Butcher & Bicycle, Leaning Trike advices

Hi there,

As a new family we just bought a leaning trike second hand to replace most of our car usage. We will probably ditch the car once the house heavy work will be done. I'm here to ask your help and experience on this project. I've read a ton of documentation but I feel I've barely scratched the surface. I've done studies post Bac in Electronics so it doesn't scare me to "plug" the system or even doing some soldering but hopefully I will not need to get there.

I'm from Quebec, so I'm looking for buying from Canada. Ebikes.ca looks to be something that people here recommend often.

Here is the electric version of my mk1.


Battery

The Butcher & Bicycle mk-1 is a leaning trike ~40kg (89lbs). The box can contain ~80kg (180lbs) stock plus driver ~80kg (180lbs). So that's a possible 200kg (450lbs) to move. My goal is to be able to move this load at ~20-25km/h (12-15 mph). To this purpose I was thinking buying a 36V - 23Ah battery that will go in the glove box (hidden) so less chance of someone robing it.

Motor

The position of the front wheel make's it easy to tip from the nose with cargo in if I get off the bike without the stand. I'd like to avoid this at a red light . My idea would be to add some weight on the back using a Hub. The frame can take a Carbon Belt Drive, and I'd like to swap to this in a near future. I also have a 8 speed hub and I like the low maintenance (but the actual hub looks to need some maintenance soon, weird noises appeared 3 days ago)

With this in mind, the options I can see:

Mid Drive (BBSHD like),

(+) More weight on the back,
(-) Probably not compatible with carbon belt
(-) Adds stress on the current hub
(-) Not in ebikes.ca

Dual front hub motors

(+) 2 times the torque
(-) does not help with the nose tiping

Options :

Dual Bafang mg311
(?) Is it possible to build one in reverse to be able to use the disk brakes
(?) Works in single side usage?
(+) Stealth
(+) Good torque
(-) Cable will exit on the wrong side
(-) No regen

Dual Grin Single Side Axle

(+) Regen
(+) MOAR POWER !!!
(-) Expensive $$
(-) Big so not that "stealthy"

Single Rear Hub Motor: TDCM IGH

(+) Easy installation
(+) Weight in the rear
(+) Hub Sturmey Archer 5 speed (Is that enough)
(+) Regen
(?) Carbon belt compatible
(?) Enough torque
(?) Torque Arm position? Do I need to know/measure some things → Picture MK1 Bionx convertion

I like the dual bafang g311 but it doesn't seem to be compatible in "dual", Grin Single Axle is a bit above my upper limit on price, and I don't like to add extra stress on the current hub.

So my choice would go with the Rear Hub above but...

- Do you think that the torque would be enough for my usage?
- Does a 5 speed 200% range is enough?
- Do I need to know/measure something before buying it?

Throttle + PAS

Ideally I want to use a torque PAS with the previous hub choice. I need first to install the wheel with the hub and then measure how wide the bottom bracket need to be. So I will probably go with a 24pole simple cadence with a thumb throttle for extra boost and regen (with TripWire_push due to liquid brakes)

More things

For the rest, I really don't know and went with what have be proposed.

CycleAnalyst V3, C7240-GR controller and a Satiator for charging

Do you see anything missing, advices, what I should look for?

Thanks for your help,
Vincent

Batteries

Digging a bit more, I've seen that I get the same range if I take a 52V - 16A/h battery or 36V - 23A/h at the same speed but can possibly ride at 38kph (52V) vs 30.3kph (36V). Full throttle it happens to have more Torque with the 52V too. Overheats in 1 minute though. Any advice on the battery choice?









Motor will be the TDCM IGH, the "torque" arm look to be really small though and I'm afraid it will bend my dropout.

I think the big question is what top speed you will need.. and what kind of hills you will need to climb.

IMHO with a vehicle like this, having such a wide front wheelbase will limit your options on where you can operate it. Do you have narrow bike lanes along your travels? if so, this vehicle is a problem and you may want to consider a 2 wheels cargo bike.

52v 20ah or more good cells.Rear hub. 40 amp controller. As it can be turned down or three speed switch. Torque arms. C.A.
Maybe the battery can fit under the tub.
Ebikes.CA has great support and is in Canadeesay.

Thanks for your answers

neptronix said:

I think the big question is what top speed you will need.. and what kind of hills you will need to climb.

IMHO with a vehicle like this, having such a wide front wheelbase will limit your options on where you can operate it. Do you have narrow bike lanes along your travels? if so, this vehicle is a problem and you may want to consider a 2 wheels cargo bike.

Click to expand...

Hi, we live in Montreal and 5% grade hill are quite common. With peaks at 15% but we try to avoid those. For the speed I'm aiming an average of 20km/h loaded. With a maximum of ~35 when alone on the bike (no baby).

The cargo is already bought and we love it (good workout though ). It's not that wide (90cm) and fit in the bike lanes we have around. During summer I try to avoid those because it's too crowded. The reason for the three wheel is mostly for the winter. We have a lot of snow and ice on side streets is common. I will feel safer on a 3 wheel.

999zip999 said:

52v 20ah or more good cells.Rear hub. 40 amp controller. As it can be turned down or three speed switch. Torque arms. C.A.
Maybe the battery can fit under the tub.
Ebikes.CA has great support and is in Canadeesay.

Click to expand...

Hi, thanks for the advices. Adding Torque Arm V4 in the shop list. I hope it will fit on our particular dropout.

For the battery I think I will try to put it at the same place than the mk1-e(lectric) -> in the glove box. I will need longer cables from the motor though



Butcher & Bicycle Image from electricbikereview.com

neptronix said:

IMHO with a vehicle like this, having such a wide front wheelbase will limit your options on where you can operate it.

Click to expand...

It's not even 3 feet wide, so it's narrower than SB Cruiser, and SBC fits in bike lanes, and between bollards on bike paths, etc. (although SBC doesn't fit thru my front door, by a couple inches or so, the B&B trike would).

There *are* so-called bike lanes around here that aren't even as wide as common handlebars, but those aren't wide enough to ride in safely on a normal bike.

I like it, but if you load the front you can't stop very fast at all before it starts to tip.

After a lot of thinking, my final choice is to use a mid drive.

It's a cargo bike, so we will have plenty of load and we need something that can ramp up the hills without overheating.

Back Wheel hub will not do the trick:
- The TDCM IGH have been removed from the battle for those reasons. If sturmey archer changes his hub. I'm roasted if anything breaks and need to buy a new motor + igh. If the motor fails, I need to buy a new combo too. Steep hills will probably overheat him fast too.
- I want to keep an internal hub for easy day to day maintenance and Montreal Winter snow/ice.

Front Wheels:
Only thing that can work with the dual disk brakes are the Grin Through Axle Hub. ~1000$ per wheel is a bit too much for me.

Only stays the Mid Drive mecanisms:
I've seen this awesome post / work on opensource of TSDZ2 and will try this torque sensing mid drive. I need a good torque on low speed and it seems to deliver on this.
Furthermore, I will keep my current hub Alfine 8 and i can change it for ~250$ if it fails or buy something else if I want.
The default I can see is the extra stress on the chain but as an internal hub, I'm not using a cassette and will have less chance to destroy everything by easing on the pedals before each speed change.

So I've bought a 52V 16Ah from Grin, and a TSDZ2 From PSWPower on Aliexpress.
I received a Bafang BBS02b instead and I will have to open a dispute to find an arrangement. I don't need the bafang that does not have torque sensing.

Story ongoing

A year later.... how'd it go?

Converting the MK1 to electric with TSDZ2 was completed before winter 2019 and it was a pain. It took me around 20h to do it as I wanted but can take probably less if you don't want to use the opensource firmware.

I've used a 52V battery 850W/h incompatible with the motor (use 48V to save time) because I wanted to lower the Amp a bit to prevent overheating (using 52V x 10Amp) with a wattage limitation at 500W and 32km/h (Quebec law).

It took me 1 month and an half to complete on my free time (taking care of the baby full time don't let much)

The motor don't fit as is on this kind of big downtube. I had to give a 45 degree cut on the motor enclosing. The speed/brake cable pass inside the frame tube and just goes out where the motor is, so they had to be removed and put outside of it. It meant bleeding the back brake (painful, needs custom tools), rewire the hub speeds (not that difficult, use a tandem cable though) and removing the box to pass new cables (screen)

On classic bikes, the battery goes on the bottle cage eyelet but it didn't fit on this bike. The battery is pretty long and the power cable was on the way or I wasn't able to remove the battery from his slot. So I had to create a custom bracket from a steel plate that I've put in the same place as the MK1-e. The plate snapped where I bent it. Then I 3d printed one but it snapped in two rides (PETG plastic). Finally I've used an aluminum flat bar 3inch wide by 1/4 inch and it worked for the last 4 months. There is a pre-cut hole to remove on the box (they probably use the same box with the mk1-e and mk1, saved me time yay).

The chain was way offset ~2-3cm so I've bought an custom chainring but I could have passed on that as it only moved the chainring .5cm inward. I've checked the net and flipped the rear cog side. it gave me a "correct" chainline.

I use a KT-LCD3 screen that is not compatible with the motor, just to be able to use the opensource firmware. It meant splicing some electric cables, solder some other cable to be able to reprogram without opening everything again, reprogram motor and screen. It was a scary part ^^ but you don't have if you stay with the provided screen or buy everything already programmed (electrifybike sell it already programmed)

Cost me around 1000Cad for battery (biggest I found), 300Cad for charger (most complete I found), 500Cad motor, 150Cad chainring (optionnal) and a bunch of custom tools (bleeding, new pads etc).

The charger is a satiator from ebikes.ca. It let me charge it to ~80% to extend the durability of the battery from ~500 charges to ~2000 charges. When I need a full range, I charge it to the top. I've used 25% of the battery with 15km of stop and go in the city loaded, so probably ~60km on the current assist/load. I've done ~600km in the 4 last months of mostly stop and go in city getting my groceries and/or daughter. She loves the bike and never want to stop at home. Once at home I need to do 2 or 3 round around the block before she's ok stopping without much fuss.

All this work was totally worth it. The bike is more stable. The nose don't tip as easily as before with weight (motor and battery behind the front wheels). It's a pleasure to drive and climb uphills at 15/20 km/h where I had trouble climbing at all. The city stop and go is not a pain anymore with the weight in the box.