Pegs on mountain bike conversion?

ttshaw1

100 µW
Joined
Dec 23, 2021
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9
I bought a beat up softtail mountain bike that I'm planning to turn into an ebike. My goal is to take it downtown, have a few drinks, and ride it home at the end of the night. I figure I'd get a lot of utility out of it by being able to accommodate a passenger. It seems to me like the easiest thing to do would be to put pegs on the rear axle so I'm not putting any extra load on the frame. There's also some meme value in asking people if they want to ride on my pegs. My major concern is breaking the rear wheel or axle, as it'll now have to carry a good portion of my 180lbs weight, plus let's say 180lbs more for a passenger. I'm hopeful that a mountain bike wheel will be reasonably well-suited for this, as it's designed to take the force of hard landings whereas I'll be using it on flat roads.

I'm also trying to decide whether I want a mid-drive motor or a hub motor. I figure if there are very heavy duty hub motors that could support the extra weight of a passenger, then that might be a good option. Otherwise a mid-drive makes sense so as to not risk an expensive hub motor wheel set. Does anyone have any recommendations as to what's popularly used for either case? I also would give bonus points to any controllers that are open-source hardware or firmware.

Lastly, if anyone has any general experience with pegs or other modifications to handle passengers, please do let me know how it went for you.
 
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