In short, do not order the 700C front-motor unless you know beforehand, how you are going to deal with their thick axle.I have ... Read More
In short, do not order the 700C front-motor unless you know beforehand, how you are going to deal with their thick axle.I have been using a bicycle as a primary means of transportation for nearly 40 years now and about 10 years ago, my knees told me that I was done riding without a motor.Commuting with a motorized bicycle to work downtown is like driving a convertible in a path dedicated to your own use with free parking when you get there. Very nice experience.This is my third bicycle motor. My previous two have been rear wheel Bionx motors. The last one, a D500, died on me; but so did the company itself, thus my purchasing this motor.I love the notion of buying a motor which does not limit me to a $1000 proprietary battery. I love the notion that the whole setup cost me about 1/3rd the cost.I rode it for the first time today and find that is nowhere near as responsive as the Bionx, however when weighed against the benefits above, I am quite happy.There is a 3 second delay when pedaling before the motor kicks in and 3 second delay after you stop pedaling before the motor turns off, so be sure to install the brake turn-off if you are going to rely mostly on pedal assist.The pedal assist works differently than it did on the Bionx. I was accustomed to setting 1 providing 25% assistance all the way up to 20mph and setting 4 providing 200% assistance up to 20mph. I generally stayed in setting 1 so that I could get some exercise and used the throttle to start up from a stop to save my knees.On this system however, setting 1 means both lower assistance as well as a lower top speed. If you want to go 20mph, you have no choice but to stay in setting 4 or 5. Not as much exercise, however at my age, my knees are not really complaining. There may be a setting to change this I have not yet encountered. This was my first trip (my commute is 10 miles each way).I uninstalled the PAS because I wanted to lock the battery to the bicycle frame. I have a folding Montague Navigator and the only bottle braze-on points are just above the pedals and I had to move the battery to a rear bag in order to install the PAS disk, however this meant I could not lock the battery to the bike.I found that PAS is hardly different at all to just using the throttle. While it is more natural for the foot to provide the power and the hand to not do so, I would prefer to lower the risk of theft.On setting 5, I found that the 13Ah Dolphin LG battery displayed 80% after 10 miles, 50% after the next 10 miles, and barely got me another 10 miles before conking out. The lower the battery % the lower my top speed.On setting 3, for the first 10 miles, the top speed was 17mph and battery still read 100% after that first 10 miles. at the end of the next 10 miles my top speed was 15mph and the battery read 75%.It came well packaged, but required a signature of someone over 21, so I had to keep a close eye on the UPS Follow My Delivery so that we would not miss each other a 2nd time.My one star off so far centers on the thick axle of the front-wheel version.Your front drop outs need to be at least 10mm to accommodate this axle, which is a bit large for a 700C front fork. I suspect they are using the same axle as their rear motor, where 10mm is usually fine. I have looked far and wide on-line and asked the local bike shop but, so far, every 700C front fork seems to have a 9mm drop. I have to either keep looking or return this motor or just grind down the axle. To be fair, my 2nd place choice, a Bafang model clearly stated that it required 10mm drop outs, so I am unclear as to who front-motor 700C wheel makers are selling to.I think 29 forks come with wider drop outs and I suspect that a 29 fork would install onto a 700c bike without a problem, especially if you are using disc brakes. Even if the drop outs were 15mm, since I would want to use two torque arms anyway, a couple of 5mm spacers may make it work.I have made eBikeling aware of this issue and they gave me no indication that it could or ever would be remedied. Their response: Unfortunately, we do not have such a chance.The rim is 18.8mm inside and 24.5mm outside. I am guessing that the 22mm in the description references the inside width where the bead goes, but I cannot measure that. My existing 622x18 rim is 18.5mm on the inside and 24mm on the outside.The inner most grove, where the rim tape goes, is 12mm. The thin rubber rim liner they provide is garbage, do not try using it as it will give you a flat tire. Within seconds of pumping up my tire to 100psi, it went flat and upon inspection, there was a smooth half circle cut out where the screw hole in the rim was and the rim rubber band provided was also cut. Fortunately I was half expecting that result and I had rim tape and a patch handy. I was curious.The only instructions in the box points you to website for instructions, but the website only shows three installations videos of the rear wheel and none for the front wheel. Fortunately, my bike has a mount for disk brakes as does this motor, so I knew which side was which so that the motor would move the bike forward, not backwards.If you look carefully at the information towards the bottom of the instructions page on their website, one of the photos and two of the plain sentences are actually links to PDF instruction files. I failed to noticed until they pointed this out to me.I did not own a crank puller tool or a bottom bracket tool to install the 2 PAS disks, so I had to place another Amazon order before I could continue.https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B075K13N4SYou might wonder why I am choosing front vs rear. A rear motor, in theory, makes the most sense, however I had constant problems with the excessive weight causing rim explosions, broken spokes, and eventually two prematurely dead motors. With a front motor, I am reducing the complexity of the setup and moving weight forward and removing weight from the somewhat fragile and expensive motor and removing weight from the rear spokes and allowing for the original spokes which never broke before I started this motor business.When I saw that it came with lights, I was picturing in my mind bright lights without their own batteries that were hooked up to the big motor battery so that I can stop the ritual of having to constantly recharge the batteries in my head/tail lights, but they are in fact an off-the-shelf $3 pack of 2 tiny LED lights with coin sized batteries (it does not mention a specific size). I doubt I would bother taking them out of the packaging.However I did find very bright front headlight here on Amazon that worked perfectly for my intended purpose and it plugs directly into the LCD display.https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B075K13N4SI already had a rear rack bag, so I used that to hold the battery and the controller (which must be close together as there is no extension cord for this connection). This way all the connections can be protected from rain. My previous Bionx motor stopped working about 20 minutes after it started raining, every single time. For my 2nd trip, I got rid of the battery bag and mounted the battery to my frame (after buying a new crankset gear to give me more clearance) and used zip ties to mount the controller to my rear rack and threaded the connectors thru an old large diameter bicycle tube to protect them from the rain and keep them together.The battery is a separate purchase from the same company and at the moment, they offer three different models for this 36V motor. This is the one I purchased (larger capacity and USB port). In retrospect, I would purchase the smaller battery for my particular frame.https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B07NHN18V9I also purchased two better quality torque arms as I read that the one provided may not be strong enough.https://smile.amazon.com/Grin-Technologies-Universal-Version-Electric/dp/B00K57N9III installed it on a 2014 Folding Montague Navigator. It took a LOT longer than I anticipated. I received it May 4th and the first time I had it together enough to ride it was May 15th and the second time, after waiting for even more parts, was not until May 20th. I probably spent a good 10 hours in total on installation. But much of that was due to my using a folding Montague instead of a normal frame. But if I wanted a non-folding big wheel bike or a folding small wheel bike, then I probably would have just purchased an eBike. Read Less
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