[Closed] Good E-bike conversion kit?

The usual answer is the bafeng kits.  they are a bit complex to fit needing connections into the gear cable and brakes as it does not torque sense.  A wheel mounted kit is much easier to fit and a bike built with a BB motor is the best to ride.

Wheel motors are fine so long as you do not have a lot of steep hills to climb

IIRC Ben at Kinetics has some BB kits I know nothing about.  High quality stuff costs tho.

I have a BB mount kit that I am no longer using - its a sunstar so3 so much better than the bafeng kits as it has a proper toque sensor and cost a lot - PM me if interested in discussing a price ( no longer made)

Thanks TJ, I am in NZ so postage will put paid to your offer. Just trying to identify a good kit to use.

Whats your budget?  ~does it have to be BB mount?  There is a pedelecs forum you can get advice from

I think the only torque sensing mid drive available now is the Tongsheng TSDZ2B

Edited to add-beaten by 3 minutes!

I've been googling this a lot recently and the Tongshen seems better than the Bafang due to being a true torque sending unit. I havnt taken it any further myself yet though. Cheaper than a Bafang and with full spares support

https://electricbikereview.com/forum/threads/tongsheng-500-watt-mid-drive.14907/

Can't comment on longevity, as i just fitted it(I'll report back in a year or 2! ), but the bafang bbs02 is a riot! 😆

I got mine from em3ev.com, direct from china, never got hit with import duty which was nice. Pretty decent communication with them directly, pretty impressed tbh(seemed a well respected company from reviews i read before hand, i'd agree). Delivery took a while though. I ordered 9th June, only turned up yesterday, so 3 weeks 2 days. Was a week to build the battery, 2 weeks delivery basically.

Got a monster battery with it 850wh, so should take me a fair old distance.

As mentioned it's cadence sensing rather than torque sensing, but if you just use the bike as normal( ie use the gears), you can then just use the assistant level 1-9 as a kind of manual gearbox for setting the torque at a particular time.

I've got the programming cable for it too, there's a lot you can play with in there to get it working exactly as you need.

kit will work better on a 68mm bottom bracket, 73mm means you'll need to adjust the offset as it's not quite design for that, but fits, also make sure it'll clear you chainstays, it just fits on my bike and no more, can imagine some bikes might be odd, (basically not to clear 55mm  from centre of bb, but the is a curve there, that give you a good bit more leeway than that).

All in all i'm delighted with it, got an 21.5kg(kit was about 9.2kg, you can go lighter ) ebike with monster range for 866 quid! 🙂 (£110 of that was delivery)

One other thing to consider is securing the battery to the frame, 2 water bottle mount are never going to be secure enough. still to figure that out properly, got a few ideas, but if you intend to welly it down hills and probably crash it, it's something you'll need to give serious consideration to.  less so if you are bimbling about, i'd still make it more secure

took me a couple of hours to get it all up and running, was pretty easy, cable tie city though!

ps surprising easy to pedal with the power off too, which will give a bit of range confidence. ie won't be too worried about cycling home a few mile if i run out of battery.

If converting a bike in the UK it doesn't have to be pedelec - can just use a twist throttle and then the wife won't even have to pedal when she is knackered.

Risky getting twist and go though isn't it? If the UK catches up with other EU regulations they'll also be banned, seems a very grey area.

A throttle is optional on the kits. I don't have one. Same as the gear sensor and the brake sensor too, optional add ons.

I don't think throttles are actually banned on the add on kits. Think they are on actual designed ebikes though. Can't mind, would need to google it think there might be a loop hole there, not sure.

Throttle only will curtail range seriously though.

Risky getting twist and go though isn’t it? If the UK catches up with other EU regulations they’ll also be banned, seems a very grey area.

I queried this and got an email from the dft saying conversons are exempt - as I was investigating the Sparticle conversion for a Brompton.

I'll have a look for it later.

Where is the best place in the UK to buy a Bafang BBS02 motor kit and battery from?, I plan to build myself a throttle controlled bike using a Surly Karate Monkey frameset, I'd rather buy from the UK for the warranty.

Cheers,

Don't really know tbh, No idea what this mob are like but they are based in newcastle and seem to have reasonable cheap stuff. bbs02 in at the end of the month.

http://eclipsebikes.com/product_info.php?products_id=12

There's 1 year warranty on the em3ev batteries. And they have local places in the UK apprently (Can't go into any detail on that. I've obviously never had to do a warranty claim as yet and hopefully won't expect to.)

From their site:

"We do also have local support in the USA, UK, Australia and even Ireland, so we will generally not be asking customers to return parts to China if they have an issue (and on the occasions we do, we would normally cover the shipping costs)."