The Motobecane Conversion is Done

[flymeaway]

The conversion is complete...and my 1st impressions riding the bike..OH Boy....this configuration definitely has more torque and power then the Carbon geared 350W hub. I'm extremely happy with the result!!!!! I'll provide ride feedback when I have a chance later in the week or on the weekend. I'll ride the bike over some of the same roads and hills I've been riding the Carbon and be able to give a fair evaluation/comparison. Here are some Pics, including the motor markings on the 48V 750 watt motor.



Court J.

 

[Ravi Kempaiah]

Neat looking bike, Court..!
I heard its much quieter as well. What do you think of the noise emanating from this mid-drive?

 

[Vern]

I like it! I am interested to hear your detailed comparison to the Carbon. I love my Carbon, but a bit more power would be nice. What was your total cost? How difficult was it to build? Where did you buy the motor? Best of luck, it looks great.

 

[flymeaway]

Neat looking bike, Court..!
I heard its much quieter as well. What do you think of the noise emanating from this mid-drive?

It's very quiet.....on a par with the Carbon, but I have only ridden it around the company parking lot.

 

[flymeaway]

I like it and am interested to hear your detailed comparison to the Carbon. I love my Carbon, but a bit more power would be nice. What was your total cost? How difficult was it to get build? Where did you buy the motor? Best of luck it looks great.

Bikes Direct $419 for the bike, $320 for the battery 36V 15 AH, $479.00 for the motor kit.....+ sweat. The only issue I had was the Bottom Bracket. When Motobecane/Chinese Mfg. built the bike they, slightly deformed the bore and the Bafang motor axle wouldn't slide through. About 3/4 hour of bore polishing with abrasive flap wheels cured the porblem. If the motor had slid right in, the total build would have taken about 1.5 hours...piece-of-cake. I'll give a more detailed discussion of how the two drives compare, but out of the gate the mid-drive is certainly a more powerful system...I have the 48V 750 watt kit to use in the next build, but I wonder what it fits????? Maybe a tandem!

Court J.

 

[Vern]

Bikes Direct $419 for the bike, $320 for the battery 36V 15 AH, $479.00 for the motor kit.....+ sweat. The only issue I had was the Bottom Bracket. When Motobecane/Chinese Mfg. built the bike they, slightly deformed the bore and the Bafang motor axle wouldn't slide through. About 3/4 hour of bore polishing with abrasive flap wheels cured the porblem. If the motor had slid right in, the total build would have taken about 1.5 hours...piece-of-cake. I'll give a more detailed discussion of how the two drives compare, but out of the gate the mid-drive is certainly a more powerful system...I have the 48V 750 watt kit to use in the next build, but I wonder what it fits????? Maybe a tandem!

Court J.

I thought that the 750 watt kit was the same basic size as the 350 watt. Is it much larger? Keep us posted on both builds.

 

[flymeaway]

I thought that the 750 watt kit was the same basic size as the 350 watt. Is it much larger? Keep us posted on both builds.

It's identical in size....My comment was concerning the greater power output of the 48V 750W unit compared to the 36V 500W unit I just installed. My 1st impression, after about 20 minutes of riding the E-Motobecane, is WOW if this is the power out of the 36V/500W motor, what would I put the more powerful motor on????? More feedback as I get some miles and hills on the E-Motobecane.

 

[Admin]

@flymeaway has been making new posts for each step of this journey so here's a related thread that went up covering his thoughts on the final product and here's the first post that introduces the custom case he made etc.

Court J. please keep your posts connected via links or preferably, just make one primary thread in the future like "Motobecane Conversion with Bafang Mid-Drive" so people don't get lost. If everyone made three separate threads for each project they posted I think readers would start to get confused and lost... missing out on interesting parts of the project that were disconnected. I would have caught this and fixed it sooner but have been offline connecting with family recently so my apologies there