Detachable system for vintage road bike.

[Suuup]

I commute to work daily - about 4 km. It's nothing huge, and I have no problem making it. There's a small hill on the way that I enjoy every day. I honestly like riding my bike (no motor). My bike is a nice vintage road bike, probably around 40 years old. I've inherited it, so I don't know much about it. It has Shimano 600 gearing with nice friction shifters. I don't ever use the front inner ring (small one).

I'd like to install a motor on the bike - just for fun mostly. I want to get nice acceleration, and preferably a somewhat nice top speed. I probably won't use the motor all the time, so it doesn't need a huge range, 10-15 km should do it. I'm definitely okay with building everything myself, so I'm not really looking for premade options (unless they're cheap).

What I had in mind is install a motor on the downtube where the water bottles usually are (I have none installed) - something like this http://www.ebay.com/itm/2-2KW-WATER...788256?hash=item3aae256060:g:-y4AAOSwEetWA6To, and the batteries on the seat tube (or vice versa). I'll need some sort of transmission from the motor to the crank / chainring. Since I have a free chainring, I figured I could use that. It's perfectly fine if the system is somewhat clunky. I was thinking some sort of lever/clutch system to transfer the power to the bike.

Is this at all possible? And does anyone know how much the total price would be? I'm thinking ~1000$ - am I totally off?

 

[Gregory]

A motor for a CNC is going to be designed to spin 10 to 20,000 rpm or more. That seems wildly inappropriate.

Have you looked through the builds in the Non-hub motor sub section? There's plenty of ideas there that are actually proven to work.

 

[Suuup]

A motor for a CNC is going to be designed to spin 10 to 20,000 rpm or more. That seems wildly inappropriate.

Have you looked through the builds in the Non-hub motor sub section? There's plenty of ideas there that are actually proven to work.

Ah yes, of course this exact motor won't work. It was just a way to picture the image I had in my mind. I have looked around, but I don't see anything like what I want to build -- possibly because it's infeasible.

 

[dogman dan]

No it's feasible,, You just need the term to google. It's friction drive.

Because of the vintage frame, most regular conversion kits won't work. the frame width is wrong, and the bb too different to use the mid drive kits.

If you don't mind spreading the frame wider, you could put a small rear hub motor on it.

 

[Suuup]

No it's feasible,, You just need the term to google. It's friction drive.

Because of the vintage frame, most regular conversion kits won't work. the frame width is wrong, and the bb too different to use the mid drive kits.

If you don't mind spreading the frame wider, you could put a small rear hub motor on it.

Wow, this is exactly what I'm looking for. Thank you! I'll do some reading.

 

[Suuup]

Which bike is it? Any pics? Might help us to help you figure out exactly what would and wouldn't work.


Short of that, regarding friction drives:

Look up the Kepler e.boost here on ES. Or Adrian's Commuter Booster. There are also other similar ones.

The Kepler drive has several versions, at least some could be replicated easily enough if you can't buy one, if you ahve some mechanical skills and tools.

Look up my DayGlo Avenger thread, and you'll see a couple of kluged-together setups, the last of which worked well enough for me and cargo, that you could almost certainly improve on and make removable if you like.



You could also build something that's like the BBS systems (BBS01, BBS02, BBSHD) or Cyclone or various other bottom bracket (BB) type drives, but you are going to need a secure enough mount on the downtube that it might not be as easy and quick to remove as you would like, to prevent pull-torque from the chain drive from yanking the system around the tube and loosening or derailing the chain.


There are also tiny little hubmotors you could build a wheel around, and swap out for either the front or rear wheel. The battery can mount on your bottle mounts (look up bottle battery here on ES; there's threads about them and on improving their mountings).


Depending on your power requirements, and thus the capacity/size of the pack needed, you could probably build a wheel that contains the battery in a ring around the tiny hubmotor, and the controller outside of that, also in the wheel. This would need to have the phase/hall wires then connected into the motor via a "brush ring", as well as the throttle/brake controls to the controller from the rest of the bike, which would get a little complicated, but would still be doable. Easier if you could put the controller on the lower fork leg (or chainstay/seatstay), and then only the battery wires need be on a brush ring. Either way the controls on your handlebars would stay on teh bike when motor wheel is removed and regular wheel swapped back in.

This is my beauty.

I've been reading up on FD systems and hear that they're VERY noisy. I'm okay with a little noise, but it seems most FD systems wouldn't be categorized as 'a little noise'.

I've looked in other directions too. The Vector bike is very attractive, but damn expensive. It's also not legal at all here in Denmark, but I'm on the optimistic side of that, i.e. maybe I just 'limit it to 25 km/h'.

Another option is the Sondor Fatbike. It seems there's a lot of controversy surrounding that bike, and I don't think the specifications make sense. A fat bike with a 350W motor and small batterypack reaching 20 mph and 50 miles range? Sounds off.

Also looked at the add-e friction drive systems. Pretty neat, but again, noise.


EDIT: Just looked at that Kepler E.boost. It looks pretty damn good. That might be an option actually. Do you know how much a full setup would run me? My only fear is importing stuff to Denmark from outside of Europe is expensive. Is it possible to get most of those parts in Europe, or will I have to go to China?

 

[gogo]

Would a sinewave controller make the small outrunners quieter?