The pie turned up around 11am this morning!
Very well packed - good job GM. No sign of damage on the box or axles/spokes sticking out etc.
The wheel is heavier than I expected - definitely got some meat in it! Looks really smart too!
Two small boxes contain the accessories. First thing I noticed was that the battery/power connector had the "+" label on the red wire and the "-" label on the black wire: do I trust the stickers *and* the wire colours to be as they should be
Installation of the wheel was quite straightforward. Fitted the tube and tyre - tube valve doesn't stick out very far due to the profile of the wheel so long valves are useful. Fitted 6 speed freewheel. Wheel fitted in my MTB frame relatively easily - it was a tight fit so need a bit of persuasion to slot in. Chunky axle nuts do a good job of keeping it secure.
Couldn't resist giving it a quick test after the wheel was on so wired up 2 of the 3 12v/7Ah SLA batteries I have plus the thumb throttle. The good news is that the wheel turned - nice work! The bad news is that the throttle didn't control the speed!
After some troubleshooting using the other twist throttle and playing with the wires it seems the controller wiring cable supplied had some bad connections, or some broken internal wires. In the end I snipped off some of the controller cable as it's far too long anyway, and just used some mini-terminal block to connect the red/white/black of the throttle to the controller cable. This also made it much easier to get the wiring through a small hole into the battery box on the back of the bike!
I can see those small connectors causing problems and I would feel happier with soldered connections anyway. I did not get another bag of connectors supplied in my kit as per Hyena's review.
Once the wiring had been sorted I got the bike the right way up and ran the cables along the frame and tied it on with cable ties. Put 3x12v SLA batteries in the boot so I 'm running at 36v. This is my first electric bike conversion so I didn't want to invest too much money in batteries to begin with, but I can see that changing soon
First impressions: Wow - this has got a lot more punch than I expected!
With a few spurts on the throttle it soon got me to a decent speed and I hadn't pedaled at all! (Ssshh...don't tell the pedalec police!) Very impressive as I'm not small! 100Kgs of me + bike is an old steel MTB + 7.5Kgs of SLA batteries.
I've only had about 5mins on the bike as it was getting dark unfortunately! My neighbour had a quick go and he was very impressed too!
More tests and performance figures tomorrow...I have a Turnigy watt meter to connect up.
Quick picture attached...
So all in all after a few hours I've managed to get my first electric bike conversion up and running and now I'm hooked. Great work GM!
