Magic Pie

Christmas present perhaps. I bought a bicycle conversion kit from Golden Motor, a Chinese company. That consisted of the back wheel with motor (no tire or freewheel). The rack and battery and various controls for the handlebars, throttle brakes, cruise control, battey indicators etc. I was going to fit this on to an old bike, but on checking the price of new tires and disk brakes I found that the parts would cost more than a new bike, so I bid on the unit pictured here on an internet auction. It was pretty easy to put all together, the only tricky part was getting the freewheel off of the wheel that came with the bike. I had to get a special tool for that. I have yet to get all the wiring trimmed down so that it is not hanging about. I have taken the thing on a couple of spins and it works very well indeed. We live in a mountainous area so not fun for little jaunts to the shops and whatnot. The laws of Japan do not allow a bike to run straight, but require it to be limited to pedal assist. This is set up to do that, but it also has a throttle. I suppose I must put in a disabling mechanism just in case I run into trouble with the police. The pedal assist works fine as well, so no problem with riding on normal roads.

I wanted to run the battery out, so took it on a straight run up the mountain, but I made the mistake of taking the dog with me and his battery ran out first, so I have yet to drain the thing dry. The thing also regenerates electricity as the brakes are applied, so I was hoping to drain it going up and charge it back a bit coming down. One day.

If you have a modicum of DIY in you I would recommend this MagicPie kit from golden motor.