Hello! and I think I want to build my very first ebike(compact cargo)!
- Thread starter freckles
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PedalUma
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- Region
- USA
- City
- Petaluma, CA
The LA Short Haul turned out nicely. I sold him the motor and battery and walked him through the conversion process to optimize the bike. It took about thirty email exchanges. Although this one is not a compact cargo, I have got to say that movie stars, princesses, Taylor Swift, and heads of state, do not have bikes this nice. I also do cargo bikes mostly for local moms. Those rims are British racing green and glow.
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m@Robertson
Merciless (on the inside)
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- USA
Absolutely love the tilting trike concept.
Nice looking bike! I’ve been looking at buying a fast commuter ebike with drop bars, but this makes me consider doing a conversion rather than buying a new ebike.
PedalUma
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- Region
- USA
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- Petaluma, CA
This is the same flavor of bike with a commuter bar. Check out the climbing gears. It is meant for western Marin.
m@Robertson
Merciless (on the inside)
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- USA
If you have the inclination and some mechanical ability, you'll be far better off. Just the issue of sourcing a replacement battery when a proprietary one wears out is either frightfully expensive or maybe even impossible. Was talking to some people just yesterday about Sondors mid drive and older hub motor battery replacements and while most of the bike is made of industry-standard parts, the pack itself and the battery contacts are one-of-a-kind with no replacements available. Thats a common story especially nowadays when Hailong, Reention etc. no longer make most of the battery cases. Nowadays you see unique cases molded to fit a specific frame design.
This covers everything including picking frames with the right characteristics, project planning, tools etc.
Thanks! I’ve seen your website (loved the 2fat, really nice!). I’m a mechanical engineer, though I lean more thermal and fluids, I can usually work out the machine side of things pretty well. The tricky part for me is the time and space to work on it. My property isn’t very big and we don’t have much storage space, to say anything of workshop space. The local bicycle kitchen is a bit too far for me too. I might go proprietary initially until these circumstances change for me.
PedalUma
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- Region
- USA
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- Petaluma, CA
Just know that many have been left high and dry as @m@Robertson suggests. Sondors is just one example of a popular company that just vanished. And the high-end bikes can charge whatever they want for parts and service because you are stuck without other options. You can do it.
PedalUma
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- Region
- USA
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- Petaluma, CA
I am picking up a trike to convert in a few minutes. I saw an $11,000 trike today. It is off road capable for people with disabilities with two wheels in front. For budget reasons the one I am converting is just getting a geared front hub motor. She only wants to do 12mph max, but it will get 500W to be overly robust.
tomjasz
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- USA
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- Minnesnowta
Man be certain it’s a trike that will run well with a hub motor. $1500 in a trike and top shelf motors that completely sucks.
Yes, I’ve been reading through these forums a lot the last few weeks. You and @m@Robertson make a compelling case for building from scratch, or at least finding a used bike for upgrading and conversion. I’m not in a hurry so I’m going to take the time to research this and determine if I can do it. Especially since I never seem to find the bike that fits what I’m looking for.
m@Robertson
Merciless (on the inside)
- Region
- USA
Went into receivership last week I think. Electrek had an article on it.
m@Robertson
Merciless (on the inside)
- Region
- USA
There is a significant supply of spare parts available, which have been transferred to a 3rd party in SoCal who runs an ebike shop. He's set up a web site. Unfortunately the Rockstars are light on the one part that is not readily available to replace and thats the battery. Only two of those left last I heard earlier in the week. And since the same battery is in use on all of the mid drive models, that goes for them as well.
The Rockstar was the one I saw pre-production with the other Sondors group admins, and went bonkers over the 7-spd freewheel it had. Fixing that was rumored to be the reason it came out later than the other two mid drive models, as they had to redesign the rear triangle to accommodate the SRAM cassette they ended up switching in after that discussion. They didn't upgrade the other two models and from what I hear, exactly the problem I warned about ended up happening (freewheel threads + 160 Nm = stripped threads).
But back to the mid drive battery: This again points to why you do your own with quality parts, if you have the ability to do so and want to be the one who decides when your ebike is ready for retirement. The one proprietary bit on that bike is the battery and its effectively unavailable. Can't blame Sondors for this blame the entire ebike manufacturing channel who all went to spiffy in-frame batteries rather than the quasi-standardized cases they started out with.
A few months ago I resurrected my road bike from the 1980's; a professional-level (for the time) custom build. All I needed to do was replace the tires (surprisingly the tubes inside have held up fine) and change the pedals to work with the cleats I use now vs. then. Thats an almost 40-year-old bike and it works perfectly again. You can forget that benefit if you don't take charge of the situation and keep yourself in control of the process.
...
It is entirely possible that a 3rd party will purchase all of Sondors intellectual property and unlaunched designs, and restart the brand. Scuttlebutt is the most likely candidate is the factory that made the Metacycle and has hundreds of units of unsold and unpaid-for inventory in its warehouse, accompanied by spare parts for same.
PedalUma
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- USA
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- Petaluma, CA
The Rockstar was 85.87 pounds/38.95Kg. I will go for an external battery every time. It came with the cheapest shifter and swapping it was a huge pain because the shift sensor is buried deep in a pit under the battery and the shift cable needs to be fed through it. It was built to sell, not maintain.
m@Robertson
Merciless (on the inside)
- Region
- USA
??
The Rockstar has/had a SRAM 11s derailleur, shifter and cluster. It was the other two mids that had 7s shifters, 7s freewheels and while I never saw them in person I am sure the shifters were the cheap one you show in the picture.
Unless they changed it down the road.
PedalUma
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- USA
- City
- Petaluma, CA
Maybe you are right. I had to replace shifters on three of them and maybe I got them mixed up. The worst was the cruiser's rear wheel hub. That took a whole new wheel build, cassette, derailleur, and shifter. The factory hub was made out of a soft ripened cheese and not intended for that kind of torque.
None
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- USA
I've had my Fiido T1 since MAR 2022, still going strong after 2.4k mi. on my recalled model T1, not even a flat tire, though tires are due for replacement.
Fat tire may feel cumbersome when compared to smaller 20" wheels, but once you are carrying significant weight with your cargo bike, the fat tire actually serves well as suspension without taco'ing your wheels.
I like the cargo ebike you built with small 20" wheels for the compactness.
But $999 for class3 750w hub motor cargo ebike.. seem reasonable to me over trying to build your own.
Fat tire may feel cumbersome when compared to smaller 20" wheels, but once you are carrying significant weight with your cargo bike, the fat tire actually serves well as suspension without taco'ing your wheels.
I like the cargo ebike you built with small 20" wheels for the compactness.
But $999 for class3 750w hub motor cargo ebike.. seem reasonable to me over trying to build your own.
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