This is a video showing our new high powered 1500W Electric Fat Bike Conversion kits. We used it here to go bike surfing. Click here to see video.
Monthly Archives: January 2017
Tweety the German bike mechanic, January 2017
Apparently in Germany all of the bike mechanics have to go to bike school. 2 and a half years to become a basic mechanic and an extra year for the advanced qualification. It was great to have Tweety in the shop this week with her German qualifications. She gave us all a bit of schooling and broke the long held bike build record in the process. This here was one of the many bikes she assembled this week. It’s the beautifully designed VALLKREE scrambler in chrome. It rides like a dream and it’s nice to know all the nuts and bolts are tight!
Electric mid-drive DOUZE cargo bike. January 2017
This was an interesting cargo bike that we electrified this week. It’s a beautiful cargo bike from DOUZE that has a lot of top end parts on it. However, riding it loaded up with a child and groceries and heading into the sea-breeze is a bit troublesome so the customer asked us to electrify it. Hub motors were no option due to the front wheel having a through-axle and the rear 11 speed internal gear so our only option was to use a mid-drive kit. This proved tougher than expected due to the frame geometry but we got around it all by pulling the motor apart and installing half of it on each side then bringing it back together. It’s now a great electric mid-drive cargo bike that will serve for many many years to come.
Solar Bike. Fremantle Woolstores. January 2017.
Electric Men’s LEKKER Jordaan. January 2017
This is one of the nicest conversions we’ve done this week. It’s the men’s Jordaan from LEKKER. It has a nice 7 speed Shimano nexus hub in the rear and it’s been converted with one of our rear rack battery/front hub motor. It’s a comfortable bike that has that classic Dutch style. Please come into our shop to test ride one.
Mid drive electric Fixie from SOLAR BIKE. October 2016
We’ve been putting together a lot of the mid-drive kits lately and this one was worth a note. This was a simple fixie that a customer brought in. It’s quite a cheap and elegant bicycle that you can get from a lot of online places or even shop fronts. This model was a REID bike that sold for around $400. It’s simple and cheap but there’s not a thing wrong with it and it lends itself nicely to the mid drive kits. There are a few brands of mid-drive kits our there. BAFANG, also known as 8fun are very well known in the business but their kits don’t have torque sensing like their production electric bikes do. We’ve now got our own range of legal mid-drive kits that have torque sensing and they are proving to work exceedinly well. They will fit onto nearly all bikes and have both throttle and pedal assist LCD control. This bike came together easily and it is a great ride. The picture here shows it with a 36V 11.6Ah PANASONIC lithium ion battery in the middle of the frame.
Speed and Distance, SOLAR BIKE, Fremantle, August, 2016
There is often a trade off in life, one thing for another. Eg. The more organic you want your broccoli, the less money you’ll have to spend on beer. The more beer you drink, the worse you’ll feel in the morning. Well, the trade off in electric biking is the faster you go, the less distance you can cover. If you stick your head out of a car that’s not moving you don’t feel any wind. If you stick it out the window at 100km/h then it’ll blow your ears off. That increase in air friction is essentially the drag that you have to overcome with either pedalling or electric motor. The faster you go, the more friction there is and hence your distance will be less. It’s not a linear relationship either, which is what creates a problem for people wanting to travel long distances at higher speeds. A customer needed to travel the 35km he was commuting daily but wanted to do it at 35km/h and not 25k/h so opted for a 500W motor. He could manage this distance with an 11.6Ah 36V Panasonic tube battery but when his need increased to travel 70km he had to get more battery power. We did this by getting another 11.6Ah tube battery and running them in parallel. Doing this is very simple, you take the red leads from the battery and crimp them together and do the same to the black ones. Then connect this to the controller. You can control which battery you use by the switches on the bottoms of the batteries. Running them both together gives you a slightly greater speed. All worked well and he’s a happy customer covering a lot of ground through the week.
Baby and Beast from Solar Bike. July, 2016
These are two of our greatest creations of late. One is a little baby girl and the 2nd is a downhill bike converted with a Bafang mid drive motor. The mid drive kits are really well worth a visit, they’re a little more comlicated than hub motors to set up but have some nice features. The Bafang (8fun) kit is probably the best on the market as a retro fit kit. They’re available in powers of between 250-1000W. This one here is the 750W model and it runs a 48V 11.6Ah SAMSUNG lithium ion battery. The battery had to be attached upside down on the down tube as often with dual suspension bikes there is no room within the frame. Rack mounted bikes are tricky also as unless it’s a seatpole mounted battery it won’t work. This bike rides like a dream, it gets about 25km range on the top level at about 45km/h. The mid-drive kits allow you to run through the gears so essentially speed depends on the gearing system. This one still delivers power at slightly above 50km/h but that’s pedalling at top speed as well. Larger chain rings are available if you need to go faster but that is pretty quick on a bicycle. Once you ride a dual suspension bike it’s hard to go back. It feels like a combination of a flying carpet, bicycle and hover board.
VALKREE Electric Bike. June 2016
Vallkree are a group from Byron Bay who are designing, building and importing some pretty good looking electric bikes. We’ve got a few on our shop floor now so if you’re interested in this style of bike then please come by and take one for a spin. They have a rear wheel motor, pedal assist and also open throttle control. They’re suprisingly comfortable and look great. They have a variety of styles, accessories and colours available. Please check out their website here.