Electric Bikes - beware...of do it yourself kits....

am a lurker...finally dived in with a e bike....and wanted to warn others...

beware...of do it yourself kits....

have a back up....if you are going to do it yourself..

am running a $1046.00 kit on my e-bike kit....but it was not easy to get running.

had problems with a cord that ran from my battery to my controller...the cord was connected positive and negative on one end and in the opposite direction in the other....

the company..insisted that it was a connection or wiring error...on my part..and did
send me an aditional kit and controller, but failed to send that damned cord...if only..:mad:..anyway..

found a local guy to help me..and it cost me around $90....

am not an electrcian or engineer.

no matter how slick the website...or how smooth talking people from New Jersey are...

before getting a do it yourself kit...make sure you have a back up plan....

the kit may be good but if the quality control is not good the kit may not work for you too...

the kit is all good now...but if anything happens within the warrenty period...will most likely...go back to human power and get a Honda moped for work...since I am dreading having to speak to these people again.....:)

so beware.....be cautious...

I didn't have any issues with my kit, as far as installation goes. I did have to send the charger back to the store I purchased it from. After I got a new charger, life was good until I managed to poke a couple of holes in one of the cells. I sent the battery back and they repaired it. I had to pay for the repair, apparently poking a hole in one of the cells isn't covered under the warranty:)

I think that it is more important to deal with a reputable shop. I dealt with Cycle9 (http://www.cycle9.com/) I would highly recommend them. They are very knowledgeable and their customer service is awesome.

I have had nothing but an great experience. But I searched to find the best kit for the $ not giving up customer service. I also wanted to work with an American company. When I got my kit the charger was defective, the next day I had a new one.

I spent time communicating with the dealer and they were very responsive and really new their stuff.

Just like cars - they have good dealers and bad.

:twitchy:

hi on the charger side i bought a 60v charger from china and went ahead and pluged it in and puff puff it blew up. i had it looked at by an electrician and he said it was wired opposite to normal ie plus was neg . it only blew the internal fuse but it would be good practise to get a multi tester and stick in the plug first so you can see if its wired right. cheers crimsonsnake.

I try my best to stay away from ebay even if it is the ebay store of the company that makes the kit. Ebay alone is a crap shoot. Sounds like a simple mistake that could have corrected by switching the wires on the original kit. I know you shouldnt have to but sometimes, that is the case.

BTW... Is it just a no name brand ebay kit or a name brand kit that you found on ebay?

I've put together two conversion kits so far. Both 48V 1000W, plus 20Ah LiFePO4 batteries, all from different vendors, all from China.

Zero problems so far. Everything plugged together and worked as advertised, they run great.

Do it yourself kits kind of implies you have a certain skill level to understand how things get hooked up and at least some limited troubleshooting skills. If you don't have that skill level, pay someone to do it for you or buy a fully assembled bike. IMO

Plus you get what you pay for. My first kit I bought an ampedbikes kit so I could have US support, a recommended vendor, and a warranty. Their installation instructions says, if you don't understand everything discussed in here, don't even try it.