Giant Cypress, Konion and 350w Geared ebike kit

I was asked by a friend if I could make her an electric bike so she could use it for errands. She did not need it to be fast, but had a $400 budget. This was going to be tough to meet, so I kept an eye out for any deals. I had missed out on the e-bikekit sale on a geared 350watt motor kit. Luckily I found an ES member who was selling his kit, unopened for $210 shipped. I had to use her existing bike, Giant Cypress. This bike had 700c tires, the e-bikekit was 26”. I ended up installing it to see if it effected handling. It felt fine; in fact it worked out well since the rack I chose ended up having little room to install the motor controller. The bigger tire would not have worked with the controller place where I wanted it.

Currently waiting on Konions from DoctorBass, for now I’ve been testing them with my packs from my BMC build which is in repair.

Cost so far
$210
$39.46 Freewheel
$38.12 Topeak Super Tourist Rack
$16.89 Tire
Inner tube
Konion batteries
$56.19 Tenergy Intelligent 3A Charger for 37 V 10S Li-ion / Li-Polymer


Not accounted for is the torque arm, my time, and low voltage circuit to protect the batteries, which would put it over budget for those trying to build a low cost ebike.

The battery setup will be identical to my BMC build. It will be 10S 4P at 40 volts. This gave me a max speed of 18-19mph. This was a bit slower than I had hoped for but ok with my friend. The setup came with a pedalic system as well as a thumb throttle. I did not find the pedalic system to be linear at all. Seemed to be on or off depending on if you pedaled or not. The good thing is the thumb throttle works as well so you have both options. The noise from the motor wasn’t too bad. Similar to my BMC. There isn’t any budget for a Cycle Analyst, so I will need to build a battery cutoff circuit for low voltage protection. If I have the time, I will install a simple fuel gauge meter that Jeremy Harris had pointed out.

Here is the custom torque arms. I had to make for it. It's only a 1/8" torque plate since the power level is low. I ended up using the bolt pattern as anchor points to keep it simple. The installation went fairly easy, the controls worked out fine for this bike and I had no trouble replacing the brake handles with the new ones that cut off power when breaking is applied.

this cypress had disc brakes on both wheels to start with? what year? i like it.

It's my friends bike so I really don't know the year. I know she had it for a couple of years already and was purchased new at the time. She really likes it, traded in a nice Gary Fisher mountainbike for it. She wanted a bike with a more comfortable sitting position and good stopping power. It's not full suspension, but the active seat post and wide seat seems to work good enough along with the front shock it's a rather comfortable ride.