In the unending quest for speed temporary sacrifices must be made. Thank you Marin Nicasio + for the wheel…very cool.



With a fully charged battery and front wheel upgrade I feel like the 39.9mph top speed is about to be smashed.


This should quiet down the front tire QUITE a bit.



This slick excels on the street (obviously) and can actually handle light trails surprisingly well too. I’ve taken it on trails few would dare to go with a slick.

Those who said it couldn’t be done…that the motor just wouldn’t have enough power well guess what. I was right about running a 27.5in front slick and a 58.8V fully charged battery.

Boom!

Very cool.

I am now thinking about converting a bike to an e-bike.

Can you provide info on the main components, brand/model, cost, source?

Congrats !!! Way to go !!! How many watts max does that pull and how many amps ??? God Bless !!!

911Boss, Yeah I can post up a breakdown of the build parts and where I got them as well as cost.

I’ll also post up some things I learned along the way that should hopefully help your build to be as easy as possible.


VBVAGUY, The bike is currently maxing out around 2000-2400 watts under full acceleration and while climbing a hill with a freshly charged battery (58-56V actual voltage).

I’ve seen reports that my hub motor can handle 3,000 watts for a few miles. It’s gearless and brushless so the only way to mess these things up is to overheat them by running them at a high wattage/speed for miles upon miles or to do lots of stop and then full throttle acceleration pulls over and over. Riding 5-8 miles didn’t seem to hurt the hub for people who were running 3,000 watts from a “1500” watt hub. I take mine up to 2,000 watts nearly every time I ride it.

I recently got a power meter to track amps. At full throttle and on a fresh battery I’m seeing 31 amps max. My build (the controller) can handle 45 amps +/- 2 amps so a better battery that can push more amps will make this thing even faster and drastically increase range.



The high speed is fun but honestly the coolest part is seeing real time how my pedaling will drop the watt usage and increase my range. The bike seems to really cruise around 25-35 with ease and without too much power consumption. Staying around 17-20 mph and pedaling to assist would give this thing an incredible range.

I’ve only had it completed about 17 days and I’ve already ridden close to 100 miles. The thing is a hoot.

I’d like to give a shout out to our fine member VTHOKY for being so kind as to let me borrow his GoPro! Now I won’t have to film my one handed acceleration test videos with one hand holding my iPhone while the other twists the throttle.

911Boss, I didn’t forget about your inquiry. I’ll post up a parts list soon. I want to also include less powerful and more affordable options for builds. Most people will be plenty happy with a 500-750W kit. The only problem with those is your inevitable longing for more power.

quote:

Originally posted by stickman428:
shout out ... VTHOKY

Hey, man, you've been an enabler for some of my shenanigans! Dad always taught, "turnabout is fair play."

Well….I think the bike is now “trail rated”. I had a moderate speed off/spill on a light trail today. I bet some of you were waiting for this inevitable post.

I lost the front end going way to damn fast on a twisty down hill trail and possibly accidentally grabbing more throttle as I tried to shift my position on the bike while braking into a sharp turn.

I lost the front end and slid off at about 15-20 mph. I’m fine and so is the bike. It hit a fallen tree and the front cable mounting zip tie on the down tube was severed from the mount on the frame holding them in place but thankfully that was the extend of the damage. The second mount was unaffected so it didn’t have any impact on performance or functionality of the bike. I’ve already addressed this weakness with 4 times the zip ties including one looping the down tube itself.

I got a little trail rash and dirt on me from sliding down the trail but nothing too bad. My trusty Suunto Core held up beautifully as did the Marin Pine Mountain Electric edition.





I also made a nifty battery charge scale by hand today to give me an idea of battery life based on voltage.

Only 44.3 more mph to go.

Please tell us you weren’t using the slick front tire on the trail. Do not hurt yourself! I don’t need to see wheelie video that badly.

I’m going to swap it to an ATV style thumb throttle. This is potentially the 2nd crash caused by this throttle style.

I distinctly remember thinking it shouldn’t be accelerating when I’m on both brakes but it wouldn’t be the first time I accidentally grabbed a bit of throttle. The 1/4 length grip twist throttle is not an ideal design.

Nah man I swapped the Maxxis back on after breaking 40. Though that slick would have probably been fine on the trail, the accidental acceleration into a turn was the real issue.

Had I been running a front slick I would have taken the trail MUCH slower, the Maxxis gave me a false sense of confidence in front grip. Hhahahha

This crash bugged me, in the back of my mind I kept thinking to myself, the damn bike shouldn’t have lost the front so quickly and unexpectedly. It reminded me a lot of when I wrecked an XL frame GT Karakoram with a long stem.

Then it dawned on me, my Giant Anthem full suspension bike that I had ridden trails on earlier in the day has a noticeably shorter stem than my Marin E-bike. The Giant Anthem has an 80mm stem versus the 110mm stem installed on the e-bike.

The longer the stem the better it climbs hills but you put more weight over the front wheel and have a less responsive bike for shredding trails. At speed on trails it is easier to lose grip on the front wheel and slide out/crash with a bike that has a damn long stem relative my short height.

I measured my other Marin Pine Mountain ridged and it has a 60mm stem. Hmmm. I then plucked a 65mm stem off one of my other mountain bikes and put it on the Marin E-bike.

Holy smokes! The difference between a 65mm stem and a 110mm stem is HUGE.. The bike now feels way more responsive and agile. My weight is shifted a little further back off the front wheel and now it feels quite a bit better.

I’m going to ride the same trail soon and see if this stem makes the bike over all feel more confidence inspiring.

I also need to contact the people I bought my kit from because while swapping stems I noticed that the crash cracked my LCD mount. Yay.

Not the greatest stem but it’ll do for now.


A pic of the old stem for reference.

What is the relationship of the pedaling to the electric motor? Do you pedal just to get moving? Does pedaling have some recharge effect?

OZ_Shadow, good question. On the vast majority of electric bikes you have to pedal to activate the electric motor. Often it is referred to as PAS (Pedal Assist). The bikes have a sensor on the crank and another sensor on the frame that tells the controller/motor that you are pedaling and depending on the power setting you selected etc it will provide power to assist.

My e-bike is a little different, it has the parts to have that functionality but I didn’t install them. This bike is straight twist throttle similar to a motorcycle. The whole grip/throttle doesn’t twist like on a motorcycle on my bike only a 1/4 length section of the right grip acts as a twist throttle. I’m going to soon covert it to an ATV style thumb throttle because this twist grip sucks when you are riding trails fast/on the limit.

I read that if you don’t go in and program the settings correctly my ebike kit can accelerate if you pedal backwards just like when you pedal forward. For that reason as well as my general preference for a straight up twist or thumb throttle not tied directly to pedaling I left the PAS (pedal assist function) off. I could easily install it in less than an hour if I wanted to.

If you pedal you can see your effort drop the watts being used to propel the bike at its current speed so in other words you can see real time the amount of help you are providing to your electric motor & battery. Pedaling to assist the electric motor and keeping the watts low (around 200-500) is how one can dramatically increase the range on these bikes in some cases to 100+ miles a charge on the better batteries.

I’m getting around 30 miles to a charge right now but I’m not exactly doing a ton of pedaling to assist and I’m taking the watts up to pretty dang high numbers (1500-2000W+). I am also using a fairly entry level battery so all things considered the performance is better than I expected.

I have a question about the level of effort required to pedal charge/assist. Is it more like a regular bicycle, or more like a stationary/spin bike? Does the effort required vary based on the terrain or battery draw, or is it fairly consistent?

Add me to the list of those who think this is a damn cool project. Congratulations for your accomplishment, and thanks for sharing it with us.

Architect, VERY good question. The new mid drive motors (they are located near the cranks/pedals) on the higher end/high performance electric bikes are starting to offer throttle off/coasting battery regeneration but I’ve only seen this on the VERY fast VERY high voltage offroad rigs. Those bikes are pretty much electric dirt bikes that are as powerful or more powerful than a two stroke 250cc racing dirt bike and they are $$$$$$.

The hub drive e-bikes like mine that I’ve seen using battery regeneration are using it when you hit the brake because the resistance required to regenerate the battery is quite a bit. It makes sense as a secondary brake on the rear wheel.

I should mention hub-drive motors like mine are gearless and brushless and while they are STOUT and typically last a very long time they have one small minor annoyance that I am not sure I mentioned yet. The magnets in the hub are very powerful and the wheel is quite heavy so there is a small amount of resistance. When you spin the wheel hard it won’t spin for a long time like a regular bike wheel, it usually will spin for about 4-5 seconds or so.

Because of the inherent resistance even without regeneration active I don’t think it would work on my bike as the bike would be quite hard to pedal and would not be fun at all. It’s good if you have a lot of downhill areas but it’s not going to give you a lot of juice unless you’re biking a long distance often and with a lot do long downhill stretches.

My kit has regenerative braking capability but I currently have it disabled as I am running a slightly higher voltage battery than my kit was designed for so I don’t want to press my luck too much. It is something I am researching right now and a feature I hope to be able to activate in the near future. It’s easy to activate brake regeneration in the programming, making sure I don’t hurt my controller or battery is a bit more complicated but I’ll figure it out. I am quite curious to see what it’ll do on the long downhill sections in my favorite park.

What's that motorcycle saying.. ATGATT?

Gloves and a bit longer pants at least some that cover your calves, pretty sure you don't need full coverage leathers, although, a tree at 40 mph is going to hurt!

Can you dial back the total power assist, when on trails to like 50% so you don't get yourself into that position,

Thumb throttle sounds like a good idea be interested in how it works out.

Do they make an otterbox type of case for that LCD, something to shield it is better than having it completely exposed.