Monthly Archives: June 2016

Here are some photos of bikes I have converted to electric. The first one converted was my wife’s Giant Hybrid. An absolutely brilliant kit, she just loves it. The car tends to stay in the garage when she has to duck down the shops as it is just so much less hassle to take the bike and there is never any parking worries.

The second bike I converted was my Giant mountain bike, to which I fitted one of your specials. It transformed the bike and got me back on it after many years of neglect. We often ride a 25 km round trip to get a coffee and for us old retirees it is great exercise without the grunt of the hills on the return trip.

The third bike I converted was a Bauer flat bar road bike. I fitted another geared motor to it as I like the low down torque and quiet manners of it compared to the direct drive motors. It is really light and simple with no gears, I find you don’t really need them with a motor fitted unless you tackle steep hills, which we don’t, and I just love it. I also want to thank you for your support and quality products, as somewhere in the middle I tried to do it on the cheap by importing from china, and after blowing up the battery on the first plug in and rejecting a geared motor with bugger all torque and which complained loudly when put under any stress, I returned to you. There was not a lot of savings to be made in any case, what with bank fees for T/T plus freight etc.

Tim, July 2012

We’re slowly becoming experts on the best bicycles to convert at our bicycle shop and we’ve opted to set up for a special sale the APOLLO SHADOW (full specs here). It’s a really good Australian bicycle that came out for a while with a Nexus 7-speed internal hub gear. It really keeps the bicycle very simple with no derailleur and is extremely robust. The conversion kit went on great, we tried both with the rack battery and the Panasonic tube battery and the tube was obviously better in terms of handling and light weight. We have just a few in stock and we hope to able to sell them to locals around Perth. The range with light pedalling will be about 30-40km and its speed is around 28km/h. Cost is about $1750.

Please come into the Perth Electric Bicycle store if you’d like to take one for a test ride. We’re sure you’ll be pretty impressed.

Solar Bike, May 2012

This is my Awesome 500W electric bike. I custom ordered it to be a rear wheel disc compatible version. It was the only way I could get a kit on a dual suspension bike. The tube battery had to sit under the diagonal bar but it goes great and the weight balance is perfect. I can ride this over nearly any bumps without a worry at all and it’s super comfortable. The modifications I had to make were to change the shifter, with the motor I can only get a 6 speed rear gear cluster to fit on so had to change the original shifter to match. I also put a larger front ring on because the top speed was too fast otherwise and I do like to pedal every now and then. It’s a great way to get to the pub and back and once I even got lucky. I told a girl that I had a confession to make – “I ride an electric bike” – she said she’d never been on one and could I take her for a ride. Very happy ending and very happy with my bike.

After a lot of research and looking around I went for the fixie/single speed with 200W mini-motor. Goes Fantastic Mate. I really love the bike. Something i need to tell you is about the weight of the bike. Fully equipped, it is only 17.5 kg – I measured it a few times. It is amazingly light!! All other electric bikes on the market are from 22 to 27, even 30 kg. This is one of the best points of the bike and I think is good for you to put it in the ad. For example if you have told me this at the beginning i wouldn’t hesitate to buy it straight away.

Roumen, Bulgaria and Perth

Got the kit and used a Giant Fixie. Fits good and works great!

Paul, NZ

This bike was put together by Cargo Cycles in Collingwood. They specialise in a variety of “Cargo Bicycles” and electric bicycles and are a wonderful distributor of our electric bicycle kits in Melbourne. This model used a disc kit and tube battery and came together very nicely. The extra motor assistance will certainly help pull those heavier loads that these bicycles are designed for. Please read their review on this model and visit their website by clicking here.

This is an electric Haro mountain bike that was put together at our shop on a customer’s bike. It’s one of the few ones we’ve done with disc brakes and suspension forks. Using the modern suspension forks, it’s generally only possible to install the 200W mini-motors because the higher powered motors have larger axle nuts that don’t sit well with typical suspension fork dropouts; the mini-motor seems to be quite a bit more generic for this purpose as the axle nuts and washers are smaller and nearly always fit snugly into the fork dropout. The disc kits aren’t common but this one worked a treat. It’s not always possible to use disc brakes because the motor can rub on the brake caliper depending on the brakes; usually they work ok but you need to be prepared to revert to V-brakes and pads if it doesn’t work out or else you’ll need to do some fine adjustments to get everything to line up. The tube batteries are a really good solution for these electric bikes we’re finding now – hardly any problems and the performance is great. This is a really nice commuting machine and it’s still pretty light, the kit only added about 6kg all up.

PERTH ELECTRIC BICYCLES, Fremantle Woolstores

For over a year my Solarbike e-bike has been my main transport for commuting to and from work, a 30km round trip. Since I’m so happy with my bike it is time for a review, which I can do in one sentence:
It assists me to burn fat and keep fit, lowers my carbon footprint and is fun!

Here’s a whole page review with a few more technical points.

Richard.

This is a model that came together particularly nicely. It’s the GIANT VIA 2W made electric with the Solar Bike 200W mini-motor kit and a new design Panasonic 10Ah lithium ion rack battery. The complete setup cost a customer $499 for the bike and $1050 for the kit. It runs Great and is far better than any production line bike of similar geometry! The range with light pedalling will be between 30-50km at a speed of approximately 28km/h. You can get one fully setup in Perth by calling into the PERTH ELECTRIC BICYCLE shop, located at Fremantle Woolstores Shopping Centre. Alternatively, you can get the bike from your local bicycle shop that deals GIANT models and get the kit from us!

This is a Giant CRX 4 set up with the Swift kit that had a 200W mini-motor and water bottle battery. It added just over 6kg to the bicycle. Its top speed is 28km/h. I went over 40km on a single charge and it hadn’t run out and felt as good and powerful as at the start of the ride. Great up all hills I encountered and I only pedalled very lightly the whole trip.