{"id":1096,"date":"2021-05-19T09:54:09","date_gmt":"2021-05-19T09:54:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bendingtherules.co.uk\/home\/?p=1096"},"modified":"2022-01-14T21:29:32","modified_gmt":"2022-01-14T21:29:32","slug":"solo-e-bike-conversion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bendingtherules.co.uk\/home\/tech\/solo-e-bike-conversion\/","title":{"rendered":"Solo e-bike conversion"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Fitting a Bafang to a solo ‘should’ be straightforward, but my Qubic steel framed MTB threw up a couple of issues.
I bought the motor and battery separately through AliExpress<\/a>. There are dozens of suppliers, many based in China but a lot of sellers now have the option of buying from a distributor in the UK or EU, which makes delivery times a bit faster, though you will probably pay more for these options. I opted for a German source and it took about 10 days for delivery, but there was a German bank holiday at the time of order which delayed dispatch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I chose a 15Ah battery with USB outlet<\/a> and the 250W motor kit<\/a> (UK street legal limit). As I have hydraulic brakes on the Qubic I also sourced brake sensors from Amazon<\/a>. I used a UK supplier so they cost more but I wanted a faster delivery. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The hydraulic brake sensor consists of a small magnet that can be superglued or bonded to the lever and the sensor unit that attaches to the brake housing. They come with self adhesive pads, but I used Sugru ‘putty’ glue<\/a> to ensure they stayed put.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The battery with on\/off switch, recharging port, lock to prevent removal from bracket and the USB port. For a 15Ah battery, the housing is quite large \u2013 bigger than the 17.5Ah on the Pino.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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A Bafang kit and battery \u2013 this one went onto my trike but the contents of the kit are the same.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

First job is to remove the bottom bracket on the bike. I had a Shimano Hollowtech with external bearings, so this was very straightforward. The motor slides into the BB shell and is locked in place by a castellated lock-ring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The motor in-situ. I had to add spacers to move the motor out further on the drive-side as fully pushed home it was contacting the chain stay. I used some spacers from the old BB on the drive side and a couple of spacers in the clamps on the non-drive side.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The spacers on the clamp to move the motor more to the drive side. There was still plenty of thread for the locking ring on the BB.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

My other issue was that the bottle-cage fixings did not align with the battery bracket, so I bought three brackets from eBay<\/a>. These elevated the bracket from the downtube and reduce the space for the battery. It’s a tight fit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The kit and battery fitted onto the bike. The battery is large for a 15AH and only just fits in the available space. There’s a millimetre between the seat tube and the battery and just enough space below the cross bar to allow removal of the battery.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The battery mounting bracket in place. At some stage I will re-route the gear cables as the brackets are too close to the cable guides on the frame.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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One of the three clamps used to fit the battery bracket. I had to drill a hole in the bracket to fit this in place. You can see the bottle cage mounts on the frame, which did not align with the mounting points on the bracket. I looped the excess control wire under the battery bracket to keep the job a bit tidier.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The thumb throttle and control pad. Strictly the throttle is illegal, as it can power the bike independently of pedalling but I find it very useful for pulling away at junctions or to get the bike moving on hill-starts. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The control display. Connections are pretty fool-proof as they are colour coded male-female type connectors. The display can be metric or imperial and shows typical trip computer information like odometer, trip distance, average and maximum speeds.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fitting a Bafang to a solo ‘should’ be straightforward, but my Qubic steel framed MTB threw up a couple of issues.I bought the motor and battery separately through AliExpress. There are dozens of suppliers, many based in China but a lot of sellers now have the option of buying from a distributor in the UK … <\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech","item-wrap"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bendingtherules.co.uk\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bendingtherules.co.uk\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bendingtherules.co.uk\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bendingtherules.co.uk\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bendingtherules.co.uk\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1096"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bendingtherules.co.uk\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1096\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1112,"href":"https:\/\/www.bendingtherules.co.uk\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1096\/revisions\/1112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bendingtherules.co.uk\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bendingtherules.co.uk\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bendingtherules.co.uk\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}