this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2026
8 points (100.0% liked)

askchapo

23245 readers
123 users here now

Ask Hexbear is the place to ask and answer ~~thought-provoking~~ questions.

Rules:

  1. Posts must ask a question.

  2. If the question asked is serious, answer seriously.

  3. Questions where you want to learn more about socialism are allowed, but questions in bad faith are not.

  4. Try !feedback@hexbear.net if you're having questions about regarding moderation, site policy, the site itself, development, volunteering or the mod team.

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
PorkrollPosadist@hexbear.net
replaceable@hexbear.net
VILenin@hexbear.net
SexUnderSocialism@hexbear.net
khizuo@hexbear.net
Wakmrow@hexbear.net
8
Anyone have any experience with an ebike conversion? (hexbear.net)
submitted 22 hours ago by ComradeOohAah@hexbear.net to c/askchapo@hexbear.net
5 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

So with gas prices steadily rising, I'm wondering what my options are. A decent $2000 ebike is way out of my price range, but I've got a 29inch huffy with a bent rear wheel I was already looking to replace. So the thought of maybe trying one of these rear wheel ebike kits seems more within my price range. Anybody done it and had positive results?

This is what I'm looking at, that seems the most affordable.

https://www.amazon.com/INPAITOO-Bicycle-Conversion-Mutifunction-Display/dp/B0FCY26ZXP

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] JustSo@hexbear.net 4 points 21 hours ago

With the disclaimer that I'm still looking for the donor frame to perform a swap of my ebike crap onto a better frame, I think the key points with retrofitting a hub motor to an analog bike are:

  • a hub wheel with cassette will likely be wider than the rear fork so you will probably have to widen it a little bit, but you should be able to do this by hand or with an easy to make tool.
  • steel frame bikes can take modest torque without issue (the critical part is the dropout in the rear fork)
  • see if a fridge magnet sticks to the rear forks and if so you're good to go (sorry if obvious)
  • aluminium frames (or ones with alu rear fork/dropouts) are a bit soft and aluminimum doesn't like repeated stress, so typically people bolt a small shaped steel plate to the fork / side of the dropout to reinforce it and take the torque. Look up "ebike torque arm" to see what I'm talking about.
  • people sell custom torque arms online to fit various common / popular frames' rear forks, but this can get overwhelming to try and hunt down and if you are handy you can make them with hand tools and some steel plate from a hardware store.

ummm. only other thing I can think is that I'm not sure how easy it would be to install something into a frame with thru-hole dropouts and have mostly/only seen conversions done on slotted dropouts. Not really sure how common thru-hole ones are, might not even be something you need to think about at all.

Hope any of that might be useful. i can elaborate or clarify if I worded anything confusingly.