jrickards

My wife has a Specialized Myka 29er (hard tail) that she loves because it fits her and it took many bikes to find this one, a few years back. She would now like an ebike but, living in a smaller city, there aren't a lot of choices and none of them were as comfortable fitting as her 29er. Therefore, I suggested we convert her bike and she's happy with that.

I actually started looking at this last year but with COVID, I stopped. However, what I found was a nice 29er conversion kit but it turns out that the company has since gone belly up. I'm now having difficulty finding one and the more I look, the more confused I'm getting.

One tricky item about her bike that the previously found kit accommodated is that the top tube is very low, so low in fact that the small front triangle has only space and mounts for a single water bottle and the only cage and bottle that works is a side-loading cage and a 500ml bottle. The ebike kit I found last year came with a rear rack (double decker) where the battery sits in the lower level. A triangle mounted battery won't fit, even if we removed the bottle and cage.

Ignore whether or not a kit is difficult to install, I'm quite fine with handing that duty off to my local bike shop.

It was a rear wheel conversion kit but I don't know if front wheel or "chainring style" are better. Likely, my wife will never travel more than 30km at a time so that might affect the motor and battery options. Our city can have hills in a few areas and she's about 200lb/90kg (but consistently dropping these last few years and she's continuing to make progress, congrats honey!)

What can you recommend? Front/chainring/rear style? Motor wattage? Battery capacity? I think the finished kit should have a double decker rack, even if the rack is bought separately, as she plans to commute with the bike and will need access to the rack.

I think it should be pedal assist but if it is also a throttle (not throttle only), I'm fine with that.

Finally, we live in Canada.

Thanks