considering my first build

[motomech]

This is the narrowest hub motor,

http://www.bmsbattery.com/rear-driving/353-250w350w-q-85100sx-motor-e-bike-kit.html

134 m/m. You can spread your steel chainstay to make it fit, 4 m/m isn't much.
Buy the whole 36V/350W "201" conversion kit.
They also have many of the batteries on sale at the moment, you want a Li-ion 48V battery.
This will put you right at the 22-23 mph mark.

I haven't heard of anyone paying duty for Chinese products and yes, it will be delivered to your house.

 

[ddk]

oh hi
contrariness here

I think if I were you I'd purchase a cheap ezip trailz ~$500

use that while waiting for your parts to show up and it will give you an idea of what you really want or need.

sell said ezip after your build is successfully tested (a couple of weeks of no problems)

I ridden an ezip all along the golf coast during the winter, where it only reached 100f once in a while

then I moved to a cooler local

life is good

 

[dogman dan]

For some reason I didn't see this thread for a while.

Cellmans geared muxus kit plus battery is a great idea. The cost of the motor won't bust your chops that much if you decide to upgrade it later. The battery, will be strong enough for a more powerfull controller later, like on a longtail with a dd motor.

Soon you'll be "in the club" with several ebikes. A longtail, a watt mizer, and a powerfull dirt stomper.

The Ezip is a better idea than many think, but just too noisy for me. The older 24v ones were very slow. I'd much rather have the muxus myself. Expect just about 20 mph out of it.

If the old bike frame is steel, don't sweat bending it out some to 135 mm, or even 140 if you need more to get clearance you need.

 

[bc_dc]

This is the narrowest hub motor,

http://www.bmsbattery.com/rear-driving/353-250w350w-q-85100sx-motor-e-bike-kit.html

134 m/m. You can spread your steel chainstay to make it fit, 4 m/m isn't much.
Buy the whole 36V/350W "201" conversion kit.
They also have many of the batteries on sale at the moment, you want a Li-ion 48V battery.
This will put you right at the 22-23 mph mark.

I haven't heard of anyone paying duty for Chinese products and yes, it will be delivered to your house.

That's good news, didn't want to get in a tangle with customs. The prices that BMS has are appealing, but cell_man's reputation for quality kits has for the most part swayed me. I'd rather pay a little more upfront to have something that should last longer. That figures into the battery size as well; the 9.2Ah battery is probably more than I need, but it would be nice to have the extra range there if wanted and at worst it would mean less discharge on my short commute. If I understand things correctly, discharging less between charges would mean the batteries should last longer, so that is worth it to me.

For some reason I didn't see this thread for a while.

Cellmans geared muxus kit plus battery is a great idea. The cost of the motor won't bust your chops that much if you decide to upgrade it later. The battery, will be strong enough for a more powerfull controller later, like on a longtail with a dd motor.

Soon you'll be "in the club" with several ebikes. A longtail, a watt mizer, and a powerfull dirt stomper.

The Ezip is a better idea than many think, but just too noisy for me. The older 24v ones were very slow. I'd much rather have the muxus myself. Expect just about 20 mph out of it.

If the old bike frame is steel, don't sweat bending it out some to 135 mm, or even 140 if you need more to get clearance you need.

Yeah, I got sidetracked with a few issues and didn't get to log on here as much as I wanted to. In the mean time I have had an email chain going with cell_man, nice guy, and he said that the MXUS will fit a 7 speed freewheel with space to spare and possibly could handle more. Assuming he meant on a standard 135mm dropout, so the wheel should fit in 130mm, it is just an issue with making sure things are spaced correctly if I need to swap out some spacers or decrease the number of gears. I took a 135mm rear wheel and squeezed it into the frame tonight, didn't seem to cause issue as you said, probably just me being a little skittish. Depending on how the axle is setup it may be as trivial as swapping out the nuts for thinner ones and the like. I hope to keep frame bending to a minimum, but it looks like it won't be as bad as I thought either way.

I ended up grabbing another frame from ebay, so ebike #2 is could be said to already be in the works.

 

[motomech]

You would still have to spread the frame. The Motor's 135 m/m measurement is from inner axle flange to inner axle flange. Freewheel space does not determine total width.

Ok, you are leaning towards Cell_man and the MXUS, good choice.

I'll will assume the your bike has some decent Delore XT 8-speed gear stuff, which would be nice to keep. If the steel forks are 100 m/m wide, I would frt. mount the MXUS with an off the shelf torque arm. Put the battery in a EV Falcon bag[which will fit your triangle perfectly], paint the motor and controller black, make the wires neat and nobody will know the bike is electric unless you tell them.

Below is a pic of my bike, where is the motor?

If you want to upgrade later, add a rear motor for 2WD.

Note, I no longwr use the lower bottle mount on the recommendation of Dogman.

 

[bc_dc]

My forks are stell and 100mm, but they are also rigid, which seems like adding the weight up there would make for a pretty harsh ride, but I'm not sure. At first I was thinking of doing the front mount since it is easier, but the rear drive should handle better. Granted, I'll mostly be powering around in a straight line. I need to think about it some more, but it might be worth the front mount just to simplfy things so the project can get moving faster; it would be nice to have it running before summer really hits. This is my first build afterall, so the opporunity to build a better bike in the future will always be there.

I always planned to put the battery in a triangle bag and/or inner downtube bottle mount to keep the weight in the center of the bike. cell_man said he is working on bottle mounts at this moment and they should be ready in a few weeks. I was thinking of a bottle mount and possibly but a triangle bag on the bottom to hide/protect it better (cell_man's bottle mount does have an Al case though, looks sturdy).

Between the 2 frames I have the only drivetrain equipment is an old Deore LX front derailer, looks to be in decent shape though. Both bikes had 7 speed cogs originally.

Those disk brakes do a great job hiding the motor. I hand't planned on disk due to complexity and cost, but for a front mount they would be more justifiable.

Maybe I don't understand freewheel hub construction very well (new at this), but I thought the axle would have a lock nut on each end, and looking at the 135mm rear I have laying around, I might be able to take 5mm out of it just by finding some slimmer nuts. Looking at pictures of freewheel hubs it seemed that removing a cog would do the trick, but I must be missing something. I'm probably not understanding what the inner axle flange is.

 

[motomech]

You wouldn't notice the frt motor at all with those power levels.
But since you have a 7-speed, go rear. You can use your existing drive train parts.
Go with the DNP freelwheel 11T rear cog.[cycle 9 or one of the Ebike stores have them if cell_man can't supply one]. This will give you good cadence @ the 22 mph top speed you should see w/ the MXUS @ 39V.
Time to break out the checkbook.

 

[bc_dc]

Time to break out the checkbook.

You're right about that!

I'm just about ready to order - going for MXUS rear, a123 39V 9.2Ah, and 48V 4A charger (only charging at home) all from cell_man.

I also plan to get a pair of torque arms from ebikes.ca for good measure.

A few questions about other stuff to complete the kit:

From what I've read, it is best not to put the controller in a bag. I was going to mount it on the stays the attach the rear rack to the seatpost or on the seatube in the bottle position depending on how everything fits. Would it be okay to paint it black? (plan to possibly do that to the motor too)

Also, I was looking into a CycleAnalyst and was thinking that the direct plug-in with speedometer would be the one to get. Are this compatable with cell_man controllers or is the plain stand alone model required?

 

[Ziggurat]

A few questions about other stuff to complete the kit:

From what I've read, it is best not to put the controller in a bag. I was going to mount it on the stays the attach the rear rack to the seatpost or on the seatube in the bottle position depending on how everything fits. Would it be okay to paint it black? (plan to possibly do that to the motor too)

I've had my controllers in my back pannier bag without any problem. With the mxus kit, its not big power and in my experience the controller gets barely warm. The ebikes.ca ones are black so I imagine painting black should be fine.

Also, I was looking into a CycleAnalyst and was thinking that the direct plug-in with speedometer would be the one to get. Are this compatable with cell_man controllers or is the plain stand alone model required?

You definitely need the CA with separate speedometer for geared motors.

There isn't a CA direct plug-in on the mxus kit controller, so you probably want the standalone... or... break out the checkbook a bit more and buy an ebikes.ca controller. That's what I did, as an upgrade, leaving me with a spare. I had to do some connector mods (with JST-SM connector kit from ebikes.ca and some Andersons) to make the two controllers match (battery, throttle, ebrake). The JST-SM's were a pain to work with, but mine have lasted very well once I finally got them made.

Or ... if you are electronically inclined ... there is also the possibility of adding your own direct-plugin connector to the controller. ebikes.ca site says "We don't recommend attempting to use the direct-plug devices with 3rd party controllers unless you savvy with electronics and have no problem understanding the following details..."

There is some talk about all these things in another thread from about here until the end of the page.

 

[dogman dan]

Maybe that was a typo, but get the same voltage charger as your battery. Likely cellman would straighten you out if you tried to buy a mismatch anyway.

 

[bc_dc]

Ziggurat - thanks for the info. i think setting up the stand alone CA looks simple enough, so I'll do that rather than get another controller.

dogman - yup, that was a typo; I meant the 36V 5A charger