I love your build! The somewhat old school classic motorcycle look is the way to go for a throttled cruiser ride IMHO. My brother is a welder and teacher with certs galore. I showed him your project and the Italjet's. He especially liked the double top rail chrome Italjet prototype (don't see it for sale anywhere?) which looks very similar to yours; just all blinged up (he's a Harley guy - new 2016 CVO Street Glide).

He wants me to design a Bobber build and offered to weld it up for me. Not sure I have the spare time for such a project inbetween the other many projects and honey-do's, but I'd sure like to.

Funny you mention the problem you encountered right off. I was on about my third or forth eMTB ride off-road with two friends on a full suspension non-electric MTB's. They were smoking me down hills, but I raced right back by them on every up hill. I had just passed them on a flat area after a decline and my bike started making this screeching noise and became hard to pedal. They were laughing as they passed back by me riding slow trying to figure out what was happening. I think they even threw a couple snide comments my way; something like "Did your electric cheating machine breakdown?"

After stopping and starting a couple times without the screeching ever going away, we all stopped to get more eyes on it while I cranked it with the rear wheel off the ground. Then I spotted the problem. A stick had wedged itself between the electric motor and the front chainring making an aweful sound and putting resistance on the pedals.

That gave me a big sigh of relief, as I thought I might have somehow fried something or had some other China part go out on me. All that worry and it was just a twig in just the right spot!

I'm approaching 600 miles now without any problems whatsoever and my MTB friends are now considering getting eMTB's too...