Tons of dead, 1-2 year old prebuilt EVs out there

[leffex]

So i went to my local bicycle collective last weekend ( a non profit bike shop that sells used stuff and teaches people to wrench )..

They have ~20 bikes for sale, 3 of which are electric.
The electrics are going for 1/5th of the price as new, but they're all a few years old, obviously bought during the pandemic..
..and another person rolls up with some Chinese prebuilt ebike to donate just as i'm looking.

They're literally going for half the cost of the nicer roadbikes and MTBs.. nobody wants these things.
Probably the best pick of them a specialized turbo vado that looks flawless going for $400.

I checked out these bikes. Every single one seems to power up but has a dead display and the motor won't operate.
..but these bikes all have what looks like working motors and batteries.

I'm kinda surprised we don't see a lot of prebuilt hacking on this forum.
For almost all these bikes, it would be a matter of replacing the controller and/or BMS and probably even unlocking additional power in the process.
You could probably make a business out of fixing and reselling these things... or just get a super cheap head start on a build.

Just a thought!

As for me, none of these interest me, even at $0.. i would much rather have the standardized, swappable parts built on a bike frame. I think most prebuilt bikes are garbage. But one man's e-waste is another man's treasure!

Hidden secrets lie within items and if you really have no use, space or time and last but not least the mindset to get your hands dirty and do your research I don't think getting those ebikes even for free is that good of a deal.

I could get them all working for 150 each or rip them for parts. I sell parts for 5 a year and now I have nowhere to store the crap I got.

Exactly those ebikes you mentioned I've heard has big issues with QC to the extent that warranty is used up to even two times on motors. Generally cheaper brands have more common issues but if you still need a special part for some reason (that will of course is not be available when you need it).

There are workarounds but to hack the systems you need a lot of "problems" and then you dissect and do your secret deeds until you hit gold.

 

[neptronix]

Thanks for that. I in fact did lose sight of the thread premise already but am guessing it was what you stated in your posts #23 (last papagraph), and #25, correct?

Correctamundo

So this new "prebuilt hacking section" would be oriented to be a subforum fostering "deproprietaryizing" proprietary systems?

Yeah.. or fix them.. IE the DIY end of prebuilts, not the selling end.

Seems like it would take the nerdy techies to hack and simplify the proprietary stumbling blocks and present workable easily understood solutions that the consumer-with-some-DIY-aspirations could apply.

This already happens infrequently on ES (BionX workarounds, Yamaha dongles, etc.) but having its own subforum would probably elevate the conversation and activity. Definitely needs a clever snappy label.

Yeah, I'm thinking we just give fixing and hacking their own sections.. and we make it distinct against the existing DIY sections so that it's less confusing where to post what... helps the reading experience too.

For me the main objective is to keep the cast-off inop ebikes out of the landfills or from gathering dust in the basement.
Or did I miss the premise?

Let's say it's to help people achieve who wish to do so... it's not for everyone, but it does seem to be for an increasing amount of people in the last couple years.

 

[ebike4healthandfitness]

Yeah, that's pretty much proprietary. Why? Probably to have a monopoly on something.
That's not cool. (IMO)

It's not proprietary. Any company (both frame builder and motor maker) can use the Shimano mounting plate standard which can also mount all of Shimano mid drive motors both past and present except their very first one they made back in 2014 called the E6000.

Here is one example of a frame builder that sells this mounting plate:

Motor Cabinet: Shimano Steps — TI CYCLES FABRICATION

TiCycleTubes design Lightweight Steel Motor Mount Bracket E6100, E7000, E8000, EP8

www.ticycles.com

Hope this helps people decide on whether or not they want to participate in pre-built hacking or at least a subset of pre-built hacking.

 

[biphaeboh]

One thing I learned at Bosch training is that they make three different shapes of motors with incompatible mountings... right now, this model year. What a pack of a-holes.

I keep hearing about the EU and "right to repair" laws. And then there is Bosch who seem to have the most proprietary stuff of anyone. Is there any hope on the regulatory side?

 

[neptronix]

Maybe it's safe to say most people are in favor? & in my case, i don't have a super strong opinion about it, i'm just concerned about any negative effects - IE drawing shilling to us.

Stan had some great points a few posts ago and it brought me back to ES Facebook and having to root out & boot shills to keep the community from turning out like.. well.. every community on Facebook. It jogs my memory good.

I think it's possible we could handle it.. Stan got it down to 1% false positive rate which would be acceptable here.

Any other cons i'm not thinking about?
I literally pay zero attention to prebuilt bikes so i appreciate any feedback i can get from the wider community here.

 

[biphaeboh]

Maybe it's safe to say most people are in favor? & in my case, i don't have a super strong opinion about it, i'm just concerned about any negative effects - IE drawing shilling to us.

Stan had some great points a few posts ago and it brought me back to ES Facebook and having to root out & boot shills to keep the community from turning out like.. well.. every community on Facebook. It jogs my memory good.

I think it's possible we could handle it.. Stan got it down to 1% false positive rate which would be acceptable here.

Any other cons i'm not thinking about?
I literally pay zero attention to prebuilt bikes so i appreciate any feedback i can get from the wider community here.

I think its a great idea, but I recognize the pitfalls. Don't do it if you think it s going to be a nightmare.

 

[Cowardlyduck]

Any other cons i'm not thinking about?
I literally pay zero attention to prebuilt bikes so i appreciate any feedback i can get from the wider community here.

If possible it could be a good catalyst to allow trusted members to post anonymously. i.e. members with over 1000 posts and at least a year on the forum can post one anonymous post per day. Moderators would still be able to see who it is, but publicly hidden.

Cheers

 

[neptronix]

If possible it could be a good catalyst to allow trusted members to post anonymously. i.e. members with over 1000 posts and at least a year on the forum can post one anonymous post per day. Moderators would still be able to see who it is, but publicly hidden.

That would be super difficult to implement ( requires maintaining a fork of our forum software with heavily modified guts ) & i think some may end up using it for not great means.

 

[Cowardlyduck]

Ok, that's fair enough for a forum like this I guess.....interestingly though a similar function is possible on many facebook groups....the exact thing we are competing against for this kind of sub forum.

 

[marka-ee]

Damn, that's a good point.
It would cause us to have to put some chill on prebuilt sales if they come a shilling.

Do you think 'prebuilt bike hacking' as a subforum name and making it more obvious that we're a pure DIY site be hopefully more repellant than attractive to guerilla marketers?

might be. I'm in Europe and there's particular interest in Bosch mid-motor drives here. As Chalo said, these bikes are fairly severely locked down and you can't just drop in another BMS/ controller and go. It's a highly proprietary system but there are some workarounds here and there. I have one sourced from Germany that is in a category where it needs brake lights, a license plate light, and is able to continue to provide motor boost up to 42 km per hour. So I didn't need to use any special dongles , but the battery situation is still very irritating.

 

[99t4]

Any other cons i'm not thinking about?

If some of the solutions come close to successfully reverse engineering proprietary (patented?) items could ES be held liable and targeted for legal actions?

 

[raedy07]

You would have failed, unless you went to a Specialized dealer and let them take you for whatever ride they liked.

i did just this, hope i won't end up like you predict

 

[neptronix]

If some of the solutions come close to successfully reverse engineering proprietary (patented?) items could ES be held liable and targeted for legal actions?

That's a good question to ask.

So far there exist these things online with no reported censorship, takedown requests, etc:
- EU based forums devoted to hacking basically everything
- Github repos full of code for unlocking controllers/displays/BMSes, haven't heard of any being DMCA'd, etc.
- Facebook groups full of illegal speed level discussion
- Reddit full of illegal speed discussion

There seems to be no legal issues doing any of the above so far; we are also technically headquartered in the USA where section 230 still protects the platform from the actions of the user.

This situation might change over time. Let's enjoy our freedom while we still have it, eh?

 

[Gruesome]

If possible it could be a good catalyst to allow trusted members to post anonymously. i.e. members with over 1000 posts and at least a year on the forum can post one anonymous post per day. Moderators would still be able to see who it is, but publicly hidden.

Cheers

Why?

 

[Cowardlyduck]

Think creatively and you might figure out why.

 

[neptronix]

^-- reminded me to respond to this..

Ok, that's fair enough for a forum like this I guess.....interestingly though a similar function is possible on many facebook groups....the exact thing we are competing against for this kind of sub forum.

Consider that facebook can do 'papers please' with their membership & can use AI and other things to verify someone is a real human etc at scale & we can't.

Because they can verify like that, they can experiment with stuff like that & maybe get away with it, IDK. They also have AI powered moderation.. so stuff that slips past the gate is caught quickly, with some loss of accuracy.

It's our burden as moderators to handle any negatives of such a feature & that's a problem in addition to all the work needed to build it.

Since we are an ultra low data collection service, you're a lot more anonymous here than in facebook's non-anonymous mode already ( you should see the data they collect from you, especially if you use it on a mobile device. It's insane & i'm surprised that people let them get away with it for so little in exchange )

 

[Cowardlyduck]

All good points Nep. I guess it's a feature that is not fit for purpose in a forum like this. Thanks for explaining why.

Cheers

 

[Gruesome]

Think creatively and you might figure out why.

Sounds like it has already been sorted out.

 

[99zip99]

Hi you all I just got a bike dropped off at my house an add motor it's a huge bruiser of a bike with suspension no battery and I guess the 900 display that's thrashed I have two of those I never liked them. I also got a 13s battery with a bad BMS from another person 4p 10 amp cells. I like the weird seat post and he left it and walked off I didn't know to make him take it or what to do but he's more of a gas motor guiding don't quite get it anyways ebike.

 

[wturber]

There is some good news-- most cheap and maybe nasty no-name (or bad name) e-bikes are easy to retrofit, adapt, keep running. The biggest problem is usually some goofy in-frame battery, which is a simple enough matter to circumvent. The break point seems to be in the $1500 retail range-- less than that, and you probably have a relatively generic open system.

Yep. I have two just like that sitting in my garage that came into our shop (Bob's Free Bikes). We fix donated bikes and give them to kids (18 and under). If an ebike is in good working condition, with a good battery, we re-sell it to help pay rent, buy parts, etc. But some come in with no battery those often aren't worth the time and parts investment to turn into ordinary non-motorized bikes. Hence the two in my garage. I'm on the hunt for some replacement batteries that will fit the frames. If I can manage something, I'll sell the bikes and donate the difference back to BFB.

The two bikes have generic rear hub motors, and small generic motor controllers. They just need a battery pack. Simple.

Another ebike sans battery came in a while back and I was able to turn it back into a regular bike that got donated. I set the the motor, controller and throttle aside for ... well ... the future?

Recently I rattle-can resurrected a coaster brake Huffy and turned it into an ebike tow vehicle using those scavenged ebike parts. I added a front brake with a motor cut-off lever and am just hooking up a "pelican" style case with some of my never used hoverboard batteries. Now we have a nice tow bike I can use to bring bikes to and from storage.

All of this works easily because the motors, controllers, throttles, etc. are fairly generic and used well established standards common for conventional bicycles.

Battery and controller not attached in this photo. I just wanted to test the tow rack here.

 

[Bandit1961]

We live in a throw away/keep up with the Jones consumer society. Junk is getting high tech - and I Love IT

 

[ebike4healthandfitness]

Recently I rattle-can resurrected a coaster brake Huffy and turned it into an ebike tow vehicle using those scavenged ebike parts. I added a front brake with a motor cut-off lever and am just hooking up a "pelican" style case with some of my never used hoverboard batteries. Now we have a nice tow bike I can use to bring bikes to and from storage.

All of this works easily because the motors, controllers, throttles, etc. are fairly generic and used well established standards common for conventional bicycles.

Battery and controller not attached in this photo. I just wanted to test the tow rack here.

View attachment 359259

Nice build. I am a huge fan of coaster brake bikes. There are some pretty sweet ones out there like the State Bicycle Klunker, Pure Cycles coaster, and Retrospec Harper. Since this thread is about pre-builts and hacking pre-builts I should also add in that some pre-built ebikes also use coaster brakes.

However, for these bikes (and others like fixed gear or single speed) where the front brake is a caliper brake I wish we could have front hub motors optimized for the non-disc brake set-up. This would allow extra motor width or gear width as well as making the front wheel dish-less (with wide spacing in between spoke flanges).

For example, instead of having a front gearless DD hub motor with 27mm wide stator, 49mm distance between spoke flanges and 63:37 (non drive to drive side) spoke tension balance it could be 45mm wide stator, 67mm distance between spoke flanges and 50:50 (non drive to drive side) spoke tension balance.

P.S. As a point of reference, an analog bike rim brake 100mm front hub is typically 70mm between spoke flanges with 50:50 (non drive to drive side) spoke tension balance....so 67mm distance between spoke flanges and 50:50 (non drive to drive side) spoke tension balance is nearly as wide.

 

[raedy07]

Trust me when I tell you the designers of closed system bikes are keenly aware of this, and they contrive elaborate countermeasures to prevent time and cost efficient customization or repair.

Bosch batteries for instance are specifically designed not to be reassemblable if you dare open one. Bionx motors will only answer the door for a Bionx display, and Bionx is kaput. Van Moof was worthless, unserviceable nonsense even before they failed and orphaned the bikes' fone-only control app.

By the time you're opening things up that are sealed up tight with security fasteners, and trying to bypass encrypted nonsense to get at the big wires directly, they already won. You're wasting more time and replacement parts on it than the value of whatever makeshift junk you can turn it into.

Best to start with a real bike and a real motor system, and warn others not to eat the poopoo just because they put colorful sprinkles on it.

we need a 'right to repair', others are working on it already

 

[99zip99]

He should have just dropped in ceramic disc pads on his new titanium rotors . That's what I have on my John Deere multitrack tractor.

So I walked downstairs to see my addmotor free huge 4 in tire bike, no battery , display crushed and now the front tire is found flat. I know I should learn to love flats I'm going to patch this one. If acceptable. Then fit my free 13s 4p lithium battery pack in its gas tank area. The rear swing arm on this thing is massive. Is this thread about rebuilding old e-bikes broken display no battery etc or should I start a new thread ?

 

[99zip99]

Free . Free. E-bike Hugh an addmotor e-bike
I think it's the green. Hall sensors. No battery the SW 900 display is trash and the 12 amp controller is probably junk just feels that way.
But it's a neat frame for large man with 4-in tires and full suspension I want to put it in the used section as soon as I get down take pictures and drag it out.
It would be good to buy a thousand watt ebike

36x4-in kit.