enduroebikes.com 2 versions?

[Lenn]

Hi all,

First post here! Love the forum and the fact that people still share so much info on forums. Dutchie, so my English is oke-ish but not great.

So. Currently own a Surron Light bee X, and happy with the nimbleness (if that’s a word), and overall torque. Unhappy with Chinese quality, I spend more time in the garage than on the Ron. Not a commuter, only own the Ron for single (mtb) tracks and offroading. Love the playfullness, but my Lord, this quality sucks balls to be honest.

Looked at alternatives, and the only real thing that’s most likely to stand up against my offroading seems to be the Stealth B52. I would love to own one, but hey, 10k is a little over my budget.

So. Looked at alternatives, and stumbled on numerous builds and threads on this forum and the web. Came across the whole Stealth Bomber diy thingys, but not my cup of tea. I need something reliable, and looking mainly for riding instead of developing my bike.

Thing I also dislike about the Ron is that it looks like a motorcycle, even with pedals on it. I want the bike to be able looking like an oversized e-MTB or something like that, so that people don’t mention it too much when in the forest.

I came across enduroebikes.com based in Canada. Anyone had any experience with this guys? They claim to be the first to build the original EEB frame, and that numerous (Asian) company’s copied and cloned the frame. For example, there this website enduroebike.com ( mind the missing ‘S’ at the end), that also seems to offer them.

The Canadian website seems legit, and on YT and other socials these guys seem to be serious when building the bike for you with all the custom parts you like on it. Also, a year warranty on the bike.

I just want to know if any of you guys ever ordered something here, or own a bike ordered originally from this website.

 

[amberwolf]

I don't have a specific answer to your conundrum, but these are some thoughts I hope will help:


If you really want something of known specifications and quality that does exactly what you want, it is highly likely you'll end up having to build it yourself from parts you have researched and tested to do what you want, unless you find the very rare company or builder you trust to do this for you.

I don't see many Surron problems posted here, though I'm sure there are as many as anything else. What specific problems do you tend to have?



As for getting a prebuilt quality bike without problems, it's pretty much all "made in China" at the core. Even if someone is assembling them somewhere else, they're still having the parts made in China, and to keep costs down there's usually little if any QC on the parts, so any QC will be done, if at all, by the builders, or more likely the end-users.

There have been some startups actually building their stuff at first, but I can't recall a specific one that over the years 1kept making it all and didn't end up outsourcing some or all of it to China/etc to lower costs (or go out of business, or just plain change their whole setup). There probably are a few, somewhere, statistically speaking.

If you read around the forums you'll see the various problems people come here with for every kind of bike, even the expensive ones (because high cost is not necessarily an indicator of quality, though low cost almost certainly impairs the likelihood of it).



I haven't researched either version of the site you're looking at, but you can look up domain registrations to find out who actually owns a website. Then you can research those people to see what businesses they're associated with, and what they've been associated with in the past, and look those up to see their history with products and customers and service.

If you contact each of them directly and discuss your needs with them, you can find out how responsive they stay after a series of communications; most places have no time or desire to answer much in the way of questions, other than to process an order. If you find a place that will, they might be a keeper, if their answers remain consistent and accurate, and they actually read your questions and respond to them (this is very uncommon).



For the look of the bike, none of the EEBs I've ever seen look like a bicycle; like the others it's basically a motorcycle made out of bicycle-like parts, and is not something a cyclist would mistake for a bicycle. Almost all the EEB types I've seen use a hubmotor in the rear, and a giant box in the frame (or as the frame) for the battery/etc.


If the SR is too motorcycle looking, then the best chance you would have of a more bicycle-looking bicycle that can still handle varied riding conditions is something with a small integrated middrive built into the bicycle frame at the BB, with pannier- or rack- or bar- mounted battery, perhaps a true water-bottle battery. Most of these are small, and power- and/or speed- restricted, small battery capacity, and are frame specific, and some of them are OEM-only, so you buy the whole bike with it on there, and replacement parts have to come from that manufacturer, at whatever cost they charge. (most of the bicycle parts are standard, and can come from any bike shop, etc, other than the frame itself, or cranks and other parts that are part of the electric bike system).


There are non-frame-specific middrives; most of these are DIY systems, though there are places that sell bikes already built up with them. These are going to be more conspicuous, usually sticking out in front of the BB below the downtube. Everything else can be hidden the same as before, and they still have the same advantages as any other middrive thru the bike drivertrain.


A hubmotor system can be more generic (meaning the system or it's parts could be replaced with non-OEM-specific ones in many cases), can be concealed with panniers, that themselves can carry the battery/etc., but hubmotors are going to take more power and weigh more and have a bigger battery, etc., to do the same job as a middrive (like the Surron uses) especially if that MD goes thru a shiftable-gear drivetrain to adapt it to the terrain/speeds it's being used on at any moment, for any conditions that are not the narrow range the motor is optimized for.