Hi All,
There are not too many posts about the Wilderness Energy brushless hubs, but I thought I might post something after hearing about the problems with Bionix and CrystaLYTE.

This is my second winter with the hub and so far it has proved to be pretty much bullet proof. I bike 1000 kilometres a month from March/April to November/December and a bit less during the snowy season. The hub has been on 3 different bikes and has proved to be remarkable.

Although the hub itself is sealed, I can't say as much for the accelerator and controller. I put a plastic bag over the former and a disposable plastic glove over the latter when it rains or snows. If wet, the controller will give Hall effect and much worse the accelerator when wet gives full speed only and won't stop when turned off. Good brakes are required.

I'm building up a new bike this winter and I'm thinking of using a rear hub this time. I'm thinking of the CrystaLYTE Journey 36V.

Any thoughts?

The Brushless Wilderness Energy motor is almost identical to the Crystalyte 408 in performance.

As to these kits people are selling with the names like "journey" and "phoenix", they're not Crystalyte's own model designations, rather names for the special packages which are either coined by Crystalyte or possibly even the dealer itself. The journey motor isn't unique, it'll be one of the 4 series systems, likely a 408 (this is the most overwhelmingly common number for a typical 26" MTB)

When I look at this kit, it seems like its a Crystalyte package as it comes all together like that. Personally, I quite like those battery boxes that Crystalyte makes, so long as they properly fit in your frame they're a treat to have for convenience, and they're not nearly as ugly as some of the other ones, the black version looks quite fine.

I suppose its up to you, if you like the specs on the Journey package then go for it. It'll perform much in the same way your Wilderness kit would, but the journey package comes with a good battery chemistry and pedal assist as well. If you don't want all that though, might as well go with putting your own kit together to your own specs.

not a bad looking kit. but im not a big fan of the led acid pack. im going to lithium :)

all my led acid batterys are going to a wind generator project see if i can get at least half off the grid

I built an ebike ~2 years ago using a Wilderness Energy kit and have commuted on it for 2 summers. It's a decent basic kit, heavy batteries and all. Get a different throttle, though! The problem as I understand it is that the wire that powers the charge indicator carries full voltage and so when the connector gets wet... ZOOM! I replaced it with a 3-wire twistgrip throttle from www.ebikes.ca. They can tell you how to change the connectors so that the 3-wire throttle will work with your 4-wire harness.

I built an ebike ~2 years ago using a Wilderness Energy kit and have commuted on it for 2 summers. It's a decent basic kit, heavy batteries and all. Get a different throttle, though! The problem as I understand it is that the wire that powers the charge indicator carries full voltage and so when the connector gets wet... ZOOM! I replaced it with a 3-wire twistgrip throttle from www.ebikes.ca. They can tell you how to change the connectors so that the 3-wire throttle will work with your 4-wire harness.

Yeh, I had that problem too in the summer. Makes you want good brakes!