My daughter Fiona and I share this bike which has a Solarbike 200w motor and the latest incarnation of 36v 10ah battery which also acts as a mudguard. The bike is a Mongoose Alta mountain bike which had been thrown out by a neighbour. We both like cycling but both have problems. My problem is age – I’m 77 now – I’ve been riding a bike to work, for shopping and recreation and on tours for 30 years. But I’ve been getting weaker and having to use progressively lower gears. Now I’m finding it hard to keep up with my younger associates and also finding the distances between pubs when touring to be very long! My daughter’s problem is weight – she is pretty heavy but likes cycling to work a distance of 10km away. However she has trouble with hills and we live in a hilly part of Sydney.
Now that we have installed the Solarbike kit, Fiona can do the journey home without stopping for walks up the hills. And now I can rejoin my biking friends – last week I did a 65km trip with them from Bondi to Parramatta and still had a bit of battery left when I got home. Of course I didn’t have the motor on all the time – just for hills to let me keep up and for crossing busy intersections where one needs to be nippy. This encourages me to feel that I might be able to go back to country touring soon as long as I can recharge my battery at the end of each day! We both find the 200w motor to be quite adequate for the assistance we need. Installation after watching the video was straightforward although I needed to make an extra washer to stop the motor touching the fat forks on this bike. Overall we are both now looking forward to some good cycling days to come. We might even have to get another Solarbike motor kit to keep us both going!
