Bionx has a custom battery with a computer that talks to the controller. If there is a problem you buy another bionx battery.
You need to measure front-rear weight distribution to decide front or rear wheel drive. My bike was way off rear heavy so I am hanging the battery over the front wheel and bought a wheel that would go either place - trying front first. If I don't like it I can get a shimano/sun 7 spd freewheel adapter for the motor, I think.
All the amazon wheel kits I looked at were missing something. No brake handle shutoff. No pedal sensors. No description of assist versus motor only. No gears in motor (I have serious hills). No mention if there was a one-way clutch in the motor to unload it from resisting you while you were pedaling. No description of controller features. Picture not good enough to tell if you could put an anti-torque strut on it. No width dimension. No description of compatibility with disk brakes. (Bafang wheel motor is too fat) One of the above. Of course amazon shows low price first.
EBO was just expensive, I think.
Lunacycle has more support but their thin geared motor wheel was out of stock & $450. Besides somebody posted their rim is incompatible with generic bike tube stem. e-bikes.ca has a great instructive site with great explanations if you live in Canada. ebikling checked all my boxes for a wheel with motor, possibly it will only last 2 weeks, but for $200 48v generic battery compatibility & 1000 w, I thought it was worth the risk. They sell 20", 24", 26", 700 mm wheels. $150 if you buy the LED controller display. I found them through bing. In Schaumberg IL for less freght & delay to IN than CA.
I wanted long range so I bought a 48v 15AH battery from btrbattery through amazon. $435. Most shops are selling 9 or 10 AH. Comes with a 3 A charger and a battery monitor board inside the battery. (cells in series have to balance or something weird happens). Case is rectangular so I'm building a frame out of AL angle to hold it over the wheel. Battery will be in the wind for maximum cooling. Once screws are glued in frame, it will take a saw to get it off & sell at the pawn shop Those hanging bag batteries look real easy to get on - and real easy to get off and carry away if you park in public. I do.
Just some thoughts. Should know more in a couple of weeks- boxes should be waiting at a lady's house out near my summer camp.
Okay, update 9/10/17
I've unboxed the ebikling geared front wheel kit, and the btrbattery 15 ah 48 v battery.
There may be bikes where this will all install in an hour, but I spent 7 hours yesterday and still not done.
My target bike was a 1990? Huffy Savanna 10 speed cruiser bike on the theory that a heavier frame is better, and 5 of the speeds are too tall for me anyway.
There are no instructions in the ebikeling box, you are supposed to check their site on the internet. My target bike is out at my summer camp where I don't even have a land line or bargain cell phone service, much less the internet. I'd looked at the site before going out there.
The "powerwheel" (sticker on the wheel) has a plastic rim which is two layer. Just like the one complained about on Lunacycle's site. It is just barely compatible with conventional schwinn tubes from the grocery store. If you mash the tire down totally flat, you get enough stem out of the wheel to fasten the air pump chuck on to the stem. I can't imagine ever adding air to this with a clip on pump chuck. One of the obsolete milton service station pump chucks that has 100 psi air behind it at all times would work perhaps.
The motor is totally thick as the space in my front fork. Forget adding a brake disk or a freewheel to it. There are bolt holes for those, 5 mm, but no thickness available for that. In fact the thrust washers with tangs were too thick to go into my fork with the tangs out. I had to pop the pins on the control connector to reverse the thrust washer to go into the slot. I had to make a pin popper to do that. (grind down a big lots origin pick to be really pointy). There is plenty of shaft outside the fork to put a torque plate, but none was for sale on ebikeling's site. I made one out of a strip of steel cut from a bed leg, ground out to make a flatted cicle slot. I used 3/16' diameter drill, to make two holes, then a 20000 rpm electric grinder and a tree bit to wallow out to fit. (use safety glasses with power tools).
The torque plate will screw to an aluminum angle strut on the outside of the fork, which will hold the 13 lb battery up, ending at the handlebars.
The shaft of the motor was too thick to fit my fork. I had to grind .030" out of the fork with a 4 1/2" angle grinder. The shaft of the motor is not 1/2"x26tpi like huffy, suntour, shimano sis shafts. It may be 14 mm x 1.5 thread, but I didn't have anything to compare it with or measure it out there. I need two more nuts to capture the torque arm & battery support strut.
The magnet plate for the pedal sensor had a hole too small to fit on the huffy shaft. I had to grind the center out with the 20000 rpm grinder, using a ball end bit this time. The prox switch pickup was on a circle of steel, but it didn't fit anywhere. Would fit under the nut but you only get one circle before the wire wraps around the frame. ??? I had to make a bracket out of scrap lawnmower plastic to bolt to the kick-stand rails, then glued the prox switch pickup circle to it. Glueing the magnet plate to the pedal shaft is TBD.
It got dark at that point and I had to come to town today. The next challenge is, the battery feed to the controller is bullet connectors, so I took some out sold by Dorman at Obriens auto supply. The don't fit. The ****ese have some new standard for bullet connectors, probably sold in lots of 100000 on alibaba. cutting the connectors off would obviously void the warrentee.
Ebikling didn't send me the disk brakes I ordered in the first box. I hope another box is forthcoming, after the container is shipped from ***** and unloaded. They won't fit anyway. They did send me a battery headlight I didn't order.
The battery is a square box made of heat shrink, with fiberboard top and bottom. The wires come out the top and were bare. This is obviously not protected enough for leaving out in the rain. I cut some of the foam it wsa wrapped in, and glued it to the top and bottom, capturing it with rubber bands while the glue dried. The covers will be further captured by the angle aluminum cage I'm going to build around it. I crimped coverd 1/4 flag terminals to the charge wires, male for minus and female for plus. Dorman parts I've tested at over 30 amps in cars (Radio shack flag terminals melted at 30 amps). The battery was charged to 49 v already. I put it on the charger, which gets a green light at 58.8 v. I stopped before there because I don't know if the powerwheel controller can take that high a voltage. I have a 55 v Dc power supply surplus from the trash bin that needs new e-caps, I'll use that I think. I don't know where I stopped because I tried to measure the voltage on 250 ma scale and blew the meter fuse, which obviously I didn't have that far out in the country.
The brake switch handles, the twist throttle and matching red hand grip, the wire harness, the display, the controller, were all in the box. Mounting on the handlebar & frame shouldn't be a problem, unless my handlebars are the "wrong" size (quite likely since globalization of the bike industry).
If interested, stay tuned for further adventures.
