On this and longer rides to over 30km, the battery has never indicated less than 50% available, and always recovered to 100% before the bike was parked again; it certainly has never run fully flat. A rule of thumb for using the bike like an electric vehicle rather than an electricity-assisted vehicle is one mile per Amp hour but I've done more than nine miles on the flat at full power and the battery didn't give out, or take unduly long to recharge. Being a technonerd, I considered buying a meter to tell me about the innards of the battery and never got around to it because the thing just seems to work and work, plug and play. (And the 8FUN kit comes with a particularly nice locking aero-plug for the battery.)
The half a star deducted is for the one wire which is too short for the logical fitment of a front drive kit, and for a wire on a plug that was misplaced, and had to be tracked with a continuity meter and resoldered, standard tacky Chinese quality control in the tiny, irritating things. (Only the motor has the special quality control for the European market.) That it isn't a whole star deducted is because a) the actual fault is singular and very minor, five minutes of my time for a routine check I conduct anyway on any Chinese electronics, and b) the nearest competitive kit is over 60% more expensive for the same bits, without any guarantee of better quality control in the peripherals. At the current stage of pedelecs, having to use a continuity meter and a soldering iron is par for the course until you get into the Canadian Bionx price range (several multiples of the 8FUN kit...).
Hope this helps.
Andre Jute
http://coolmainpress.com/andrejute.html
PS. Don't be tempted to buy the kit with the rack and the flatpack battery rather than the one with the bottle battery. It isn't worth saving either the few pounds or the water bottle mountings to unbalance your bike by putting the battery way out the back. The battery is atrociously heavy, and you absolutely must mount it in the centre of your bike, or even on the head tube, rather than on a rack out the back. There isn't in fact a kit for 700C bikes with the bottle battery, so I asked the vendor to give me a bottle battery from a 26in kit rather than the rack and flatpack battery that normally comes with 700C kits, which they instantly agreed to do, and without additional charge.
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Hope this helps.
Well, it surely helped me, Andre! Yours is the most concise, precise, and focused account of installing and living with "electric boost" I've seen, and it helped my understanding and will help me assist others with similar questions. A fine job, as always!
I am so glad such devices are now available to help riders who need them, and they present a nicely integrated solution as well. The front-wheel conversions seem the best way to keep the bulk of an existing bike intact, and allow for reversion if the need no longer exists. Already, possibilities spring to mind for friends facing knee replacement who will need low-torque movement to aid their short-term rehab, but will return to regular cycling afterwards. I can see folks with similar needs pooling the cost and swapping it about as needed. A great permanent solution too, unobtrusively ready and waiting whenever needed.
All the best,
Dan.
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Thanks again for the response..................... yours would be perfect Andre if I were able to follow the technical 'lingo', but I'm afraid you lost me early on and, if I attempt anything myself, I'll finish-up with a garage floor covered in bits, including bits of my beloved RT!!?!......................
Elsewhere I've been recommended to consider Ezee something or other, especially as there's a dealer/fitter near me (in Northants)............ any Members know this brand??
Pippa
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Hi Pippa,
I'm on the wrong side of the Pond from you, but I see Cyclezee, Ltd has quarters in Milton Keynes --
Cyclezee Ltd.
3 Guest Gardens
Milton Keynes
MK13 0AF
United Kingdom
email: john@cyclezee.com
email: sales@cyclezee.com
Tel. +44 (0) 7962407799
From what I can see, the distance between Northampton and Milton Keynes is 10mi or 16.09km (hope I got that right). Hopefully it means they're close to you. I would suggest contacting them to see if the have a recommended installation shop in your immediate area.
Some information about their Ezee conversion kits appears here:
http://www.cyclezee.com/bikes--conversion-kits.html
A gallery of installed conversion kits is here: http://www.cyclezee.com/gallery.html
A photo of the kit itself is here: http://www.cyclezee.com/uploads/2/8/6/0/2860781/2340386_orig.jpg
I'm sorry I have no experience with e-bike conversions, so I can't fairly evaluate or comment on the Ezee conversion kits. Andre is your man for that, or perhaps Forum member Paul Hipwood, referenced above. It sounds as if Ian S. (same thread) is about to embark on a similar project; he might have suggestions as well.
By coincidence, I saw an Ezee conversion on a Bike Friday as I rode Sherpa today. The gentleman riding it looked very happy and content, if that counts for anything.
Hope this helps!
All the best,
Dan.
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Thanks again for the response..................... yours would be perfect Andre if I were able to follow the technical 'lingo', but I'm afraid you lost me early on and, if I attempt anything myself, I'll finish-up with a garage floor covered in bits, including bits of my beloved RT!!?!......................
LOL. If you ever successfully took off a wheel to repair a flat, and refitted it, if you ever successfully bolted on a bell, you can fit the 8FUN kit. I did, and I'm the original cackhanded intellectual, with spectacles. The kit is designed for housewives to fit to their shopping bikes. The plugs, for instance, are all different and matched. It's very difficult to go wrong. Or your LBS will assemble the kit on your bike in under half an hour. Ask him for a quote.
Andre Jute
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Hi
I had lung surgery last year which damaged the vagus nerve so now have heart problems as well as reduced lung capacity. My cycling has been severely curtailed as a result. I'm about to get an electric assist conversion kit fitted to my Raven Tour. The conversion will be supplied and fitted by the Electric Transport Shop based in Cambridge (also branches in London and Bristol). They done a number of conversions on Raven Tours and am confident they'll do a good job. They'll build the hub into a rim of my choice. An other supplier I tried would not.
There are a couple of Thorns on their website (under customer reviews) - one from an 80 year old who can now whizz up hills and tackle 60 mile runs.
Good luck. I'll post a picture of mine when it's done.
Ians
Here's the review
"It is 20 months since a Sparticle electric front wheel was fitted by Electric Bike Sales of Cambridge to my well travelled Rohloff equipped Thorn Raven. It has performed perfectly and has enabled an octogenarian rider to keep with his firends on the level and easily outrun them up hill in the course of our weekly 40 to 50 mile social cycle runs. It is also used during the week for shopping and visits to the local town, round trip about 6 miles, and has even been on a CTC organised tour in the Netherlands. Even on 2 runs of over 60 miles, 2 of the 3 battery level indicator lights were still alight at the end of the day. This may be because I rarely use more than the minimum level of assist necessary to keep up and although it is quite possible to do so I never use the motor alone without pedalling at the same time. Up to about 20mph the bike freewheels downhill as fast and as freely as any touring cycle. One unexpected advantage is that by using the motor to accelerate to speed it is much easier to maintain that speed than would otherwise be the case. The only minor mishape that occured after much bouncing around on rough tracks was the fracture that occured to the plastic casing of the saddle post battery carrier. I therefore made a modified fitting so the battery could be carried securely on the carrier. No changes to the wiring were necessary. On another occasion I was able to repair a puncture to the motorwheel without difficulty with the wiring. Altogether I am a very satisfied user and consider the Sparticle Thorn Raven Rohloff set-up to have been an excellent investment."
Mar 14 2011,
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...I'll post a picture of mine when it's done.
Yay, Ian! Thanks so much; your information will greatly help me help others in need of this same assist. Well-done and thanks very much in advance.
All the best,
Dan.
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Thanks Dan
here's a link to the site I mentioned. There's an RST and an RT in the gallery.
ians
http://www.electricbikesales.co.uk/shop/electric-bikes-trikes/conversion-kits/sparticle-250-watt-conversion-kit-v-3-/prod_493.html
ps; I did try Cyclezee; he has a good reputation on the Pedelecs Forum, but would only supply a ready-built front wheel. He was unwilling to let me choose my own rim. I'm only going to do this build once and it's expensive so figure I should get to choose my own rim. Fussy I know but there you are.
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Once again many thanks to you all.................. I've been down to Somerset where I was able to check-out several electric-assist 'bikes and today I'm hoping to visit Cyclezee in Milton Keynes................ Ian, your suggestion sounds a very interesting one especially as they have an Oxford branch.................. decisions,decisions!!!!!?! I'll keep you posted on my search
Stan
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Stan
I live in Milton Keynes - you're welcome to come and check out my Raven Tour when the conversion has been done. It's in the shop in Cambridge right now - I'll let you know when it's back if you're interested.
ian
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ian did you get a new electric wheel fitted love to see pic's of this if possible.
btw whats the story with the guy in cycleez what was the problem in you supplying your own rim,
sounds like he wants to make as much profit as he can on the build. ???
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I think you can assume, Jags, until offered evidence to the contrary, that any electric wheel you're offered in a kit by a British vendor was assembled in China and bought whole by the kit supplier. In fact, several of the suppliers buy kits with all the peripheral controls as well as well as the wheel.
I too would like to see photos of Ian's conversion.
Andre Jute
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Jags and Andre
I had a couple of email conversations with cyclezee and the guy was very helpful. However, when I asked about who his wheel builder was and what rims were available he said it was simply not possible for me to choose my own rim. I suspect Andre is correct and the wheel/motor comes bought in, thereby restricting choice. It seems to make very little difference to the price however.
It may be a small point for some but it's my bike - the whole point of going with a conversion kit rather than buying a pedelec was so that I can have it exactly as I want.
I visited the branch in Oxford and it was closed (It seems a very small shop - terraced house conversion) - I phoned the Cambridge branch and they were extremely helpful. I asked about rims and they even asked if I would like to supply my own. They offer some customisation - choice of battery location, choice and position of throttle (important given Rolhoff shifter). If I'm not happy then bring it back and they'll tweak it, change things. So I'm reasonably confident they'll do a good job.
The bike is in Cambridge right now. There's a slight delay because their wheelbuilder is in Oxford .....
I hope to collect it towards the end of next week - will post photos.
ian
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thanks lads ,look forward to seeing the pic's when i get back from my tour. ;)
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Ian S, I think the pricing would go the other way, up, if you had a wheel built in the UK rather than in China. I bought the whole kit (from a British supplier) and expected to have to rebuild or retune the Chinese wheel, or just cut the motor out and start from scratch (not a waste, as you would be able to measure spoke length and suchlike, important to get right the first time because I import my Sapim Strong spokes from Germany) but it turned out to be exceedingly well-built with an excellent rim, spokes, nipples and a brand name rim band. My problem with the wheel isn't the workmanship or the quality of the components but that it is too narrow for my preferred 60mm Big Apples. (It does fine though with the 47mm Kenda thornproof tyre supplied in the price, which at its lowest inflation is more comfortable than its knobbly appearance would suggest.) -- Andre Jute
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Andre any chance of some photos ;)
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Andre any chance of some photos ;)
90% of the photos of my electric motor installation saga have been setting on my desktop for months, waiting for me to have time to tidy up the wiring and take the last few photos. Er, yes, before that I had to fit the the BUMM lights that work with a 36V battery, and find a leather container for the controller box, wires, a wallet and a camera to match my leather saddlebag, or paint the supplied plastic container bike colour... it's a major industrial critical path analysis just planning all the little jobs of such a major change.
Perhaps I should publish my report in parts...
Andre Jute
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very good so should be worth the wait .
get them up Andre theres a good lad. ;)
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Perhaps I should publish my report in parts...
Now you've done it, Andre...opened the oven door before the cake has finished baking! :D
"Work in progress" is always good! Goes from trial-fit to finished-and-nice as a photographic journey.
Best,
Dan.