Although I wouldn’t want a hub motor on the front wheel. The bike is designed to take the human created power at the crank and distribute it to the rear wheel. So the front wheel just wouldn’t like all that power up there.
We got enough people on here to be able to cut any mounts you would need outside of the kit you get, you can throw together the safest battery and not worry about chinesium leaking out of it!
I’m going to do some digging on this now…you got me wanting to make one too!
I cycled to school for years. One thing I see, related to the bike part: front loaders are shit. Makes turning at low speed impossible. If you’re expecting her to take any sort of luggage, make sure it has a rear carrier
Hub motor conversion is easier and cheaper but frame has to allow for dropouts rather than thru axle on newer mountain bikes. Same as a skateboard choose your battery and motor to suit your needs.
That’s my bike the battery case is designed to fit on water bottle mounts, has 70 18650’s so if frame can fit one of them they easy to fit and take off the bike when not using.
I went for high kv motor that bike can do 50 mph bit gets there leisurely, can get 20 miles out a charge no probs. The motor controller is from grin technologies that’s the guy who has endless sphere. I’m gonna change out the motor some point for more torque to get wheelies.
Glad bill mentioned spoke length with hub motors, comfort with shorter spoke length is oft overlooked.
If you haven’t already check out Grin based in BC. i know you dont want to spend dozens of hours on learning and configuring so the motor simulator tool justin has may be really helpful. you can select specific motor/wheeel/battery config to help determine what will make the most sense for her daily commute. they also have a wide range of motors they can build into the wheel for you.
When fitting hub motor to bikes either front or rear standard practice is to fit a torque arm, it fixed to frame and holds the axle to prevent it snapping the dropouts from the force of the motor
I would go with a rear hub motor, it’s easy, pretty cheap, and plenty powerful. I work at a bike shop, and have ridden a few of the e-bikes that we sell, and even a 250 watt hub motor bike can get you up to 20mph quickly. Comfort with a hub motor isn’t really a problem, as you can just lower the tire pressure for a smoother ride. Also, as far as a motor controller goes, it’s very easy to set up a vesc with a traditional e-bike throttle. The vesc works really well unless your planning on using higher voltages.
I once converted a dead Razor Dirt Bike to esk8 parts, it was a lot of fun, and scary fast. It had a flispky vesc 4.12, a TB 6380 motor, and a lipo battery.
Edit: Also, I would recommenced buying a bike (non electric) from a bike shop and not online. Most shops adjust hub bearings, true the wheels, adjust headset and bottom bracket bearings, adjust the shifting, and adjust the brakes. All of these things make a big difference, and unless you know how to do them yourself, and have the tools to do them, buying a bike from a shop is the way to go.
+1 for LBS
its also the end of the season for many local bike shoppes so you are likely to find sales. the lbs will also stock components required to tune & repair the cruiser when something goes pear shaped. unfortunately there are so many standards for bikes that few things are standard. by purchasing online there is a risk of having a standard component that may be common but not common in the area and will extend downtime while waiting for delivery. I say this from experience and also understand i’m a bit more remote than most on this forum.
Getting the tools to do almost every repair on a bike is like 30$ and the book to figure how is free online. Sadly with the overhead cost of running a bike store it’s much cheaper online. Every time I go in for possibly doing a repair the cost is more than the tool to do it myself.
