Electric Bicycles 2023

Well, part of my goals for the year are to get my ebikes sorted out and either sold or working. Right now, none are any of those!

I’ve started out with my commuter build. It got disassembled after I sheared a bolt in the rear (rear rack to frame) towing garbage cans up the driveway, before I’d built the trash trailer. Yeah, it’s been offline for… some long while.

Getting it back together is going slowly, because there’s no shortage of “things not working on it or that need replacement.”

The bar ends were turning back to oil, the seat wasn’t far behind, the freewheel isn’t working reliably, and the connections are corroded. I hope. Because it cut out on me trying to pull a hill, and the connections are pretty bad - I didn’t have tools to troubleshoot on the hill, and by the time I got home and was able to prod it, it was, of course, behaving. But Andersons exposed to the air for 5+ years, after 3 years of high current use, don’t look so hot.

As it warms up, I want to get a few other bikes working too. I’ve got no shortage of BionX parts, and I’m hoping at least some of them are compatible with each other… it’s been so long, I’m not sure what I actually have. But I need to sell the rest, so if you need a BionX wheel and motor, I probably have something of the sort.

There’s also the Tailwind that needs a custom pack built. The LTO battery is just too small to be of any use, so I’ll probably build a large 18650 pack for the rear and call it good.

Who else is doing anything with them recently?

I’m tempted to swap my rear 26" for a e-wheel. What voltages does the BionX want? What width rim is it? Note that I’d be putting it on a recumbent trike (i.e. braking hard in front I can lift the rear wheel), so I don’t have to worry about brakes, only moving the (9s?) cassette over; I think I have the tools to do that. oh, what kind of axle? how big (wide) of a rim? There’s a limit as to how big of a tire I can put on there. Oh, and what kind of throttle? (Trike has non-standard handlebars) so many questions.

You don’t want a BionX motor unless you already have their system. It’s exceedingly, and annoyingly, proprietary, and they’re long since out of business. Mostly it was a “If you have a fragged motor and working rest of system and want a wheel, let me know…”

I would look at the ebikes.ca kits - they’ve got a nice simulator you can plug stuff into and see how a motor is likely to handle your setup. As far as axles/rims/etc, you can get whatever you want in most kits. My suggestion will be to get the stoutest rear wheel, laced with the largest spokes you can get, into a geared hub motor. Don’t worry about regen, it’s overrated on bikes.

Well, after some extensive fiddling, my freewheel/cassette is off and replaced. It took the bike shop some of their custom tooling to get it free!

The freewheel bits were sticking, not engaging properly, and after removing it, they were gritty sounding, so… nope. Not gonna bother with that, when a new one, with labor was about $35.

Waiting on new bar ends, the old ones are disgusting…