I have so many questions I hardly know where to begin. I think it will work great, by the way. I have a Stokemonkey setup that works great; I love the Stokemonkey on the Xtracycle. I can use it equally well for commuting and for hauling a massive load of groceries, etc. However, I would like to get a motorized option for my kids so they can use a bike more instead of a car. Power on the hills is the main thing in my region. Unless piled high with batteries and using a super high power motor, hub motors don't excel at big hills. You are the first person I've run across that has a hightec. The basic design of the hightech looks genius; driving the crank directly through a high rpm motor. My questions are the following:
1) you say the original motor wasn't up to the task. Is this just a function of the fact that it was a 350W motor?
2) How are you going to get the tranny on a new bike? I assume the frame of the hightecbikes has a mount for the tranny where most bikes have a bottom bracket.
3) How do the hightec bikes do on, say, 20% grades? I am solely an on-the-road rider but really enjoy going up the bigger hills without even breathing hard. I don't think hub motors excel at this type of use.
4) What are the tranny case and gears made of?
5) is the original motor a high RPM one with a big reduction in the tranny or does the motor have a planetary gear stage on it?
If your experiment works well, I want to do the same. Wonder if either hightec will come out with a setup like yours for big hill climbing or if kits can be had without the motor and batteries. I wonder why they don't have a larger, more capable motor to start with. Seems like a genius idea to me. The only thing that is stopping me is that I don't have a donor tranny and frame! Please keep us up to date. Can the tranny be purchased alone?
NOTE: The Stokemonkey will "own" a 20% grade, motor only, on 15 amps at 36V. It creep up, but I don't care. When I talk about hill-climbing, this is what I mean. The hightekbikes site says the original bike will do an 18% grade, but that depends highly on the weight of the rider and speed of the climb. Numbers like this don't tell you anything unless you know the rider weight, speed of climb, and if it was motor only. Power useage is also nice to know. I had a professor in aerospace engineering once who frequently said "You can make a rock fly if you put a big enough engine on it". Same is true of ebikes. A hub motor burning 2kW to get up a 20% grade is crazy.
