Kit arrived yesterday in 2 boxes. Put the bike in my work stand and dropped out the front wheel - which has a 700c tyre. Wheel supplied was said to be 28". Spoke to the supplier and he said it was OK, and so it proved to be - new 700c rim tape was a perfect fit and so was the tyre.
Fitted the new rack - which has the battery. Didn't appreciate until later that the battery is removable so struggled to fit the heavy rack and had to call in a second pair of hands. If I'd taken the battery out would have been a doddle.
Grappled off the Revoshifts and fitted 2 new brake levers, an LCD display/controller and a throttle. Have told the wife that if I catch her riding around on motor only, it'll be divorce, as the bike has pedal assist. There's a disc with magnets that fits around the BB spindle and a Hall sensor that picks up the pedalling motion. Turn the pedals and the motor kicks in.
The Hall sensor is generic but the bracket supplied would not work for me, so junked that and glued the pickup to the frame with silicone (and sealed the housing at the same time as it's right where it's going to get wet) and secured with a cable tie.
No instructions supplied but the cables are all colour coded so difficult to get it wrong. Tidied all the cables up and secured with grey cable ties to match the frame. Looks very tidy now. Cables all have multi-pin moulded plugs and sockets with alignment arrows - so hard to get wrong.
Wheel fitting was a bit of a challenge as it's designed for 100m dropouts - which is what the bike has, but the forks are fairly bulbous in section just above the dropout and slightly fouled the hub motor on the lh side. Had to shuffle the axle plain washers about to get 2-3mm clearance between fork leg and motor casing and make a new washer to allow the axle nut to clear the lawyer lips. There are also tabbed washers on each side to lock the hub to the fork - otherwise the motor could spin, with disastrous results. Had to relieve the (aluminium) dropouts with a file by about a mm to get the new axle in.
Had to ring the supplier to find out which way the wheel goes into the forks (cable on the rh side as it happens) there's a slight resistance if you spin the wheel backwards, and none if you spin it forwards - knowing that would have saved me the call.
Switched it on and apart from a brief flicker of the screen, nothing. Put it on charge for 3-4 hours, still nothing - then I found the on-off switch on the battery, then we were in business.
The Chinglish instruction on setting up the lcd/controller didn't quite work for me but the supplier was very prompt in getting back to me with an email and that problem was solved.
So that was that. Throttle and pedal assist both worked on the stand and the wife is now waiting for the rain to stop before trying it.
I think the big challenge will be in not touching the throttle until you are on the bike and ready to go - otherwise the thing will set off without you...
Wouldn't fancy trying to change a front tube on a cold, wet, windy dark night, so maybe a pair of M+'s may be a good idea instead of the cheapo Bontrager tyres the bike came with. Still need to carry a 19mm spanner around though to get the wheel out.
The whole job took me about 5 hours, if I did it again I could halve that.
So, all in all, very pleased with the outcome. Electric Bike Conversions in Stoke (Cyclotricity agents) were very helpful and quick at getting the kit to me. The support over the phone was very prompt and helpful. Let's hope that the wife's physio bills will now be a bit less!
EDIT: The wife has been out for about 6 miles and pronounced it fine - sailed up the hill back into the village on only assistance level 3(of 5) - but she did complain that she couldn't pedal fast enough to keep up with the motor - had to explain that she needed to change up a gear or 2 then - not sure she understands 3x7 gears.....
