It Beggars Belief that e-bike manufacturers haven’t worked this out yet. 

Gee Dee 27/11/2023

When you put a 13-28 tooth freewheel on a 26 inch wheeled ebike the necessity for a throttle is pretty minimal, in fact, you pretty much don’t need one but ebike manufacturers fit them anyway and for some people they’ll come in handy. 

But here’s the thing, when you add that same freewheel to a 20 inch wheel it’s pretty much useless in higher gears. When I added an 11-34 freewheel to my Engwe Engine Pro although I had a habit of still using the throttle I didn’t really need it … even on steep hills. 

So, with this in mind why haven’t the ebike manufacturers out there taken this on board? Even new bikes coming out, why have they still not worked this out? I’ve emailed Engwe a few times about this and the only reply I got was that they have no plans on changing the design of their bikes. Which is ridiculous, it’s not a redesign it’s a parts change. 

If you’re scared of being caught in the U.K. or any country where throttled e-bikes are against the law, this is currently the next best thing to having a throttle … a properly geared ebike. 

For less than £30 and an hour or 2’s messing around it’s cheap and easy enough to do yourself (you may need to buy a split freewheel removal tool £30 if you don’t fancy knocking the motor through) but none of it is actually rocket surgery. 

It’s just another step towards making your ebike U.K. legal. 

MATE E-bikes is probably going to go tits up (and why this isn’t a bad thing)

by Gee Dee 25/10/2023

News is swirling around the blogs, Facebook pages and other news sources that MATE is on the verge of bankruptcy. It’s not long ago that its U.K. arm was put into receivership which was of no surprise except to MATE owners. 

Here’s the thing. There’s absolutely nothing proprietary about these bikes, nothing whatsoever. You can buy virtually every single part of these bikes from AliExpress … in fact, like the Engwe Engine Pro, X, EP2-Pro etc, you can buy better replacement parts across the board. 

Let’s be honest … you could build this bike with better parts for two thirds of the price of what MATE was price pointing their bikes for. 

“Yeah, but you said this isn’t a bad thing?”

I did and here’s why. 

These companies are going to rise and fall over time, new designs, new technologies but one thing is going to remain a constant. The batteries they’re built around will be generic, the motors will still probably be Bafang or some similar generic motor, cheap Shimano gear sets will still be used, bottom brackets will be standard, controllers and displays will be  generic as are goose stems, suspension and tyres. 

“But what if I damage my frame?”

So what? Buy a new frame. Use your existing parts in a better frame, go from cafe racer to foldable, full suspension to fixed frame … the choice is yours. 

This boys and girls is why this isn’t a bad thing, a vacuum forces innovation and within that, well, the skys the limit. 

Why are e-bikers confused for this?

By Gee Dee 17/10/2023

So, today I saw a couple of youngsters out on what I think was a Talaria Sting in really, really bad condition. I saw them riding down the road opposite and saw that when they banked the pavement near a local shop they struggled stopping, but stop they did. 

So, I turned around and caught up with them at the shop. (I was out and about on my Engwe Engine X.)

When I asked the passenger if it was 2000 watts … he replied “It’s not mine mate”. Think he thought I was the police. Once I convinced him I wasn’t and I was just interested in the bike and what I was capable of because I’m interested in buying a street legal SuRRon, it all came out. 

When the rider came out of the shop he told me it was 8000 watts, the motor on the back looked like a dustbin lid it was that big. The passenger looked about 15 and rider looked about 18. 

“How fast is it then?” I asked. 

“Well, I’ve had 80 out of it” replied the rider. “Really? It’s that quick?”

”Oh yeah, no brakes though, they’re shot” he told me. “Don’t you worry about the police catching you?” He laughed it off with “They tried, they can’t catch me, last time I just went into the park and lost ‘em”.

“The other time I just rode on the opposite side of the road into oncoming traffic and they stopped following me”. 

… and off they went, no helmets, no protective gear, not giving a fuck in the world, but most importantly, no brakes. 

See, as much as we’d like to have 750w motors, top speeds of 22 mile per hour, we won’t get it because the government see’s us as them, with that mentality, in my view it would be easier for me to get a high power SuRRon and a balaclava simply because, well, the police won’t be able to catch me. 

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