EGO kits

[sk8norcal]

Get your bike an EGO boost! - EGO Kits are add-on electric motor kits to upgrade about 70% of all bicycles on the market. 2400Watt maximum power open up unreached downhill trails as unreached fun on your uphill ride. Flat-speed upto 70kmh! Active bike handling is garanteed thru 3,1 kg lightweight motor and rucksack-battery.

http://www.ego-kits.com/

[boostjuice]

The way Cyclone kit's should have been put together in the first place... I'd bet my left nut they are using the same 'Headline electric' manufactured motor as well. It looks identical.

[Jeremy Harris]

Nice to see that someone's taken the Cyclone and done a reasonable job of re-engineering the fittings. Pity they didn't address the horrible noise though. There are virtually no off-the-shelf bottom bracket drive kits apart from this and the original Cyclone, so sorting the noise issue out would make this a nice bit of kit. As it stands it looks nice, but I'm not sure I'd want to ride around with what sounds like a horde of angry wasps buzzing away between my feet.................

Jeremy

[neptronix]

Heh, i'll tell ya... i myself don't mind that sound and i kinda liked that about my Currie setup.

If they made a kit at a reasonable price sans batteries, i'd really consider one.

[Ypedal]

yep. that's a cyclone alright.. and battery on the back. ( the right place for it when off-road imo )

[neptronix]

Is it really?

A cyclone with anodized / fancy cut painted parts?

[damonjackson_spl]

how does it mount onot the bike?

pics are too small!!

wish I could get the cad dxf so I can have a sticky beak on autocad2010

[sk8norcal]

how does it mount onot the bike?

the video shows it better,

it looks like that main piece uses the bottom bracket as a mounting point
and looks like velcro strap for the downtube...

[boostjuice]

Yeah, the top 'flaps' are likely designed to bend inwards until they make contact with the down-tube as the Velcro strap is tightened, forming a laterally rigid structure. It looks like the lower fastening point is designed around the ISCG chainguide mount - also with a bit of bending adjustment to accommodate for the varying bottom bracket shell widths. Only a select group of recent downhill bikes feature frame welded ISCG mounts as standard, so for the vast majority of bikes that don't have them, you can sandwich aftermarket ISCG adapter mounts behind the bottom bracket cups - on both sides if necessary. It's a smart design. I like it.

Whats not smart however, is running high torque (high current) through these motors crappy standard planet gears made of butter. If they haven't replaced or case hardened the standard gears to resolve this problem then the company had better prepare for a mass of warranty returns.

[Dingo2024]

agree its a cyclone and a good iteration....what I dont understand is how they have got the gear reduction down far enough on the motor to climb hills like in the vid. Looking a the size of the front chainring compared to crank length it is around standard size (40-44t?)....to get the pedal cadence down to 88rpm with my cyclone build at 48v I had to go to a 64t front ring and 13t on the motor (14t is stock cyclone).

Also no cooling fins etc. on the motor=overheat ..............I have my doubts

unless its not running 48v?

love to be proven wrong of course

Ian

[Ypedal]

I"d put money down that it's running 24v

[Miles]

It does use a 48v battery but we don't know what Kv the motor is wound for, so....

[etard]

If the Cyclone could be improved by just adding hardened gears in the gearbox, I'm sure that's what they did, and you will pay extra for that. This appears to be marketed to the DH crowd anyway as a hill assist for getting the heavy bikes uphill, and most Freeride, All Mountain, and ALL DH bikes have ISCG tabs around the BB anyway. I wonder if the freewheel on the cranks has been upgraded, isn't that one of the first components to go out on the Cyclone setups? Very smart setup, I think they nailed it.

Why did they yank the first video from youtube? I didn't get to see it, maybe it showed too much?

I think they enlisted AJ for this kit, look at all those lightening holes!!

[damonjackson_spl]

yeah I think they have nailed it!

I have a sneaking suspicion's it is the next gen kit from that elektro site from Sweden/Amsterdam or whatever? remember they had that website with triple chainsets YEARS before cyclone had theirs, and they used shimano Trials ISIS cranks, and you can send your frame to them to have the motor integrated into the frame, they did it on heaps of KONA stinky's!!

[rearengine]

How is it mounted???

Wow! I don't think like the sound of bending things , and Velcro straps to hold it on.. I have enough trouble with nuts and bolts .. Bill

[spinningmagnets]

Cyclone has really missed the boat when it comes to updating their kit choices. I remember stories I've read where major bicycle manufacturers are in print as saying that mountain bikes are a fad and will remain a niche business. Would it have really been so much effort to have a younger staffer take pics of what the kids were doing on the trails, and make up a few frames to see how they sold at bike shows?

"Cyclone" has become a defining term for crank-drives, for goodness sake! How many times have you walked over to a Minolta or Ricoh in order to "Xerox" a page? EGO has a rare opportunity to DEFINE an interface. If EGO wanted advice designing their V2.0 drive, here's what Id recommend.

This is for an upscale market. There is no need to compromise by using an off-the-shelf motor. Define the goals and order a batch of housings, stator laminations, and have a custom winding. Up the volts to something between 36V and 48V, add hall sensors, make the motor form slightly narrower and slightly larger in diameter (Miles' motor is a good size and shape as a starter experiment)

The most frequent complaint is that theres a lot of chain noise because the motor-sprocket is very small (in order to avoid adding an additional-stage jack-shaft reduction). Matt has gone from a 3:1 to a 2:1 on his pulley-set to give the smaller pulley more tooth-engagement due to high power slippage. Not hard to do, IF...you add a jackshaft reduction. If a large company is affordably mass-making custom parts (making it harder for others to copy their results) The basic bracket set would hold their motor, a jackshaft, and two pulley/toothed-belt sets, so the primary/secondary stages were both fairly quiet belts.

The large pulley on the BB would be mounted to an ENO freewheel thats attached to a central aluminum spider, allowing the customer to change out the plastic BB-pulley to a different ratio. This would be similar to the Extron #219 sprocket series, where it is more expensive to set up a shaft with an Extron spider, but once thats done, sprocket high-tooth-count changes are only $20.

The defining interface I mentioned earlier would be between the motor/jackshaft holder, and a secondary adapter. The secondary adapter would mate the unchanging EGO bracket to every popular downhill frame. An aluminum machined/stamped bracket with appropriate custom tube-clamps, would be a separate item to order. Next years new frames would only need a new adapter.

Such an EGO component module could also be easily adapted to a left-side drive on the rear wheel...Right now I would buy one of Matts drives over an EGO or Cyclone any day...

[etard]

I see what you are saying Spin, but I have to disagree. Imagine the cost of developing a motor from scratch, engineering bulletproof components and then trying apply all this to the various sizes of high end mt bike frames. then on top of that trying to sell this "add on" with more spinning sprockets on a chain size nobody has heard of ? A chain size that requires a special $50 chain breaker to fix. Yeah, it makes sense to us here, but this is the mt bike crowd, they are distrustful of anything with a motor, let alone adding weight and whirling sprockets is unconceivable. Now for the right price, some might be tempted to get their toes wet and try out this EGO kit, but if you add $1000 more to the price tag those takers disappear exponentially. You should see what they say about the Shuttle Buddy, it's a great product at a decent price, but alot of riders hate it with a passion. Grant it, the thing pollutes with smoke and noise, but most mtb riders don't see the reason in the first place.

[VSkudarnov]

EGO announced the prices for their kit - EUR 1850 plus shipping
So if you subtract the 1200W Cyclone kit for $928 (with slightly smaller 8ah battery) that they use, these guys want extra EUR1,000 for their cool mounting plate, cool cranks and the backpack (with slightly larger 12ah battery). Not bad mark-up, huh?

[Jeremy Harris]

EGO announced the prices for their kit - EUR 1850 plus shipping
So if you subtract the 1200W Cyclone kit for $928 (with slightly smaller 8ah battery) that they use, these guys want extra EUR1,000 for their cool mounting plate, cool cranks and the backpack (with slightly larger 12ah battery). Not bad mark-up, huh?

Ouch! I'd guessed they'd mark up the price a bit, but that seems crazy. It's almost enough of a mark up to tempt me into getting my local CNC place to make some nice brackets and put together a more competitively priced kit................

Jeremy

[VSkudarnov]

Ouch! I'd guessed they'd mark up the price a bit, but that seems crazy. It's almost enough of a mark up to tempt me into getting my local CNC place to make some nice brackets and put together a more competitively priced kit................

Jeremy

I was already thinking the same - similar mounting plate for my Kona Stab DH bike. But I am in Switzerland, and manual labour is f..ing expensive here.
You can make a model from the cardboard, try it on your bike and then order from the workshop. Their website should the complete picture.

But these guys have not solved the main Cyclone 1200W issue - 1200W 48V (with 14T freewheel to DH 32T chainwheel) will spin too fast to pedal! One need to use 13T freewheel and 52-60T chainwheel, which will look stupid on a DH bike and eat all the ground clearance...

The kit mounts on ISCG standard mount (standard for DH/FR bikes), but I think you can screw it directly on (under) the Bottom Bracket of the standard MTB, right?

[Whiplash]

I really want to see the install of this from start to finish, I can't get the video out of my head though! I WANT that climbing power! I think I'll have it too! LOL!

[sk8norcal]

[full-throttle]

Something funny going on @ 1:01 - watch the right foot

Slipped off the pedal??

[Whiplash]

I still LOVE their videos! These guys are who inspired me to build my kit! (Which I am almost finished with by the way!)

[Malcolm]

It's great to see someone come out with another bottom bracket kit that will fit a wide range of bikes. There seem to be a couple of different motors in the photos, including a cyclone, which as Jeremy says is likely to be noisy. I've been trying to refine my own bottom bracket drive to eliminate the noise. It's nowhere near as well finished, but I'm happy enough with the way it performs. It uses a 350W geared Bafang motor with stainless steel mountings. Still lots of improvements to make: I'd like to make it more compact and stiffen it up a little. Thanks for the pic of the ISCG chainguide mount Boostjuice – I wish I'd known about that before! Drilling 35mm holes in stainless is hard work...