Jettison the Bion-X?
 

New member here, already appreciative....

We bought a used Yuba Mundo, with a Bion-X drive, a few years back for hauling our second-grader to her urban school. Now she's leaving 5th grade, and the bike's been sitting for a year. I intend to use it as a work--alley and dumpster salvage for my eBay store, plus ladders and supplies for building maint--hauler and for the 5-mile commute between our two houses. The Bion-X controls are a mite iffy, and the battery would probably need a rebuild. Besides which, that hub is a millstone when it's not driving!

I'm thinking about selling the wheel and all the Bion-X gear, then just building or buying a good 48h rear wheel for the bike. But if I knew I could get the drive working dependably, I'd go on riding it. Pros and cons? How much work is it to rebuild the pile and troubleshoot controls?

The con is that BionX has been out of business for several years and parts may be difficult to locate. However, ebikesca (GRIN) has worked with the system and may be able to provide assistance or work around parts. I've always found them very helpful when I've had questions.

Whoa! what a great site. I was instantly transfixed by ebikes.ca. Thanks for that referral. Gonna wade right in!

Grins solution was to gut the Bionx wheel and use an aftermarket controller to make it go.

Dump it. These systems get more problematic as they age.

-SP

Bionx is long gone, I would say it is time to go. Trying to scour for parts that are probably used at this point for a old hub drive just isn't my cup of tea. If I were sticking with hub drive kits Grin would probably be the way to go. Though Yuba and better yet Tern does some excellent electric bikes these days with Bosch motors (or Yuba uses some Shimano stuff I believe on the lower end) way more support and super reliable and unlikely to go out of business anytime in the remote future. Bosch is committed and are a huge company and even if they discontinue the line they support their stuff for 16 years past when discontinued so as long as you don't have first gen stuff which never made it to the U.S. (aside from some individuals bringing it over) you have good support still and plenty of parts still being made.

Yep; sure looks like a rabbit hole. If it were just the battery, I might rebuild that. But given the system's other problems, I'll take the advice with relief. Thanks.

Thank you. I guess it's better to be the one suppkying the used parts than the one scavenging for them in this case.

Pretty much yes. Support is the biggest key if you are investing in something like that.

"Jettison the Bion-X" is something you'd definitely hear in a movie that was a ripoff of Alien

I have an old 24v Bionx system I shelved over 10 yrs ago. Decided to revive it on a used folding bike. As expected the battery holds almost no charge. Decided to open up the battery case - put the controller board in an old floppy disk plastic container, a new homebuilt lithium battery in the front cargo basket. I used a pouch battery sold by batteryhookup called SPIM08HP. Wired it 2p7s so my estimate is the battery would have about 600WH. I charge it to only to 28.4v and discharge to about 24.5v to maximize battery life. On this voltage range, battery imbalance does not go over 30 mv. In power assist level 2 (50% assist), I get about 60+ miles. On level 3 (100%) and occasional level 4 for steep San Francisco climbs, I get under 30 miles. I think the hardest part of the project was overthinking it. Once you open up the controller and dissecting it, it is easier than it looks. If you have a system lying around, I think it is worth the effort. Bionx was ahead of its time as it had regen. I think they came out too early in the ebike trend.
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I'll just add this for other BionX owners who may be in this situation.

About ten years ago, while BionX was still in business, I decided to retrofit my beloved 1973 Schwinn with a BionX kit. It worked like an absolute charm for me for several years. I'm middle-aged and live in a city of hills, and the BionX helped me get back the sheer enjoyment of riding. Unfortunately the battery finally died a few years ago, and I was heartbroken (not to say irritated) that I couldn't get a replacement. I also didn't really want to go shopping for another conversion kit, partly because I didn't want to put the bike (or myself!) through another conversion process, and partly because the BionX's pedal-torque-based assist mechanism was what sold me on an ebike in the first place.

I looked at battery-rebuild options, and wasn't encouraged by the way nobody but nobody wanted to work on BionX's closed-architecture, difficult-to-retrofit, no-company-to-support-you-any-more battery packs.

Luckily, I stumbled upon Northeast Battery Systems, LLC (northeastbatterysystems.com). They were agreeable and straightforward, provided a couple of options for re-celling and upgrading the battery pack, and were able to do the job and have it on its way back to me in about a week. My BionX is up and working again, and obviously I'm happy about it. :) If you have a BionX kit that's gone south because of the battery, and you'd like to bring it back to life again, I definitely recommend them.