novembersierra28 said:
This bicycle has taken me at least 5 months to complete to this late stage.
There is a freewheel inside the chainwheel allowing the pedals to remain still (or one can pedal).
Freewheels have relatively crummy, loose bearings. They work fine that way because in a normal bike, freewheels only turn when
not under load from the chain. But on a bike where the freewheel spins under load like a Cyclone e-bike or a Da Vinci tandem, regular freewheels tend to self-destruct. With help from an Etek, yours will probably do so sooner rather than later. Be familiar with what happens when the freewheel literally disassembles itself and falls apart-- probably just a jumped or jammed chain, but try to anticipate the consequences.
Da Vinci beefs up the freewheels used in their systems by spot-welding the threaded bearing parts together so they can't loosen. This doesn't make the bearing last longer, but it does keep the freewheel from barfing its guts out.
would substituting the front forks make a difference? I might try this before I scrap a hardened steel frame (Raleigh make good ones).
According to specs I've found for the Raleigh Rave, it has a mild steel fork with a 1" steer tube. That's more prone to bending than a chromoly fork or one with a 1-1/8" steer tube. You also want to be sure to run the stem quill deep enough into the steer tube that its expander wedge is well below the steer tube's threads. If the stem is fixed too high, the handlebars can break away without warning. The only way to know with certainty how deep it needs to be is to take apart the headset and have a look at the outside of the fork steer tube.
The extra weight and higher speed of your bike will place much higher stresses on the fork than normal, but the motor drive will have no direct effect on it. In any case, you can only replace your fork with another 1" fork. A decent quality suspension fork (hard to find in the 1" size) would not be a bad idea, because it would save the bike some amount of beating as well as giving you more comfort at speed. A triple-clamp type fork would offer better strength and rigidity, but you'd have to mount a drum or disc front brake, or weld on some new brake bosses.
http://socalicustom.com/bikes/product_info.php?products_id=910&language=1
I looked up information about the Raleigh Rave. It's a cheap bike with a cheap, probably Taiwanese but maybe Chinese frame. A cheap/crappy frame is not necessarily a weak frame! Sometimes it's quite the opposite. But you have to be discriminating about the details. (Certainly you don't want to have this conversion on a lightweight bike.) Note that your faith in Raleigh is misplaced-- that company name was sold to Derby Cycle in the 80s, and then Derby went broke and changed hands, etc. The Raleigh brand tells you nothing about a bike anymore except that the current owner of the name is trying to use it to get more money for the bike than it would be worth as a generic.
The Rave is a bike that retailed under $200 in 1999; in other words, it was the cheapest bike in the bike shop or one of the nicer ones at the department store. It had a "high tensile" steel frame, meaning mild steel, probably 1020 alloy. The good news is that a hi-ten frame is probably pretty stiff and will almost certainly bend before it breaks. The bad news is that it's likely to be poorly made and not particularly strong (but there are lots of exceptions).
http://www.bikepedia.com/Quickbike/BikeSpecs.aspx?Year=1999&Brand=Raleigh&Model=Rave&Type=bike
http://www99.epinions.com/bike-Bicycles-All-80509-Raleigh_Rave__1999
Anyway-- be careful, go easy on the bike, and if you can get your motor mounts and some reinforcements welded on instead of bolted, that would be a very good idea.
Chalo
