Hill climbing commuter build

Vincentrg

100 µW
Joined
Mar 26, 2019
Messages
9
Made a video of my Hill climbing commuter build. It's a ridged, high power front drive, strange contraption. It's been excellent for what I built it for, and so much fun. Here is the link:

https://studio.youtube.com/video/FoaBnc8hSF0/edit

Let me know what you think!
 
One way to get clearance for the battery mounted in the worst possible place. At least in the rain anyway.

Bet it does climb like a goat with that 20" wheel though!! And it works for you. Creativity always gets a thumbs up here.
 
Good point about wheel spray.

Thumbnail doesn't show it, but the fender plus an additional "battery fender" does a pretty good job at keeping wheel spray off the battery. Additionally I live at a pretty dry place.

Design is always about priorities & compromises.
 
Vincentrg said:
.....
Design is always about priorities & compromises.

So the battery wouldn't fit inside the frame?

:D :bolt:
 
Yes, could have located the battery in the frame.

Downside would be higher center of mass and access to the water bottle would be limited.

Upsides: would have been easier, maybe slightly better water protection for the battery. What else?

Having the weight forward is pretty important.

Thanks for your thoughts!
 
10 minutes vid about a hill climbing bike that we can’t see climbing, not even riding. :roll:

Find a steep dirty hill and show us some fun.
 
Yeah, where I live we get in a normal year, 7 inches of rain. But that means as a commuter, you still ride in the rain at some point. Good fender on the front wheel will do the trick of course.

But I found I rode through water a lot. With that little rain, puddles from sprinkler systems every morning. :lol:

Easy enough to put the water bottle somewhere else. I came to like mounting one on the bars, usually on the stem itself.

the CG does not need to be that low, but with no fender, the underside of the bar, the top side of the bar, same thing really as far as spray goes.

We're nit picking you of course, Its what we do. I still like the small front wheel for climbing. After about ten years of nit picking my builds, I came up with the perfect bike for me, which then proceeded to burn my garage down. It featured a long tail with motorcycle saddle bags for carry it dry cargo capacity, small rear wheel for better climbing, and additional battery trays mounted on both sides of the seat post for better CG. Both batteries just far enough from the wheels to avoid the spray. Loved that bike, till it burned up.
 
Vincentrg said:
....Downside would be higher center of mass and access to the water bottle would be limited.
Not a down side at all. Batteries in the triangle give a fine center of gravity more evenly spreading the weight between the two wheels. Water bottles can be put anywhere.

Upsides: would have been easier, maybe slightly better water protection for the battery.
What else?

Protects the battery from getting smashed in an unexpected rut or pot hole.
Having the weight forward is pretty important.

Too much weight forward and when you unexpectedly hit the front brake hard to avoid an accident and the inertia causes the whole bike to roll over the outside of front wheel and flip over your head. It will change your mind about too much weight up front. (Ask me how I know about that one.... :oops: )

Also, fatiguing the downtube / headtube weld is another reason to distribute weight evenly. I have a cracked frame in my garage for that very reason.

:D :bolt:
 
What's fun about DIY is that we get to prescribe the priorities. There is so much diversity here and our backgrounds vary so much. I hear and get and appreciate all of the gentle push back. I was pretty aware of the considerable downsides of this build before I got into the build.

I actually have a lot of experience with that exit from a two wheeled vehicle over the bars called an endo - I have participated in trials competitions for many years both bicycle and moto (and still do). Yea, this concoction is a recipe for an endo for sure, but having all that endo experience, I'm pretty good an avoiding it.

I would not recommend this sort of design for the masses.
 
Nice plan and execution, and though the look is different it's not ugly at all to me. I'd like more time in the video of a full view of the ebike. Function wins over aesthetics every time in my book. My only concern is the fork. If you do hit a bad enough pothole I worry that your rigid fork extension would focus too much force and buckle the tubing at the transition point.

For ride comfort be on the lookout for an old pogo stick steel fork which you could extend in a similar manner. While obviously not as good as a properly damped suspension fork, a simple spring fork can greatly improve comfort on impacts. I've also adapted forks with aluminum lowers to handle hubmotors by cutting the dropouts off, and using relatively thin steel tubing that fits snugly over the aluminum tubes to make an extension with steel clamping type dropouts. With an overlap of 4-6" and a good rubberized adhesive you end up with a strong and effective extended for to make the small hubmotor wheel work well up front.

Add in a Thudbuster or other seat suspension system and you'll be riding in comfort.

The only thing I'd do differently is to go ahead and cut the downtube and weld the rectangle for the battery up mostly within the triangle. That will have negligible effect on ride feel, handling and traction, and it gets the battery up and out of the way of road spray and front wheel even with suspension travel.
 
Vincent, wow!

I've been feeling lonely, doing research on ebikes from the perspective of a guy who drives to town to shop, a long way down and then a long way back up with cargo (4000 feet total climb in my case).

I'm especially interested in your thoughts on regenerative braking; I figured it wouldn't work for me because I'll be going downhill when the battery's fresh, but I hadn't considered the point about reducing maintenance on brakepads. Do you reckon, if I get a bike with a mid drive motor, I could add a front direct-drive hub just for regenerative breaking?

Thanks for sharing a neat project.

GEF
 
If you have steel forks on the front might get away with regenerative braking but you will need two clamping type dropouts, one on ether side, to keep the wheel on if the forks dropouts splay open over time. Regenerative braking is better suited for a rear wheel setup with a clamping dropout that locks the axle in place and keeps it from rocking between acceleration and breaking. Or spend the money on the GMAC motor with a built in regen torque arm.

Do your research on it before moving forward with your project. :wink:

:D :bolt:
 
Thanks for the tips, e-beach. Nice to know it's possible. Won't pull the trigger on the bike until springs, so I'll have time to do the research. I don't want to turn a $4000 bike into a giant paperweight, so if I'm not reasonably confident, I won't attempt the mod. GEF
 
4000 feet is a big hill. Thats a real mountain! That could use up some brakes. But a hub motor adds more weight going back up, and you will be heavy enough already. And it will drag all the while, when not using it.

Good disk brakes with the very best pads would be the way I'd go, not because they brake better, but because they would need fine adjustment a bit less often. Cheap brakes ok, I don't mean you need expensive hydros. They just need to be able to get good pads for them.

Funny though, how the house is always on the hill, and the store in the valley. Worst possible for EV. Would be so nice to coast home that 4000 foot drop. Your real problem will be carrying enough battery to haul a heavier weight back up that hill.
 
gfagan said:
....I don't want to turn a $4000 bike into a giant paperweight, .....

As a very wise man once said on endless-sphere....Never ruin your best bike by turning it into an ebike....Or something like that. (Right Dog Man?)

If you want to build one, better to get a reasonable inexpensive bike to convert.

:D :bolt:
 
More then one person on ES has said that, including Chalo.


e-beach said:
gfagan said:
....I don't want to turn a $4000 bike into a giant paperweight, .....

As a very wise man once said on endless-sphere....Never ruin your best bike by turning it into an ebike....Or something like that. (Right Dog Man?)

If you want to build one, better to get a reasonable inexpensive bike to convert.

:D :bolt:
 
markz said:
More then one person on ES has said that, including Chalo.
.........

Funny how good wisdom spreads like wildfire. :wink:

:D :bolt:
 
A $4k bike needs to be turned into an ebike to help justify the silly high cost.

ANY bike can be made better by making it electric, unless it's a bike used for competitive cycling where you'd make it illegal and useless except as a training bike. Then the extra weight would make training a better workout, and you could set it up with some extra drag with regen to make the workout even better. You could even get fancy and make it variable to give yourself climbing training even on flat roads. :mrgreen:
 
What I actually said about a thousand times was aimed at certain people. Serious cyclists that love to pedal 2000 miles a year already. They likely have multiple bikes anyway, and will still want to pedal that one they spent a fortune on, because it is the lightest one.

So don't ruin your favorite bike making it into an e bike.

But most of us here, will benefit from making that best bike they own into an electric bike. We would not pedal 2000 miles or more a year without the motor help. We might not pedal 20 miles a year on an unconverted bike.

Best of all, build your own bike. The best bike I ever owned I built about 50% of the frame. Nothing I could afford suited my needs at that time.
 
I was reluctant to build on my best DH bike, and did my first build on a less expansive DH bike that I purchased especially for that.

2 years later, when I decided that I would not ride the single tracks without a motor anymore, I finally built my Demo 8. It proved so much better than my 2 first builds, that all the bikes I have built since, had been on the best DH racing bikes that I could source. I chose them used, off season, to have the best for the money. And, I upgraded them with the best components that I had rebuilt especially for the purpose. So, with better bikes, better power and speed became worthwhile, because the bikes were able to achieve proper stiffness and handling for the harder riding.

Of course, one has to define his needs first. It is useless to build on a 5k$ bike if it will be riding the city bike paths at 25 mph. Don’t ruin your best bike for that. But, if you plan to ride the streets fast in the city trafic, or you are building a dirt bike, it is an important gain of time and money to build on the very best bike that you can afford.
 
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