Monthly Archives: May 2016

This is a giant step-through bike that I put a 200W kit on for a customer. It goes very smoothly and offers excellent quiet assistance up the hills around here. The bike on the right is an electrically converted off the side of the road bike that my son absolutely loved and wouldn’t get off all day. I’m operating in Brisbane (Acacia ridge) as an installer and dealer for the kits now so if anyone in the neighbourhood wants to get a conversion kit and/or wants to have it installed on their bike then please contact me after work hours on 0434 288 307.

Steve, Brisbane.

This bike was a wreck from the side of the road that I removed everything from and kept only the frame, forks and seat. It has a front and rear 500W motor, each controlled by a separate battery and control system. Thumb throttles in each hand worked the best for me and I liked the olders style handle-grips. It was awesome but it was definitely too much for this bike. It wobbled a bit and with two batteries and a rear motor on the back wheel the weight balance wan’t ideal. Also, after crashing it the rear rack snapped, possibly due to the extra weight but more likely the driver. Even though the bike wasn’t ideal for this setup it went like bananas upon take off and when pedalling in a straight line it took off more or less as quickly as a normal car. There was heaps and heaps of torque up hills and it was possible to ride up all hills I encountered single speed in the saddle with hardly any effort. I’ve since removed the front wheel and water bottle battery and it is more tame and ridable with only a single powered motor. I’ll retry this system on a more robust mens hybrid bicycle and put the water bottle battery on the diagonal frame to better balance the weight. I’ll also connect both systems through the same throttle to see if it works and is better than two throttles. I’d say that if going for a high power electric bike option then the 750/1000W kit with a single 48V 12Ah battery is better than two individual kits. A very sturdy bike is needed and it might be best on a tough chro-moly frame with torque bars. The power from both wheels is great but it comes at a sacrifice of extra weight and a need to charge two batteries rather than just the one. Also, the 1000W kits have a slightly higher top speed than this dual 500W kitted out rocket ship. The acceleration and torque uphills is fantastic but I found that I’d get to 35-40km/hr nearly instantaneously and then it’d not do much more without pedalling very quickly. It seemed to be too much on the side of electric power than pedal power. One kit is ample but the rev head inside us all has to be sated.

Matt – Solar Bike

This is my latest fixie that I designed (prototype number 3, model: NUTCASE) and had built up to suit the Swift kit’s light weight electrical components (click here to read the fixie story) . It’s great. The single speed is wonderful; no clunky gears and absolutely no need for them with the electric motor assistance. It has a street legal 200W mini-motor and the water bottle shaped battery mounted on the diagonal crossbar. The bike is very smooth, fast and efficient and has been designed around a racing bike frame. It also looks great and very few people pick up on it being electric. It travels at an average speed of 30km/hr (no pedalling) up to nearly 40km/hr with some good pedalling. Range is about 40km. The only future changes I’ll make to this current model are to include an extra set of retro style handlebars and adjustable stem to make it even more comfortable and add a bit more style. The velo plush seat and handle grips are really nice though so overall riding comfort in its current state is very high. It has a flip-flop rear wheel with a single speed free wheel cassette on one side and a fixed gear on the other side. Riding it fixed was just a little too radical with the added speed and weight of the electric components so I have flipped it around to ride in free wheel mode – it’s more relaxing this way. I hope to make some final very small changes and import a small number of these bicycles to accompany the Swift kit for people wanting what I consider to be a perfect commuting machine and one of the best electric bikes in Australia. This model should be available in the first few months of 2011.

Matt – Solar Bike

I got this INDI 500 bike off the side of the road and put a standard conversion kit on it. This has a small 10W panel cable tied onto the carrier rack that re-charges the 36V lithium ion battery directly. There is no regulator between the panel and battery so electricians will likely tell you that this isn’t ideal but it is certainly the most direct way possible to recharge the battery via photovoltaic. I had the panels specially cut to give a closed circuit voltage of 42.5V (the same as what the chargers put out) and so far it is working as intended. From my testing so far it seems that for each hour I leave it in the sun I can travel 1km. I am also testing another direct charging system using a 100W 48V panel with a custom designed regulator that outputs at 42.5V and that is functioning well too. A 100W panel is too large to put on a bicycle but if you have space to mount it at work or home where the bike can charge directly from it during the day then it can fully charge the battery from flat in about 4 hours.

Matt – Solar Bike

Residents of Perth looking for an electric bike are very fortunate to have the Perth Electric Bike shop present. They can provide you with a range of bikes suited to both you and an electric conversion kit at great prices. Jack is the resident electric kit installer and is able to give great advice on the ideal bicycle and can also do excellent installations. Jack performed this installation for a customer last weekend and had this to say:

“There are many low quality Chinese models on the market that no bike shop would be interested in due to difficulty maintaining the bicycle performance and having to diagnose electrical faults. The kits are great because the bike and electric components are essentially separate systems and allow us to use a high quality bike. It’s much better to get a custom job on a bike really well suited to you and of much higher quality running components all under a warranty. The electrical components all seem to be of high quality and have not caused us any problems to date. This is an electric bike I set up for a customer recently. It’s a Giant Cypress a customer had sized up for himself and it was fitted with a 200/350W interconvertible motor for both on and off road. The bike costs $500 and the kit $950 so all up for a fantastic bike and electrical components it adds up to $1450. This is a really great commuting machine and I welcome anyone into the store to discuss options to get one like this or similar made up for themselves.”

Peter and I traded ideas, design (see some of his work above), skills and solar bike components about 2 years ago. His bike has been running well since then and he recently sent me a short review on its performance.

From Peter: “Bike still going great. I’m able to make it all the way to work and back (via my gf’s house) on a single charge. This is a round trip of about 35km with a 300m altitude change! Of that, the motor was in use solidly. A quick thermal check over the whole kit after ariving home found everything to be in good order. Only the fuse holder and controller were remotely warm and I’m confident that the fuse would give out long before anything else. The bike and I weigh about 115kg together so it was a fair old effort on the part of the kit. Of course, I was also pedalling, probably putting in about half of the energy moving the bike on the steepest hills and all of it on the flat. Having ridden up that road on a lighter but un-powered bike, there is no contest in my mind which I’d rather be on after a long day at work. The old prototype battery, controller, charger and switch fit perfectly into the ammo box mounted on the back. I’m sure there would be lighter solutions but this just looks the business. Planning to grab some kahki paint and redo the rest of the bike to match. Being able to carry the charger everywhere makes the idea of riding it a long way much more appealing.”

Jacqueline from Canberra sent in this review after converting her semi-recumbent Giant Revive into an electric machine. This was a custom order straight from the factory and took about 3 weeks to arrive as it was a 20″ rim with mini-motor. There was a little playing around to get it fitted and a few emails passed between us but she succesfully installed the kit – replete with white unicorn and a lot of other paraphernalia – and it seems to be serving her brilliantly.

From Jacqueline: “It is absolutely wonderful. I can’t stop grinning! I pedalled as usual on the flat, freewheeled down hills and used the motor to assist my pedalling uphill, just using it to take up the strain so I wasn’t pedalling any harder than I would on the flat. It was as if the hills had all been flattened out! Which is saying something, out here on the Western fringes of Canberra; especially as I had two panniers of shopping on the back that I didn’t even notice! There was no strain on my legs or my heart. I even kept up with my athletic husband on his lightweight carbon fibre racer! You have my utmost gratitude for excellent customer service and a superb product. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for helping to restore freedom to this arthritic granny!”

I always have loved cycling but when I moved to ‘hilly’ Hobart the terrain took the fun out of it somewhat. Every now and then I would cycle to work and back home but I hated the steep hills on the way and so I used my bike less and less. I always thought that it would be great to have a little ‘booster’ engine to help on the climbs and started looking around on the net. When I came across SolarBike I really liked what they had to offer as it is a complete conversion kit, very good quality parts and extremely easy to install. Also, the great responses to my questions and technical insights from Matt along the way were a great help!
All in all, it was so easy to convert my old Malvern Star bike and it was also a nice surprise to see a thumb controller and a tyre in the package. The thumb controller is a much better option in my opinion. The range is pretty good and I estimate that I use about 50% of the battery (2.5 hrs charging time) for my 16km return trip to work.
To sum up the experience riding the ‘all wheel drive’ bike is easily done with one word: FUN! I ride my bike to work almost every day now and I still work out on my bike climbing up the the steep hills and trying to go faster on the flat sections but my travelling time has been cut in half and I always cycle with a smile.