Electric Bike Kit Recommendations

My son and I are looking at ordering an electric motor conversion kit for a bike.  I figure this would be a fun project for us to work on together and would have the convenience of most of the parts being included in the kit.  We're in lock down here so running to the store for parts isn't as convenient as it once was.  We're looking for a budget friendly kit to order off of Amazon, of which there are a ton.  Anyone have any experience with these and could recommend one for us?

Thanks!

I think Luna cycle has a good name. Never ordered from them but have shopped a lot. 

I would avoid the Amazon kits.  Quality and support  will be lacking.  I have done 2 conversions of recumbent trikes, used kits from electric bike outfitters and ebikekit.com both were over a grand but excellent quality and support.  Because a recumbent trike is a little different I needed cable extensions, and a display holder to put things where I wanted them.  In addition the battery mounting was changed, I am a picky SOB!  Both kits cost over a grand, but are amazing.  Range is more than we want to go in a day and the levels of assist compensate as we wear out or hit bigger hills.  

So I cannot recommend Amazon kits, but do recommend

-350 to 500 watts power, unless you want to do burn outs or pull heavy loads.

-battery size and voltage for the length of ride you do.  Wife uses the battery only for assist on hills and for the last 1/3 of a ride, needs a charge about every 100 miles of riding.  Would have liked a smaller lighter one on that kit.

-buy from someone who will give support after the sale.  

They are a blast and great idea for a project.  

Teh E36 M3 said:

I think Luna cycle has a good name. Never ordered from them but have shopped a lot. 

I built a bike with a Bafang BBS02 mid-drive kit from Luna for my wife last spring, and we both love it. It's an old steel road bike frame on 32mm tires, and it has a legit 30 mile throttle-only range on a 10Ah battery. Plenty of acceleration. We put a bunch of miles on it last summer and it's been totally reliable.

If I was going to build another one, I'm not sure I would order from Luna, though. There's nothing wrong with them, or any of the parts, I'm just not convinced that what you get from them is worth their markup. As far as I can tell, the differences between the Luna kit and just buying the Bafang parts off Amazon are:

• Luna logo on the motor housing
• Luna's "hot rod" programming in the motor controller
• Upgraded MOSFETs to handle the extra current from the "hot rod" tune

I found that you can buy a USB programming cable for $8 and program the motor controller yourself with freely-available software. Luna is not doing any black magic with their "hot rod" tune, they are just changing some of the parameters in the software, and it's not hard to DIY. I was even able to make some improvements; the bike doesn't lurch on and off the throttle as much with my tune as it did with the Luna time.

The BBS02 kits are pretty old now, so you may want to go with something newer/better, but ours is great and my wife is looking forward to getting out and putting a bunch more miles on it this year.

Depends entirely on what you're looking to do, and you're knowledge base! I've been learning eBikes for a few years now and only now am I getting serious about building my first.

Like someone else said, I wouldn't order off Amazon. The kits there are mega-cheap using bottom shelf square-wave controllers and very basic MOSFETs, sometimes clearly using ones that didn't pass QA from other factories that were just "Recycled" into their controllers. Some threads on cheap builds have shown aluminum wires even, and the listed wattage ratings are typically at full blast with a charged pack (wattages and controllers really produce a range dependent on voltage X amperage, I have a 350w controller that's really ~620w at full send).

Instead, look a Grin Technologies (Ebikes.ca), Luna Cycle, and barring that ask some questions on the Endless Sphere facebook group (I find is far better than the forum) for what little ebay sellers have good products. Grin is expensive like Luna, but their support is the best I've seen in any hobby and their selection is pretty mad. Luna makes phenominal batteries and excellent chargers that have options for max charge amounts (aka you can set it to charge the battery at 80% or something like that, which is great for safety AND long term health).                     

Thanks for all the feedback and suggestions.  I should have clarified a few things...

This is more about doing a project with my 13 year old, not so much about ending up with the ideal ebike.  I'd like for him to be able to ride it at the end and be proud of what we did but it doesn't need to be a really awesome ebike.

We have some Amazon gift cards to fund this project so that's why we're looking there.  I understand what that means quality-wise but as long as it's functional for a reasonable period of time we can live with the shortcomings.

I can ask around on the ES facebook forum for you. As for manufacturers, 8FUN is a motor manufacturer that makes pretty decent motors that have been showing up in nearly everything like ebike sharing; just make sure you're controller uses the same connector. Grin Technologies has a great writeup on them, but we're switching to a 9-pin HiGO connector now but there's still some odd formats out there including chargers using audio ports.

GIRTHQUAKE said:

As for manufacturers, 8FUN is a motor manufacturer that makes pretty decent motors that have been showing up in nearly everything like ebike sharing; just make sure you're controller uses the same connector. Grin Technologies has a great writeup on them, but we're switching to a 9-pin HiGO connector now but there's still some odd formats out there including chargers using audio ports.

For what it's worth, Bafang and 8fun seem to be the same company. Yeah, the 10Ah dolphin pack we are using has an XLR connector. Kinda weird, but it works.