Introduction for DIY Hub Motor Kits

These kits  suit Back Yard  Tinkerers with some skills in bicycle maintenance etc. Basically these kits I can get the price down because they are made for the Chinese market where ebikes are now huge in numbers in some regions of China. Many Chinese rely on electric bikes for daily transport so these motors are not inferior in quality.

The difficulty with motors made for the Chinese comsumers is that they tend to use them in moped style electric bikes which have slightly wider dimensions than western bikes (such as mountain bikes). I've had no problems in fitting these motors into western style/dimension bike frames. Each type of motor has information on widths between frame needed,  installation etc

There is some work involved to install these kits, you need to spoke the motor into your own rim and make your own battery set up and supply your own batteries (see battery page). Spokes of the correct length are supplied with the kits to suit which ever rim you'll be installing it into.

Each kit contains a hub motor with spokes , a controller, a throttle (twist or thumb type) and brake handles with a cut-off switch. Also included are some torque washers or a torque bar depending on the motor type.

You have to spoke the motor into your own rim -see page link for spoking-or get a local bike shop to do it (if your technically minded spoking the motor into a rim is not particularly difficult), if your not very patient I wouldn't advise to do it yourself, but it really is not that difficult to spoke a motor into a rim if you take your time.

The idea of these kits is to make as cheap as possible hub motors to backyard tinkerers who like myself find the cost of ebikes or ebike kits rediculously high or who are just into building things for themselves. What I have done is found some suppliers of different types of  hub motor kits, hub motors, controllers, throttles etc . I've recently set up a small testing room in China and have trained a workman to do the testing of all components before they are sent out. I was planning on doing it myself from Australia but have found that I'm getting interest from people in other countries and need to test them in china before sending them out.

So in future all the kits/ parts will be sent from China. I'll be staying in China for some  between April/May 2006 to make sure all goes smoothly and will do alot of the testing myself while i'm there.

Detailed instructions are supplied on this site for each motor kit on what is needed to install the hub motors. Its basically a waster of paper/ink to put the instructions in the kit but also you can get an idea from the install instructions for each motor on what is involved to install.

Please check the dimensions of the hub motor you are interested in and that it can fit in your bike frame (some of the motors are slightly wider than standard bike frames and it might be necessary to bend out the frame by a cm or so, this can be done just using the your feet and arms though some people may not like the idea of doing this to a nice bike or for fear of weakening the frame). The reason the motors are slightly wider than standard bikes is that they are  produced for the chinese market and in china most ebikes are moped style which have a slightly wider frame.

Each hub motor kit is NOT supplied with batteries as sealed lead acid batteries (absorbed glass mat type -agm) are now readily available  in car Jump Starter Kits and at fairly low cost and easy to find. These are ideal for use on ebikes (its the same type of battery  manufacturers use on their ebikes). So you will need to have some basic knowledge of connecting batteries in series and joining wires together.

If your interested in any of the motors send me an email and tell me a bit about your project or what bike your going to install into and I can help with what my suit best or any other details you might want to know.

As a general rule bikes with aluminium frames are not the best for converting to an ebike, as with the extra battery weight and extra forces due to the motor there may be risk of some failure in the frame. This particularly applies to front motors being used in non-suspension type front forks made of aluminium.