StudEbiker
100 kW
After a year of pouring over this and other forums trying to find the right kit for my needs I finally purchased a kit. After reading Terry's offer of the free shipping and the combo price on the Aotema motor, controller, 36v10ah LiFePo battery and Dogman's review of the kit as well as many other positive comments on this forum I decided this was the kit to try and I have to say I am VERY glad I did.
A little background. A little over a year ago I heard about a cycle shop in my town that was selling an e-bike kit so I went over to check it out. He was selling Bionx kits and he had a PL-350 set up on a test bike. I rode it and thought it was one of the greatest things ever. The only thing holding me back was the price. For those of you that don't know, the PL-350 is about $1,700 (or a cool thou over the cost of Terry's kit). Two of the big selling points of the bionx system is the weight and the fact that it has regen. However, the cost benefit for that was a little daunting. Even when gas was $4 a gallon it would have taken me a LONG TIME for that kit to recoup the expense. However, the e-bike bug had certainly bit me hard and I kept looking at other kits and options.
I had a bike already that I was committed to putting the kit on. It is a Trek OCLV carbon fiber MTB and had Manitou front alloy suspension forks. I wanted a rear hub motor and was looking seriously at the BMC from EV tech. Then I realized my rear dropouts were aluminum. Easier to replace forks than rear dropouts so a front hub it was going to be. I wasn't interested in speed above 22 mph or range much beyond 10 miles, but I did want to be able to get up the hills on the way up to my house. Disc brakes didn't matter to me either as the Trek has good cantilever brakes on it that should be fine for the speeds I wanted. Then I started reading Dogman's review of Terry's kit and it seemed like if the kit was working good enough for Dogman's commute it should be fine for mine as I only have a 3 mile commute each way. Like Dogman's, my ride to my work is pretty much all DH, but the ride home is all UH. I will post some grade info later.
I decided to order Terry's kit. The kit arrived in a reasonable amount of time. I ordered the kit on the seventh and it arrived on the fourteenth. Kit arrived in good shape. The front wheel is heavy, 15lbs, but the quality of the wheel build is nice and and it was true. There was no documentation at all and I was glad that I knew where all the good e-bike info was on ES! The controller is a nice looking piece of kit with a gloss black finish a rocker type power switch and two indicator lights. A red light that indicates the power is on and a green light that means something else. Sometimes it is solid and sometimes it blinks. Not sure what the meaning of the two are. I have e-mailed Terry about this and he is checking on it. As this is my first kit I don't have a great deal of knowledge of the different controllers out there, but this one looks nice (dare I say a little sexy) and has a good solid feel to it. The kit does come with a nice little goodie bag with zip-ties (way more than I needed and in various sizes for different applications), a spoke wrench, a seat post clamp, and some heat shrink tubing. A nice touch that will save more than a few people that buy this kit a trip to the bike/hardware store. The fact that the battery has the andersons and the controller has bullets(as mentioned by another poster in Dogman's thread) seemed a little odd to me a first as well and then i saw the extra andersons and realized that it was done that way to allow for custom installation to length. I didn't have any experience with anderson connectors so I had to do a little research, but I was able to find all the info I needed here: http://www.westmountainradio.com/supportrr.htm and was on my way.
The battery is in a Topeak bag on their nifty slide and lock rack.
I wanted to be able to easily take the battery with me if I had to lock the bike outside somewhere for an extended amount of time. The 10ah battery fits in this bag wonderfully and still gives me enough room to store a tool kit and all the stuff I carry around with me during the day like wallet, cell phone etc., with room to spare and then if that isn't enough there's always the paniers. I thought all the connectors were on wires that were a good length, except the leads coming from the battery. They could be a little longer. Because of the way the shrink is on the battery the leads are in an awkward position and are just a little short. Would be great if they were about 4" longer. The wire from the controller to the motor was the only one that I thought was a little long, but I was mounting in the frame of the bike. If I had wanted to put it on the back it probably would have been just right. Nonetheless, I just folded the wire up a little and used a bit of the included heat shrink and voila, perfect length! After getting everything together a quick weigh in showed the bike to weigh 50.2lbs. Heavier than I had hoped, but I think that is still pretty light compared to what it could have been with SLA's!
So I have taken it to work the past two days (12 miles total) and it has performed brilliantly and is exactly what I wanted. It gets me up my hills great. It gets me out in the open for awhile everyday, and it hasn't changed the feel of my bicycle significantly. Normally by car it takes me ten minutes each way to work and back. By bicycle it would take about 35 minutes total. It would take me about 12 minutes there and 23 minutes home. Today I was a little rushed to get to work and get back home so I pushed pretty hard in both directions. Even stopping at two full red lights and at three pedestrian crosswalks my round trip ride today was 22 minutes and I would say that was probably 10 minutes there and 12 minutes back. I'm impressed.
The motor is very quiet. My main concern was buying a kit I couldn't ride before I bought it. I didn't want to spend that much money on something that would still struggle to get me up the hills near my house. On the other hand, I didn't want to overspend and get way more bike than I needed because I really just wanted to use it for my short commute to work each day and have it be a pleasant experience. I can unequivocally say that this kit (so far) has exceeded my expectations in every way! Terry has been very helpful which has also added to the to pleasantness of the experience. Kudos to him for offering a great kit at a great price!
A little background. A little over a year ago I heard about a cycle shop in my town that was selling an e-bike kit so I went over to check it out. He was selling Bionx kits and he had a PL-350 set up on a test bike. I rode it and thought it was one of the greatest things ever. The only thing holding me back was the price. For those of you that don't know, the PL-350 is about $1,700 (or a cool thou over the cost of Terry's kit). Two of the big selling points of the bionx system is the weight and the fact that it has regen. However, the cost benefit for that was a little daunting. Even when gas was $4 a gallon it would have taken me a LONG TIME for that kit to recoup the expense. However, the e-bike bug had certainly bit me hard and I kept looking at other kits and options.
I had a bike already that I was committed to putting the kit on. It is a Trek OCLV carbon fiber MTB and had Manitou front alloy suspension forks. I wanted a rear hub motor and was looking seriously at the BMC from EV tech. Then I realized my rear dropouts were aluminum. Easier to replace forks than rear dropouts so a front hub it was going to be. I wasn't interested in speed above 22 mph or range much beyond 10 miles, but I did want to be able to get up the hills on the way up to my house. Disc brakes didn't matter to me either as the Trek has good cantilever brakes on it that should be fine for the speeds I wanted. Then I started reading Dogman's review of Terry's kit and it seemed like if the kit was working good enough for Dogman's commute it should be fine for mine as I only have a 3 mile commute each way. Like Dogman's, my ride to my work is pretty much all DH, but the ride home is all UH. I will post some grade info later.
I decided to order Terry's kit. The kit arrived in a reasonable amount of time. I ordered the kit on the seventh and it arrived on the fourteenth. Kit arrived in good shape. The front wheel is heavy, 15lbs, but the quality of the wheel build is nice and and it was true. There was no documentation at all and I was glad that I knew where all the good e-bike info was on ES! The controller is a nice looking piece of kit with a gloss black finish a rocker type power switch and two indicator lights. A red light that indicates the power is on and a green light that means something else. Sometimes it is solid and sometimes it blinks. Not sure what the meaning of the two are. I have e-mailed Terry about this and he is checking on it. As this is my first kit I don't have a great deal of knowledge of the different controllers out there, but this one looks nice (dare I say a little sexy) and has a good solid feel to it. The kit does come with a nice little goodie bag with zip-ties (way more than I needed and in various sizes for different applications), a spoke wrench, a seat post clamp, and some heat shrink tubing. A nice touch that will save more than a few people that buy this kit a trip to the bike/hardware store. The fact that the battery has the andersons and the controller has bullets(as mentioned by another poster in Dogman's thread) seemed a little odd to me a first as well and then i saw the extra andersons and realized that it was done that way to allow for custom installation to length. I didn't have any experience with anderson connectors so I had to do a little research, but I was able to find all the info I needed here: http://www.westmountainradio.com/supportrr.htm and was on my way.
The battery is in a Topeak bag on their nifty slide and lock rack.
I wanted to be able to easily take the battery with me if I had to lock the bike outside somewhere for an extended amount of time. The 10ah battery fits in this bag wonderfully and still gives me enough room to store a tool kit and all the stuff I carry around with me during the day like wallet, cell phone etc., with room to spare and then if that isn't enough there's always the paniers. I thought all the connectors were on wires that were a good length, except the leads coming from the battery. They could be a little longer. Because of the way the shrink is on the battery the leads are in an awkward position and are just a little short. Would be great if they were about 4" longer. The wire from the controller to the motor was the only one that I thought was a little long, but I was mounting in the frame of the bike. If I had wanted to put it on the back it probably would have been just right. Nonetheless, I just folded the wire up a little and used a bit of the included heat shrink and voila, perfect length! After getting everything together a quick weigh in showed the bike to weigh 50.2lbs. Heavier than I had hoped, but I think that is still pretty light compared to what it could have been with SLA's!
So I have taken it to work the past two days (12 miles total) and it has performed brilliantly and is exactly what I wanted. It gets me up my hills great. It gets me out in the open for awhile everyday, and it hasn't changed the feel of my bicycle significantly. Normally by car it takes me ten minutes each way to work and back. By bicycle it would take about 35 minutes total. It would take me about 12 minutes there and 23 minutes home. Today I was a little rushed to get to work and get back home so I pushed pretty hard in both directions. Even stopping at two full red lights and at three pedestrian crosswalks my round trip ride today was 22 minutes and I would say that was probably 10 minutes there and 12 minutes back. I'm impressed.
The motor is very quiet. My main concern was buying a kit I couldn't ride before I bought it. I didn't want to spend that much money on something that would still struggle to get me up the hills near my house. On the other hand, I didn't want to overspend and get way more bike than I needed because I really just wanted to use it for my short commute to work each day and have it be a pleasant experience. I can unequivocally say that this kit (so far) has exceeded my expectations in every way! Terry has been very helpful which has also added to the to pleasantness of the experience. Kudos to him for offering a great kit at a great price!
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