Originally Posted by portals

I assume this is a direct drive hub motor you want to use? If so pretty much guarantee you wont want to ride it with no power. they suck pretty bad unpowered. For a test ride sure I can see that and it is totally doable, but thats about it.

Thanks for the feedback, I have no experience of trying to ride a bike with a hub motor as a normal bike, I thought probably it would be a bad idea, thank you for confirming. ;-)

Coming at this from another way, if I have an ebike that is wired with a controller and battery and I swap out the back wheel removing the motor hub with a normal wheel, is that legal in UK?

From another way, what if I strapped a 12V car battery in to my back basket on a normal bike, just for fun, is that illegal?

Or a BCM to the bike with nothing else, where does that stand?

I think you can probably see where I'm going with this, I want the ebike larger motor distance potential but also option to ride it normally as a bike for school run etc. and be legal, getting pulled by cops with my son would not be a good look.... To do this I need to be able to as quickly as possible convert between the two, so I'm wondering what I can 'keep' on the bike to achieve this?

Thanks

PS:
as for legality in the UK I guess it depends on how big a jerk the cop is, or how stupid you were behaving to require a cop to pull you over on a bike. In the US I cant imagine a unpowered motor regardless of its theoretical power rating ever being a issue.

Lol, it's Glasgow, Scotland, fyi 90+% of them are, being polite, 'jerks'.... :-!