Dillenger Conversion Kit | 250w | 36v | 10Ah

[byebyepetrol]

Ditto here too. Performance is "reliable". I'm the only cyclist with electric muscles on my commute all the other poor buggers are bravely battling on. Masochists. Respect.

Pedestrians
I've found bells et al including a 140dB electronic beep horn are useless alarms for pedestrians. Especially when they're wearing headphones. I've fond the best warning cry is "heads-up!"
Phonetically optimal, it projects the loudest warning and is neither fawning or confrontational. Also easy to pronounce when you're busting your lungs.

New Pack 14.5AHr 36v
FYI Took a new 14.5AHr 36v battery and out of interest swapped it out with the 10AHr 4000km one. Result is an 2kmh extra across all speeds but still limited to 35kmh.
It only drops one bar out of the five? after my commute whereas the old pack drops 3.

I'll test its max distance on a long run this weekend.

Battery Mounts
Despite bumping the pack every time I carry the bike up the front steps to my house the bottle mount system hasn't failed. It flexes but that's all.

Front Tyre
I've dropped a few psi out of the front Schwalbe to reduce the harshness; down to 52psi from 60. Rolling resistance has barely changed and it's a lot nicer to ride. FYI I have no front suspension.
If I did it's likely I'd run a higher psi.

 

[Scotty T]

Awesome thread, gives me a lot of confidence in my purchase I got the newer basic kit with the bullet battery and controller in the base (like that controversial fat bike battery). It's 36v 8Ah but says actual voltage is 48.

http://dillenger.com.au/shop/conversion-kits/250w-electric-bike-kit-li-ion-8ah-36v/

At first didn't add the PAS and had some dramas which I posted here:

http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=54165

The bike:

As you can see it is on a 3 speed hybrid, I am ordering a torque arm as I am slightly concerned about the cheap fork, esp after the same brand seatpost that came on it literally fell apart. Long term I think I'll go rigid but given that nobody has had a problem with this kit we'll see how that goes and keep a very close eye on it. The bike owes me $190 inc the new $40 post, seems to have had little use by an older fellow so should give plenty of trouble free riding. Sharing with my 16yo son for now but heaps keen to do the old rigid CrMo proper MTB.

I'm not that bike fit currently, would average 20k going hard on my MTB commuter on the 90%+ cycle path commute of 18.8k to work in Canberra, and way less on the same day coming back especially the climb home, haven't been on the bike enough for years. I ran out of gears on this bike as it has a 22t back cog so I've ordered an 18, the bike is 20kg, I am 90, had 4kg in the pannier, averaged 23.5 on the way in (first real ride on the bike) and 23.9 home!

Well done Dillenger, was stoked to order from an Aus company putting together good kits and supporting them, and you guys getting some fantastic mileage.

 

[Scotty T]

Oh I forgot, my charger gets really hot too. The battery on throttle control without PAS on the first commute one way (18.8km) was down to two lights on the pack, a bit below half so I had to take the charger. Hopefully can get some more range with the PAS.

 

[byebyepetrol]

Welcome to the forums Scotty and thanks for sharing a cracking good road test.

As for rigid fork I put up with mine but I think there's merit in taking a 1-1.5 Kg weight penalty to have the suspension.
Maybe not-so-much for front hub where the extra mass might impact on agility. A hardtail would be an effective platform for
an electric rear hub.

FYI
My next 29er (non-electric) MTB is getting Rockshox Reba air forks.

I'm a bit envious of your 18.8km commute. I enjoy my 9km each-way jaunt but it's not long enough ;0)

Wishing you a long and fun relationship with your bike.

 

[Scotty T]

Thanks mate, looks like a top notch forum and I've had a few lurks in the past while working up to getting this whole thing happening.

Thanks for the advice on the the forks, I do like the suspension especially with some of the bumpy bits I need to ride through, and the seatpost is quite nice but I think the internals of the shocks are a bit stuffed as they bottom out hitting anything at decent speed. There are some nice Suntour models out there for the hybrids that I would be more confident with. This is the other bike up for consideration:

But I might be able to get hold of something else with nice forks as a donor. Will put some more miles on this one first, and watch your Bafang upgrade thread

Just went for a 13k ride with my son on the e-bike and me on the rigid MTB, that will be roughly his commute distance to school each way. He's very unfit and overweight (scourge of the "digital natives") and it's been a hell of a struggle to get him on the bike, we MTB a bit living only 3km from Stromlo Forest Park. When we ride bike paths together normally 13km/h over 13km is a quick speed for him. We just did 17.2 on a fairly tight turny bike path route and I had to go pretty hard to keep up.

The battery was still reading 3/5 leds when we got home, but the dashboard went to 1/4 leds and flashed on the last hard climb home. Son was using the throttle fully to drag up the hill and not much pedal. I took it for a couple of kay spin on fairly flat, with no throttle and the dashboard adjusted again to half so it seems it's more of a live readout saying if you keep doing this hard dragging you will kill your battery really quick. I think that's what worried me arriving at work the first time as the last bit is very steep after a couple of km mellow climb.

It's the super basic dashboard, but the e-brake cutoff lever was actually heaps better than the cheesy one on the bike before so that was a win:

 

[Scotty T]

Can you tell I'm hooked? After a quick beer run assumptions seem correct that the dashboard indicator is adjusting according to what load is on the motor. Up the same hill just now without the throttle it stuck at 2/4 and didn't flash.

 

[2old]

Scotty T, another aspect of Dillenger that you'll appreciate, but hopefully won't need is they stand behind their product. A couple of ES members have had problems with their kits, but Sam Sewell resolved them.

 

[Dillenger_Australia]

Looks fantastic! Good job on a very tidy installation!

Sam

 

[Scotty T]

Looks fantastic! Good job on a very tidy installation!

Sam

Cheers Sam, I am sending a couple of other mates your way, they had a spin on the bike the other day and loved it.

 

[Scotty T]

Battery is well above half charge after 18km this morning on PAS, with only a couple of 5 second throttle blips near the top of a couple of hills. Huge difference, will make it back home easily. Also noticed how easy and stable it is to ride with no hands, the weight and inertia in the front wheel make it track like it's on rails, never experienced that before!

 

[Tats]

The dillinger kit works really well on the PAS - incredible torque for the power rating of this system with lots of range and a simple install.

The battery indicator I think is a basic voltmeter. When it reads lower, setting to a reduced level of assist and staying off the throttle to limit the peak current drawn helps prevent the voltage from dropping too much and the BMS cutting in.

 

[Scotty T]

The dillinger kit works really well on the PAS - incredible torque for the power rating of this system with lots of range and a simple install.

The battery indicator I think is a basic voltmeter. When it reads lower, setting to a reduced level of assist and staying off the throttle to limit the peak current drawn helps prevent the voltage from dropping too much and the BMS cutting in.

Yep it's just great using the PAS, I was skeptical at first thinking this was just a way of making sure you pedal all the time to activate the motor but it is a great system and doesn't put any strain on the motor at all, it just hums along with you. I think on the next build I won't bother with a throttle at all.

 

[tdmmodels]

I completed my ebike conversion of a 30 year old Diamondback Response Sport mountain bike.
I went with the Dillenger 350w kit with the 26v 10ah battery kit after doing a review of available electric bike kits.
I like the Dillenger kit because it had the frame mounted battery (No rear rack), plus it had 5 level pedal assist.

I should have done a little more reading/research before installing the hub motor on the old bike. It had a RockShox
aluminum fork and after about 15min of riding the fork failed (fortunately at a stop sign). I was naive and did not know
that that was unsafe unless you have dual toque arms. Dillenger should really have a WARNING on the web site regarding
the use of a front hub motor on an aluminum or allow fork and recommend torque arms if you want to do it.

I ordered a Surly Troll steel fork and installed it along with two (2) torque arms (I know it's overkill but I don't have to think about a failure).
Installing the Dillinger kit was fairly easy on this bike accept for the pedal assist ring. This bike had an aluminum pedal crank that was
slightly larger than the the sensor ring. I solved the dilemma by filing down a flat spot/groove on the crank and removing all the "fins" on the
pedal assist ring. I also had to enlarge the diameter of the ring to fit over the crank groove. I then epoxied the ring to the crank and it lined up fine.

As part of the upgrade on this old bike I had to replace the old gear shift levers with new and installed a new Shimano Acera v-brake on the front fork.
The Surly fork had about 1.8" longer dropout - crown distance compared to the old RockShox. I wanted the handlebars higher for a more comfortable ride
and replaced the old straight handlebars with a 4" rise set... all of which made the bike much better to ride.

I live in a hilly community in central Arkansas and the addition of electric power really makes bike riding more feasible now.
I've gone on a couple 10-15 mile rides and the 350w motor + peddling gets me up, down and around with not much effort.
Assist Level 3-4 will get me going as fast as I can peddle and seldom need more than 3-4 gears.

All in all I am very pleased with the Dillenger kit and have would recommend it to others. The only exception being that they really do need
to warn people about putting this motor on aluminum or alloy forks.

 

[2old]

Good review; my 36V, 10 ah conversion in on a 25 or so year old Diamondback Axis. A year trouble free (after an initial problem with the controller was resolved). Only consideration is after awhile, 30 mph will beckon. Trying to cure that itch now.

 

[Scotty T]

Nice build! Love the retro MTB's coming back to life with electric kits

 

[rolly]

Just got one of these Dillenger 250w front hub kits installed on my Avanti Blade Sport. I got the 13AH battery. Easy to install except for some dropout and lawyer lips filing, but it works great. I will also have to modify the magnet ring to fit on crank like in the above picture.

Thanks for everyone's posts here, they helped me decide what to get and how to install it! (instructions are a bit lacking)

Will update with pics and stats after i've put some k's on it.

 

[Tats]

G'day Rolly, I did the same with my PAS ring except I just used a couple of spots of superglue rather than the epoxy. Worked for me but I'd carry a spare tube of superglue with me just in case it came loose.

 

[rolly]

Hi again - haven't been riding as much as i would like (have put 600k's on it so far), but i've been enjoying the assistance from the front hub kit.

Lately I've been having a little issue with the motor - it appears to be shutting down once the output gets over a certain amount of watts (somewhere around 250w on the display). Previous to this the display would show up to about 550 watts on the highest setting. This means that it will turn off when using the 3 highest modes of pedal assist (5, 4 and occasionally 3). It can be turned back on immediately after shutting down, which makes me think that its not a physical problem with the hub. Other than that, it performs and sounds the same as it used to.

Do you have any idea on what would be causing this?

 

[2old]

Basically this happened to me twice with two different new batteries. They were kaput after a year. I don't think the problem is the motor.

 

[Tats]

My view - Battery can't handle the 15A discharge without hitting LVC due to voltage sag. 10aH is not a lot of headroom especially when they age. That's why feathering the throttle/watts is keeping it going.

Leave the battery on charge over the weekend to try and balance cells as much as you can - but I reckon thats the weak link.

 

[Dillenger_Australia]

If anyone else has run into this issue please get in contact. When we look back and examine the longevity of the headway 36V 10Ah packs we are a little underwhelmed. Despite the battery factory honoring each and every warranty claim (and subsequently customers getting replacements), overall there are more than the acceptable level of low capacity/saggy batteries. About 18 months ago we changed over to Samsung cells for this kit (it's now 36V 13Ah) and there has been an increase in longevity passed the warranty period. But I realize that doesn't really help the customers that are still using the headway packs and having these issues before their time. If anyone is in that situation, please contact me here and we can offer something of a discount on upgrading to a Samsung pack.

Sam

 

[rolly]

Thanks for the replies. Mine is the 13AH samsung battery i'm sure.
So there's nothing that can be done, bar get a new battery?

 

[2old]

Definitely try to revive it as described above; my first battery had the identical problem that you describe, but wasn't possible to save. The second one is basically doing the same thing.

 

[rolly]

So i should leave the battery to charge for a couple of days? Even after its fully charged (green light on charger)?
I just had another thought. I've never run this battery completely flat. Would that help anything?

 

[Dillenger_Australia]

Hi Rolly, when did you purchase the battery? Did you have an order number? And whereabouts are you located?

Sam