fietsbob

Stated his plan was putting an electric motor wheel in .. Only by fitting a mid drive motor conversion
in place of the crankset & BB

can a fancy hub without a motor be substituted..

kek

10sp mtb flat bar shifter do not work with 9sp rear derailleur
10sp road flat bar shifter do work with 9sp rear derailleur
(exception: 10sp Tiagra SL-4700 do not work with 9sp RD)

10s road shifters compatible with 9sp mtb rd:
Shimano Ultegra SL-R780 (with instant release, with multi release)
Shimano Ultegra SL-R770, Tiagra SL-4600, SL-R460 (with instant release, no multi release)

may be thread is the same? or at least axle diameter is the same? they may be compatible

VegasTriker

The Shimano website has a compatibility chart that shows you exactly which components work together. https://productinfo.shimano.com/#/

I'm a little late to the party but had I seen this earlier I would have suggested instead looking at some of the higher seating tadpole trikes. The Catrike Villager is one that I know about. It costs a little more than the one you chose ($2,550 + $200 shipping completely assembled). The Pfiff Primo weighs 75 pounds according to the information on Amazon. The Villager weighs 34 and comes with standard gearing. It is compatible with electric assist as shown here: https://www.utahtrikes.com/RECENTTRI...bentTrike.html. It's much easier to deal with a lighter trike to start with than to add more weight to an already heavy one.

fietsbob

Mechanic's perspective; speeds is spacing
(7 thinner to fit in place of 6, 8 added wider to the stack of 7)

after 8, the spacing got tighter .. and chains thinner..

so the clicks on the lever got closer together as the distance from cog to cog got less..


So you have to keep the whole integrated setup as one..

mixing is a dark art ..







..

elizilla 

The Microshift thumb shifter fit on my handlebars and does not foul on the other controls, so that part is all resolved. At least temporarily. Because... now it turns out the cogs that came on this rear wheel are wonky. The cog spacing matches 7-speed stuff not 9-speed, so my parts-matching project continues to unspool. LOL!

VegasTriker, I considered some recumbent trikes including the one you suggest, but I chose the upright one. Remember I am not coming at this from an able-bodied perspective; I have more factors to deal with here. Sorry. But take heart, I am not stopping here; a motorcycling-level budget goes a long way in the e-bicycle world. I may put together another machine, when this one is done. I'll already have a lot of parts!

squirtdad

@elizilla A thought just hit me......are you doing this with the hub motor wheel? if not do you know what hub motor wheel you are getting in the future and what it specs are? I would be a pain to start over if the hub motor wheel did not support all of what you are doing. And is the wheel cassette or freewheel?

elizilla 

Yes, I do have the hub motor wheel. I expected it to have a 9-speed cassette on it. But when it arrived and I tried to install it, I discovered that what it actually has is a 7-speed conventional freewheel that has been modified to add two extra cogs. They make the whole assembly too wide. You have to add a bunch of spacers to get the dropouts clear of the cogs, and you have to spring the frame dropouts more than I think is good, to force the extra spacers in. And if you want the dishing correct you would also have to add comparable spacers on the other side and spring the frame dropouts even more. It is too much to spring it, and I gave up on shoehorning it in like that.

I have a freewheel tool that would fit this freewheel's splines, but its center hole is too small to fit over the larger e-bike axle so I couldn't take the freewheel off to examine it. But it is clearly not a freehub/cassette; it is a freewheel. Considered putting my freewheel tool on the drill press to make the center hole bigger, but it's hardened steel; I'd destroy drill bits that cost more than a new freewheel tool so I set it aside.

Instead, I talked to the company that sold me this wheel and I was cranky at them. They confirmed my observations and they are sending me a conventional 7-cog freewheel AND a new freewheel tool to get their weird 9-speed freewheel off. Those parts will be here tomorrow. I appreciate that they are willing to stand by it.

I also found a 9-speed freewheel on Amazon. That will also be here tomorrow and I will see if it has proper 9-speed cog spacing, and if so whether I can fit it in. If it works I can keep my current derailleur and shifters. But if it is also an ersatz 7-to-9 converted freewheel I'll send it back, and send back whatever I can of the derailleur/shifter/chain I already have. And go back to the drawing board to choose 7-speed components instead. Yes, I could go to friction mode and just live with it, but I'd rather have index shifting and I'm prepared to keep plugging away at it.

It's always an adventure!

elizilla 

I appreciate that the seller of this wheel is willing to stand by it, even though I am annoyed at their poor product description. They could have just ignored me, or run me in circles with bad support, and they didn't. So I won't name them here, I don't want to trash them.

But I told them this: I can't even imagine any bike this kind of 9-cog freewheel would work in, without multiple other weird kludges! Why not just sell a 7-cog version and leave it at that? Because if my bike had 9 rear cogs from the factory, this wouldn't be a straight swap into that either. It would still be too wide for the dropouts, and the indexing would still fail. Every buyer will be unhappy since there's no good use case for what they sent me! They need to not do this!

If the 9-cog freewheel I ordered on Amazon actually has the right cog spacing, I'll write back to the company that sold me this hub motor wheel and let them know of it. They could switch to that and make people happier.

squirtdad

is this the one you got? claims it was designed for electric bikes....if it is not the one you got, may be worth looking at






https://www.thebikeshopstore.com/cat...xoCPhAQAvD_BwE

elizilla 

It is not the one I got, but I am interested! I think I will wait and see what happens with the parts I already have coming, though, before I buy any more.

Since I posted last night I have been reading Sheldon Brown again, and he says the cogs are spaced the same in 7/8/9 and that all these claims of incompatiblity are just to sell us things. So maybe the 7-cog freewheel WILL work with my 9-speed derailleur/chain/shifter and the indexing detentes will be correct. One way to know, try it and see. If it does, I will just stick with that and save myself from the frame springing drama, no need to order more parts. Or maybe I will follow his instruction on springing the frame. I will keep you guys posted.

Dan Burkhart 

While 7 and 8 speed are close enough that they can usually be made to work mixing speeds and shifters, 9 speed is substantially different. The overall width of a 9 speed is nearly identical to 8 speed, because they are packed closer together.

elizilla 

Just checking in with an update... the 7 speed freewheel, the new 9 speed freewheel, and the freewheel removal tool arrived.

The new 9 speed freewheel looks a lot like the first one, I guess that is just how they look. Like the two smallest cogs are an afterthought.

The tool they sent worked fine. Since the wheel has never yet been ridden on, it hasn’t been torqued by pedaling, so I didn’t have the struggle I am used to having when taking a freewheel off.

I set the three freewheels on the bench to measure. The 9 speed ones were identical to each other. The 7 speed cogs were not spaced as close together. This is not unexpected but it is good to empirically confirm.

Put the 7 speed freewheel on the wheel and put the wheel in the bike. It fit like it was made to go in, centered easily, no struggle anywhere.

That settles it. 7 speed it is, no more mucking about with 9!

Bundled up all the 9 speed specific stuff to go back. Ordered parts for 7 speed.

FedEx has the battery, and is saying it will be here Weds. With luck the latest parts order will be here by then too, and next weekend I can work some more.

elizilla 

Ok I did not wait for the weekend. It is alive!

I still want to tidy the wiring a bit, and fine tune the shifting. Adjust the seat, bars, etc to get it just right. And it needs some toe clips. But that is all easy stuff. I just returned from my test ride and everything works. Yay!

ronin4740

While I don't have any advice to offer I wanted to mention that I'm enjoying following the updates in this thread Looking forward to hearing about and maybe seeing photos of the finished product!

squirtdad

yay......now pics and full ride report

elizilla 

I now have four miles on it. It's been years since I rode a bicycle so longer rides will have to wait for me to get better shorts and shoes and a helmet - I used to have all those things but they've gone missing. Pretty sure I put my SPD shoes into the donate box, during my last move, but I can't even recall what happened to the rest of it.

It's amazing what electric can do to make a super heavy bike feel light. Reminiscent of motorcycles actually. Oh and today I got a wheel up. Oops.

The pedal assist works well. It is controlled by magnets on a disc that spins with the pedals, like a more elaborate cadence sensor. I have discovered that if I downshift, the magnets pass the sensor faster and more assist comes on. Which is perfect since going uphill is when you need more assist! I have got the menus set to give me a max of 3mph with the throttle, so if I want to go faster I have to pedal. But if I am in a low gear and pedal the assist kicks in pretty strong. The bike was super heavy even before the motor and battery went on, so I am shifting the gears a lot. Mainly because if the gear is too low, it helps me too much and I need at least some resistance when I pedal. I used to be able to keep my cadence high and spin all day, but now I am fumbling. I have some nice old Campy quill pedals which I just finished putting on, see if that helps me smooth this out, but sloppy pedaling and feeling like my knees are going to fly away may just be something I have to live with. I ran these pedals for years, back in the early 90s before I switched to clipless, and now I have them to remind me of what it felt like to be a serious cyclist.

I went out and bought one of those ridiculous huge padded seats I used to laugh at. It's not about comfort, it's because I didn't feel safe - this is a trike and there's more sideways motion than on a two-wheeled machine; add that to my own awkwardness and the small seat, and I felt like I was going to slide off. The new seat helps and I feel much safer.

Here are some pictures:



Me on the Pfiff Trike


Hub motor with new 7-speed derailleur


Pedal assist sensor


48V lithium ion battery mounted in front end

squirtdad

Nice build, I am glad is it working out for you And thanks for posting the pics

Kimmo 

Nice work!