Originally Posted by nwmtnbkr

famicodo,

First, I hate to burst your bubble--there are women in the e-bike community just like the larger cycling community. It's not a fraternity.

I installed a Currie conversion kit on my mountain bike last July and absolutely love it. It's affordable (cost me $279 from the superkids, that's still their price and they still have free shipping). This 450W non-hub motor in this kit has lots of torque, which I need living in the far northern US Rockies. Since installing this kit, I've put more miles on my bike than my truck. I've actually done other mods to make my bike a little more of a cargo bike, adding a front rack that I can load a basket and panniers on, bi-pod kickstand (love it), fenders, etc.

Like any major purchase, one needs to do their homework before buying. As far as consumer opinion goes, I tend to check multiple forums to see what the general consensus is among a broad group of people. I don't trust ebay ratings, in fact I don't tend to buy things on ebay.

I just built a 24V 20AH LIFEPO4 battery using Thunder Sky cells. I'm extremely happy with this battery's performance and suspect I'll build a second one in early summer since my original SLA is beginning to lose capacity. All-in-all, I'm very happy with my e-bike., then I want it to function as a bike. Those who want a motorcycle experience on an e-bike are likely going to be disappointed.

I think the price on most ready-made e-bikes is too high, especially since most are manufactured to a lower spec for the world market. (The EU and parts of Asia have set significant limits on the power and speed of street-legal electric bikes and these are the specs the big manufacturers build to--you'll get much better performance and probably be happier converting a bike on your own.)