So in my recent bike buying craze a picked up a 2005 full suspension Rocky Mountain Element 30…it has decent tunable full suspension, 26” wheels and weighs about 30 pounds as is…it also has nice hydraulic brakes. This is the next bike I plan to electrify…but from what I have learned from my Stephenwolff I plan to do it with a smaller mid drive motor and a smaller battery that is either hung from the seatpost or down on the lower frame tube if I can figure that out…based on what I have read this would add less than 15 pounds to the bike...probably about 12 pounds…I will update this when that happens. Currently it’s not easy to find the Toshkeng mid drive motor in stock but I will work on that.

So I recently bought a Stephenwolff hard tail with the big Bafang mid drive motor and a huge 30 amp back rack mounted battery. It definitely has some pros and cons to it and the used cost was $1900.

The battery setup is not ideal…it is a lot of weight to have up high and in the back of the bike, plus it puts on real strain on this rack and hitting potholes really shakes it up back there.

The bike goes very fast even with a middle sized chainring…with a full battery charge I can hit close to 40 MPH. But it’s sketchy at this speed and a bike that weighs 66 pounds all in. Initially I wanted a bike that I could use for short commutes on 25 mph local / congested roads. What I have found is that going this fast is not safe because the cars see me as a bike and don’t think I am going 30 MPH…another issue I have encountered with these high speeds is that there is zero pedal assist, the motor/battery are working very hard and pushing north of 1500W…all of this drains my 30 amp battery much quicker than you would expect. My guess is that I can do about 15 miles at this maxed out speed and take the battery down to about 25% remaining. This is important because I had thought about getting a small 52v battery in the 10-15 amp range and that would drain super fast under this full load.

after a few close calls at speed I decided to slow down and ride this more like a pedal bike…I travel at about 15-18mph. I have been playing around with my power assist in the 3 to 4 power setting with watts in the 200-350 range on flat ground. So based on this I plan to order a new mid drive by Toshteng that has a torque sensor. All of the high end purpose built e bikes use torque sensor motors so why not give it a go…

reasons for this are many…I want a lighter setup and really don’t need a 1000watt motor. Riding my bike now at these slower speeds shows me I could get away with a 500-750W mid drive easily. Plus all of the added weight (north of 30 pounds) really affects how this bike rides, for on the road it’s bad when going fast and hitting potholes or stopping fast, I would not attempt to take this bike on ANY type of single track. Before I completely write this bike off and sell it I plan to take off this 20 pound plus battery and rack and ride it with a small 10 amp unit just to see how much different it feels.

hope some of this info helps someone out there…remember, bigger is not always better!

looks like a good bike, see no issues with it, it likely has a compatible BB (68-73mm BSA threaded) but I couldnt confirm from their site. if thats your main use case is light trails / commuting, not a bad choice. personally after trying a hard tail setup which was decent, I went with a custom full suspension setup for XC/DH rough terrain... love it. as far as batteries you can go with reputable vendor like UPP and others or look into high end custom packs, like from bicycle motor works dot com. pretty good slim packs packing the most capacity, current, lightest weight in the smallest size using high end samsung cells. have had good performance on them 52v15ah slim pack is what you may want, 12.5 x 3.5 x 3.3" . fits in a small space.