850 EUR for an omafiets! When I was in the Netherlands you could pick up the same bike for about 100 EUR used. Someone should setup a business of importing bikes from the Netherlands!
That said, I don’t know how you’d go about adding an assist to that bike. Because of the fender and tire covers there isn’t access to the top of the tire to do an external assist. The shifting is in the rear hub already so you’d probably lose all your gearing if you replace the tire with a new CVT electric assist hub. Realistically you probably would spend more money trying to convert that bike than just buying a new e-bike. Plus a e-bike will be made with lightweight materials and not weight a ton like an omafiets. That bike and an e-bike sort of have opposite design purposes (super simple and durable vs technology and powered). Btw, e-bikes aren’t super popular in the Netherlands because the country is so flat. Most bikes don’t have many gears and people don’t worry about the weight of the bikes as much. It was always really funny to see someone on a fancy mountain bike riding around the city. Sova From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Pavel Kirkovsky Sent: Monday, August 25, 2014 3:36 PM To: DorkbotPDX Subject: [dorkbotpdx-blabber] Electric bike conversion Hi all, I know there are several e-bike experts here! After reading about custom electric bicycles <http://electricbikereport.com/custom-electric-bikes-with-bosch-mid-drive-gates-belt-nuvinci-hub/> that use the NuVinci CVT hub, I became interested in figuring out what it would take to convert my bike to have an electric assist feature. The bike is a classic Dutch <http://www.workcycles.com/home-products/handmade-city-bicycles/workcycles-omafiets-dutch-granny-bike> "Omafiets" made by Workcycles, and it already has a N360 CVT hub. This bike is super comfortable already, but it would be even better with electric assist and a trailer for extra cargo capacity. My goal is to have a versatile comfortable bombproof bike that can be used to fetch groceries or, if needed, haul heavy things on a trailer. Could anyone help point me in the right direction? Thanks, Pavel
_______________________________________________ dorkbotpdx-blabber mailing list [email protected] http://music.columbia.edu/mailman/listinfo/dorkbotpdx-blabber
