Raleigh 3 speed cruiser. First build. Advice requested.

fourbanger

100 W
Joined
Jul 17, 2014
Messages
214
Location
Vancouver B.C. Canada
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Just bought this old timey bike a couple days ago. It's actually a little tall for me but with an old license plate from one of the local municipalities I just couldn't resist. SA 3 spd with drum brake sealed the deal and the guy took my offer of $160 so now I likely have a candidate for my first conversion.

Trying to keep my goals simple and modest for the first time around.

25 km range
32 km/h max speed with pedaling (top speed limit here in Canada)
keep the bike as stock as possible the looks unassuming and inconspicuous

Pretty set on a flatpack rear rack battery and front geared hub. Undecided on PAS or torque sensor but I'm leaning towards not for now.

Battery would likely be something along the lines of this: http://www.bmsbattery.com/36v/464-36v-15ah-lithium-ion-electric-bicycle-battery-pack.html

But think I could use some recommendations on motor/controller.

Trying to keep the cost down as I wouldn't mind flipping this for a few bucks once it's all said.

Might be a fool's errand but hey, other people are doing it and I can make even $50 off my first build I'd consider it to be a success.

Thoughts and comments, criticism and recommendations all welcome.

Thanks!

V.
 
If you are looking for a project to make a buck, you are looking at the wrong place.
Just buy old bikes and fix them up.
I don't think anybody here, except those who own an Ebike business, has ever made any money doing this.
 
I don't know if you can flip it and make a few bucks, it's only fair to make something if you invest your time to install a kit on a bike. There is a bit of a learning curve. But then it becomes a used bike unless you have a shop and sell them as new.

The battery you link to is virtually the same as the one I bought. I'm a bit surprised because I thought they were now using Anderson connectors to connect the battery to the controller. The one in the picture is the one I have and has given me some trouble. The prongs slide into the sockets and after a few thousand miles the connection becomes intermittent, which is a pain. However with YKicks help, I learned how to disassemble that and clean it out.

The kit that BMSBattery has on that page is pretty close to what I started with as well and works fine. The whole thing with battery is under $600 shipped, but it takes a few weeks.
 
dgk02 said:
The one in the picture is the one I have and has given me some trouble. The prongs slide into the sockets and after a few thousand miles the connection becomes intermittent, which is a pain. However with YKicks help, I learned how to disassemble that and clean it out.
Can you point me to the thread or whatever that talks about how to disassemble and clean out the connection? I think I may have a similar problem. My connection is the 3-prong variety.

Many thanks.
 
Interesting about the intermittent connectivity. I do believe I had the same problem with my store bought ebike which had the same type of connection from battery to controller. I don't seem to recall the actual lcd cutting out, just the power for a couple seconds, then back on again.

Anywho, I'm playing with Justin's ebike simulator and thinking right now that a Bafang MXUS with 48v and a 15A controller ought to do the trick.

Bit of a learning curve indeed!
 
If that bike has a chrome wheel you are asking for trouble as it is most likely not a standard hub motor size. The size is not equivalent to a normal 26" mountain bike size...perhaps 26x 3/8? You will have issues with your brakes not fitting I think.
I had an old Raleigh 3 speed, and it is NOT a normal 26" nominal size. The decimal sizes like 26x1.5 are not the same as the old chrome wheeled threespeeds. A normal hub motor will have its rim inside the extent of whatever brakes are on that old clunker, like the older Weinmanns etc. You would need some sort of long-reach calipers. Those old Raleighs are somewhere between modern mountain bike sizes and 27C. No hub motors come in that size.
 
Yea, I've been thinking about that of late. Seems to me the only solution would be to buy the hub motor bare, get some 700c spokes and cut them down and re-thread the ends to have it built into the stock rim size (590mm). Unless I'm missing something else, that is...

Learning curve ain't a linear one, is it?
 
Its not worth the trouble with the non-standard sizes, on those old clunkers, much as I like the 40s war era Britain "look". The chrome rims have lousy breaking power in wet conditions, on the rear, and you would have to get a wheel build on the new hubbie. The 3speed hubs are ok, geared pretty high in 3rd, but often fail or are touchy. Putting a lot of pedalling torque on those is a recipe to destroy your testicles if you stand up on a hill (you probably wouldn't on an ebike, unless you had to ride it home) and it failed or was maladjusted. I think those bikes are pretty well obsolete, except for the esthetic if pedalled as they come. I'd buy a cheap better bike to convert, in a standard wheel size, whatever that would look like, road bike, hybrid. Alloy frame, steel fork with decent dropouts and fender eyelets. Lots of bikes like that out there for a hundred bucks.
 
I agree, that bike may very well have odd size rims, and also different axle lengths from modern standard.

So it will be a lot of your time and effort to modify it and or a hub motor enough to run it electric.

What it is, is a candidate for a friction drive. (fenders removed) But still going to be tough to sell at a profit, unless you consider a buck an hour for your time profit.

Nice bike though, well worth having in the collection of bikes. In my stable, only about half the bikes are ebikes. The vintage stuff is left stock. I must admit since I got sick I don't ride them much, but the wife does.
 
dilkes said:
dgk02 said:
The one in the picture is the one I have and has given me some trouble. The prongs slide into the sockets and after a few thousand miles the connection becomes intermittent, which is a pain. However with YKicks help, I learned how to disassemble that and clean it out.
Can you point me to the thread or whatever that talks about how to disassemble and clean out the connection? I think I may have a similar problem. My connection is the 3-prong variety.

Many thanks.

There was no thread; I live close enough to him to have gone over to his place. Essentially, the prongs fit into a receptacle that has sort of clips that grip the prong(s). While that works fine for normal AC plugs, I think the problem on the bike is that there is constant up/down/side/side/back/forth movements, and over a few thousand miles the clips just get pushed back a bit from the surface area of the prongs and don't make good solid contact. All I did was to open up the compartment that has the clips, take them apart, and bend them out so they make good contact again. So far, so good. In fact, before I did that, I cut little wires about 1/2" long, bent them at right angles, and taped them so they hung over the clips, forcing a better connection. But over time, those broke off and I had to clean them out of the way when I opened up the clips. I think I'll put together a little you tube video to show this since it's likely that other folks have the same issue. Anderson and bullet connectors are really better, but don't work so well for sliding a battery onto and off the rack.

Oh, in order to open up the compartment, we had to remove a lot of waxy stuff that BMSBattery used to hold the wires in place. We replaced that with regular heat-shrink insulation.
 
Hmm. Lots of obstacles to overcome.

I appreciate the words of caution from you ebike vets, and take them at value, but I'm going to do it anyway and here's why.

Spokes can be made or modified to fit this old clunker.
Brakes on this bike are more responsive than on my 26" alloy rimed daily rider with cantis and given the modest level of electronic assist I'd like to incorporate I don't see why they wouldn't be sufficient.
Bikes are only any good if they're ridden. The top gear on the SA *IS* infact much higher than I anticipated (remember), but there's no point in me collecting old bikes just because they're old.

If the toy I buy is so nice that I don't want to take it out of the box to play with it then what's the frocking point?

However, all these things being taken into consideration it seems that I may be setting myself up for a really overly complex first build, and that's not what I'm looking for.

Sounds a lot like I should find myself something a little more simple and straight forward to start with. I'll put this project on the back burner for now and come back to it later; it's waited a good 50 years, I'm sure it can wait a little longer..

Thanks y'all as always.

To the guy from my town; we should meet up sometime for a drink, if you're up for it.

PS.

None of you ever did recommend a suitable motor/controller combo supposing I actually were to go through with this.

Cheers,

V.

PPS.

I like how f------ gets turned into frocking on this forum.

That's frocking brilliant.
 
Don't cuss on the forum please. At least not the f bomb. Now you make me go edit into frocking. It's not magic, you make us work to make it into frocking.

Soon as you tell us how wide the frame is on that bike, we can tell you if it's even possible to fit a hubmotor on it without seriously bending up the frame.

Here's the deal, you pretty much are limited to a front motor, but on older bikes the forks are often narrower, so the motor would rub the forks if you tried that.

Ok, bottom bracket motor, Well, my experience is that the bb shell on older bikes is not the same size as modern bikes bb shell.

You like the brakes? Great, but you won't have that drum front brake anymore with a front hubmotor. If you replace the rear wheel, there goes your vintgage IGH gears.

What's left now? Not much, you might be able to put one of those noisy currie kits on it. Or some other kind of drives the rear wheel with a sprocket on the left side kind of thing. Lots of folks home make stuff like that. Or some kind of friction drive, homemade or whatever.

See where you are? Sure you can do it, and it might be quite fun to. But originally you mentioned doing it for profit, well, you won't profit.

For your first hubmotor bike, the ideal will be a more modern bike, one with 135 mm rear spacing and 100mm front fork width. Then we can start recommending kits because they will fit the bike. I don't mean brand new, but something from the 90's or so. Not something from the 70's or older.
 
Looking again at that bike, I thought it had a drum brake you liked. But It appears to me like rim brakes front and back.

Steel frames can be bent. If you don't mind doing that, you can fit a custom laced rear motor on it after spreading the rear to 135mm. The bike would make a nice single speed then, with a single gear freewheel on the motor. Who needs to shift an ebike anyway?

I'd suggest a Mac 10t, or similar larger gearmotor for that. Something able to run 500-1000w. Grin Cyclery is the good vendor in Canada, if not the worlds best. Ezee kit? They could build your wheel once you send them the rim, if it's still straight.

Or, if you would rather have a smaller motor, grin can still do your spokes for you to lace er up. I just still suspect though, that a front motor simply won't fit. So your plan B must be a rear hub after spreading that frame. It might be possible to put a cheap derailleur on it too, but there goes that classic look if you do that.
 
This would be project is looking less and less easy by the day. I'm glad this forum is here or I would probably be totally smocked.

I'll take a ruler to the front forks tomorrow. Yes there are rim brakes front and rear but the IGH is fitted with a drum brake that isn't attached to anything. That front drum looking thing is actually an old hub generator who's guts seem to have migrated elsewhere, hence I see no loss in swapping it out with a motor.

I hadn't counted on the forks being too narrow to accommodate a little 350Wish motor, but like I say I'll get an accurate measurement tomorrow to figure out what's up.

Don't mind stretching out the back stays a bit, but bending forks more than just a little can make me feel a little nervous, to be honest.

Thanks again. I'll keep you all posted.
 
Have a look at the Raleigh conversion and comments just posted by Justin in the "Girls On Electric Bikes " thread.
 
That bike might have a 100mm fork. Or it might not. Back far enough, bikes had all kinds of fork widths. Now it's pretty standard 100mm. I wouldn't hesitate to pry a fork out 5mm, but no more than that.

The geared motors can be wider 3" up the fork from the drops than dd motors, so look at those measurements first.

Best approach may still be turning it into a nice slick single gear. That IGH is not that beauty.
 
If it were my bicycle I would put a q100 or q128 in the front and make it as stealthy as possible and ride the hell out of it, because I love IGH hubs.
 
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