I've finally finished my first ebike build so I thought I would add a build thread. This is a very basic build - front wheel, low power, pretty straight forward. At first I wasn't going to do a thread since it's a basic build with nothing overly fancy or new. But the more I got thinking about it, the more I remembered it was all of these types of threads that gave me the most useful info when doing my research. Some of the hot rod builds with huge power on fancy frames were neat reading, but weren't really applicable to what I was trying to do. Hopefully this proves useful to someone else down the road, if not, well tuff sh$t, it's here now 
Background: I live in Calgary, Alberta and commute to work all year long. My commute is short (~10 km round trip) and almost dead flat. Yes, I'm very spoiled...5 km one way is short enough to make pure pedal power an option, which I've done for the past 4 years but a) riding through heavy snow and gale force wind in the winter is tiring and I don't like showing up at work all sweaty, and b) I just really wanted a new toy and can justify it by not paying $250/mnth to park at work.
Anyway, my primary goal was for a good reliable commuter. I currently have two bikes I ride: a road bike for the warm months and an old Norco mountain bike for the winter. My plan (for now) is to have one setup and swap everything between bikes twice a year. Ebike laws here say max 500W to the wheel and no assist over 32 kph. I also ride on bike paths most of my short commute and the City "technically" doesn't allow ebikes on the pathway. This isn't that big of a deal, except that my office is next door (and in fact shares a parkade) with a police station and I pass at least 5-10 cops daily...so, stealth is most definitely my friend
Bike No.1 - the winter beater: Old Norco P.O.S. I got this bike for $50 off my neighbour. It was extremely functional and everything was in great shape...until I rode it through snow, slush and muck in temperatures as cold as -35C for the last 3 winters. Now the suspension fork is seized and the gears only change under protest.
View attachment 7
Bike No.2 - the summer cruiser...an Electra Straight 8. I scored a sweet deal on this back in the fall when a local shop was clearing out 2012 stock. This is a definite change, and in my opinion, a nice upgrade from my roadbike!
View attachment 6
The build:
Being winter, everything started on the winter beater. The stock aluminum suspension fork got ditched for a nice, rugged, Surly Instigator cromo fork. The suspension was only semi-functional and it froze solid in anything below about -3C, so I don't really miss it. The Instigator is a burly fork to say the least...single butted steel with nice beefy dropouts. Unfortunately it has lawyer lips so I picked up some C-washers for a nice flush install.
I managed to score a 9C 2807 (labelled as new with minor "cosmetic damage") during the Grin garage sale a little while back. The 2807 motor arrived from Ebikes.ca quickly and well packaged and was as described, with some minor scratches on the hub's black metal cover. It was way out of true and several spokes were pretty loose so I dropped it off at my local LBS to have it tensioned and trued. As far as installations go, it seemed about as straightforward as it gets and the motor dropped in quite snug with little to no fiddling. I'm pretty sure the beefy dropouts on the Surly would be sufficient on their own, but I added a torque arm from Grin just in case. I first bought the Rev3 torque arm but it conflicts with the disc brake tabs so they graciously let me exchange it for the Rev2 that attaches to the fender eyelits. Here is the motor fitted to the fork, seems like a nice fit:
Battery: My first choice was a Cellman A123 pack. Unfortunately his supply of the small round cells is no more, and could only offer the 20Ah pouch cells. This was much too big to go in my triangle and was more money than I was looking to spend on my first build, so I decided to go with one of Cellman's new NCM packs. They are made from Samsung 18650 cells and are (supposed to be) rated to 4.5C continuous. They also have the advantage of being significantly smaller and lighter, not to mention reasonably priced. I'm only running a 25A controller and based on the ebikes simulator, wasn't expecting to be pushing much over 1C continuous and less than 2C burst, so figured these should do the trick. Anyway, the battery came via Fedex and was delivered without issue. I wasn't sure whether I was going to run into issues with duty/brokerage or anything related to 'dangerous goods', but I picked it up after about 8 days in transit and was relieved to have no extra fees or taxes. The battery was well packed and looked great. Dimensions provided by Cellman were spot on at 203mm x 138mm x 75mm. I haven't weighed it yet to verify the 3.5 kg spec but it feels about right. Has connectors with a pre-charge to the controller and separate cables for charging.
Controller, etc.: Controller is a basic infeon 25A, nothing much to mention here. The only real hiccup was that Paul forgot to attach Andersons to the controller power cables, which arrived bare. He offered to send me the connectors but I didn't feel like waiting and had someone local (that actually knew what they were doing) solder a line in parallel with the +ve line (for the precharge) and attach the Andersons to mate with the battery. Also provided by Paul was an ignition switch, half-twist throttle with cruise and 3 speed switch and some ebrakes. He also included a spare connector to match connections for hall sensors on the motor with the controller. Phase wires between the controller and 9C motor were a direct colour to colour match, bonus!
At first I used an old backpack and MacGyvered a makeshift battery bag in the triangle with some duct tape and bungee cords. It was ugly but functional.
I eventually picked up a Power in Motion rear key-switch frame bag. The bag is very nice and has andersons pre-wired to a key ignition. It is a VERY tight fit, but I managed to squeeze everything in there for a fairly clean install.
Other stuff: I ripped off the (non/semi functional) front derailer since I won't be using it anyway, then swapped the rear shifter to the left side to make room for the throttle. I also swapped out the brake levers for the ebrakes provided by Cellman. I added some Schwalbe Winter Marathon studded tires for my winter commuting. Man what a difference those make on the slick stuff, plus the reflective strips are a nice feature, since both my rides are in the dark in the winter. Not great in deep snow, but what 2.1" non-knobby tire is??
Review: Been riding this bike for a little over a month now and I've pleased as punch! Performance is nothing to get worked up over but is more than adequate for my needs. I have the CA limited to 20A so acceleration is a little sluggish, but I want to be kind to the battery long term. I use the 3 spd switch a lot, typically leaving in spd 2 which puts me at a nice 28 kph. I find this perfect for my winding route along the bike path. At this speed I cruise along at around 10 A (<1C). At full throttle on spd 3, I top out at around 34-37 kph depending on battery charge, while drawing 14A-15A continuous. While fun, I don't get to cruise that fast for too long on the bike paths, so I find I don't use it much. In spd 2, I can hold full throttle and don't need to worry about feathering the throttle at all. Spd 1 is pretty slow, about 18 kph, but is very useful when there's snow on the ground and things are sketchy.
That's it for now. More pics of the Electric 8 coming soon
Cheers!
Mike
PS - thanks to everyone for sucking countless hours of my life away with the very informative and helpful info on this forum. I changed my mind on this build at least a dozen times since last summer and thanks to the info here, I think I have something that should suit me nicely....at least for now
Background: I live in Calgary, Alberta and commute to work all year long. My commute is short (~10 km round trip) and almost dead flat. Yes, I'm very spoiled...5 km one way is short enough to make pure pedal power an option, which I've done for the past 4 years but a) riding through heavy snow and gale force wind in the winter is tiring and I don't like showing up at work all sweaty, and b) I just really wanted a new toy and can justify it by not paying $250/mnth to park at work.
Anyway, my primary goal was for a good reliable commuter. I currently have two bikes I ride: a road bike for the warm months and an old Norco mountain bike for the winter. My plan (for now) is to have one setup and swap everything between bikes twice a year. Ebike laws here say max 500W to the wheel and no assist over 32 kph. I also ride on bike paths most of my short commute and the City "technically" doesn't allow ebikes on the pathway. This isn't that big of a deal, except that my office is next door (and in fact shares a parkade) with a police station and I pass at least 5-10 cops daily...so, stealth is most definitely my friend
Bike No.1 - the winter beater: Old Norco P.O.S. I got this bike for $50 off my neighbour. It was extremely functional and everything was in great shape...until I rode it through snow, slush and muck in temperatures as cold as -35C for the last 3 winters. Now the suspension fork is seized and the gears only change under protest.
View attachment 7
Bike No.2 - the summer cruiser...an Electra Straight 8. I scored a sweet deal on this back in the fall when a local shop was clearing out 2012 stock. This is a definite change, and in my opinion, a nice upgrade from my roadbike!
View attachment 6
The build:
Being winter, everything started on the winter beater. The stock aluminum suspension fork got ditched for a nice, rugged, Surly Instigator cromo fork. The suspension was only semi-functional and it froze solid in anything below about -3C, so I don't really miss it. The Instigator is a burly fork to say the least...single butted steel with nice beefy dropouts. Unfortunately it has lawyer lips so I picked up some C-washers for a nice flush install.
I managed to score a 9C 2807 (labelled as new with minor "cosmetic damage") during the Grin garage sale a little while back. The 2807 motor arrived from Ebikes.ca quickly and well packaged and was as described, with some minor scratches on the hub's black metal cover. It was way out of true and several spokes were pretty loose so I dropped it off at my local LBS to have it tensioned and trued. As far as installations go, it seemed about as straightforward as it gets and the motor dropped in quite snug with little to no fiddling. I'm pretty sure the beefy dropouts on the Surly would be sufficient on their own, but I added a torque arm from Grin just in case. I first bought the Rev3 torque arm but it conflicts with the disc brake tabs so they graciously let me exchange it for the Rev2 that attaches to the fender eyelits. Here is the motor fitted to the fork, seems like a nice fit:
Battery: My first choice was a Cellman A123 pack. Unfortunately his supply of the small round cells is no more, and could only offer the 20Ah pouch cells. This was much too big to go in my triangle and was more money than I was looking to spend on my first build, so I decided to go with one of Cellman's new NCM packs. They are made from Samsung 18650 cells and are (supposed to be) rated to 4.5C continuous. They also have the advantage of being significantly smaller and lighter, not to mention reasonably priced. I'm only running a 25A controller and based on the ebikes simulator, wasn't expecting to be pushing much over 1C continuous and less than 2C burst, so figured these should do the trick. Anyway, the battery came via Fedex and was delivered without issue. I wasn't sure whether I was going to run into issues with duty/brokerage or anything related to 'dangerous goods', but I picked it up after about 8 days in transit and was relieved to have no extra fees or taxes. The battery was well packed and looked great. Dimensions provided by Cellman were spot on at 203mm x 138mm x 75mm. I haven't weighed it yet to verify the 3.5 kg spec but it feels about right. Has connectors with a pre-charge to the controller and separate cables for charging.
Controller, etc.: Controller is a basic infeon 25A, nothing much to mention here. The only real hiccup was that Paul forgot to attach Andersons to the controller power cables, which arrived bare. He offered to send me the connectors but I didn't feel like waiting and had someone local (that actually knew what they were doing) solder a line in parallel with the +ve line (for the precharge) and attach the Andersons to mate with the battery. Also provided by Paul was an ignition switch, half-twist throttle with cruise and 3 speed switch and some ebrakes. He also included a spare connector to match connections for hall sensors on the motor with the controller. Phase wires between the controller and 9C motor were a direct colour to colour match, bonus!
At first I used an old backpack and MacGyvered a makeshift battery bag in the triangle with some duct tape and bungee cords. It was ugly but functional.
I eventually picked up a Power in Motion rear key-switch frame bag. The bag is very nice and has andersons pre-wired to a key ignition. It is a VERY tight fit, but I managed to squeeze everything in there for a fairly clean install.
Other stuff: I ripped off the (non/semi functional) front derailer since I won't be using it anyway, then swapped the rear shifter to the left side to make room for the throttle. I also swapped out the brake levers for the ebrakes provided by Cellman. I added some Schwalbe Winter Marathon studded tires for my winter commuting. Man what a difference those make on the slick stuff, plus the reflective strips are a nice feature, since both my rides are in the dark in the winter. Not great in deep snow, but what 2.1" non-knobby tire is??
Review: Been riding this bike for a little over a month now and I've pleased as punch! Performance is nothing to get worked up over but is more than adequate for my needs. I have the CA limited to 20A so acceleration is a little sluggish, but I want to be kind to the battery long term. I use the 3 spd switch a lot, typically leaving in spd 2 which puts me at a nice 28 kph. I find this perfect for my winding route along the bike path. At this speed I cruise along at around 10 A (<1C). At full throttle on spd 3, I top out at around 34-37 kph depending on battery charge, while drawing 14A-15A continuous. While fun, I don't get to cruise that fast for too long on the bike paths, so I find I don't use it much. In spd 2, I can hold full throttle and don't need to worry about feathering the throttle at all. Spd 1 is pretty slow, about 18 kph, but is very useful when there's snow on the ground and things are sketchy.
That's it for now. More pics of the Electric 8 coming soon
Cheers!
Mike
PS - thanks to everyone for sucking countless hours of my life away with the very informative and helpful info on this forum. I changed my mind on this build at least a dozen times since last summer and thanks to the info here, I think I have something that should suit me nicely....at least for now
