I have a pretty cheap heavy bike, but I considered spending a few hundred on a conversion kit?

Is anyone able to give me any success stories about this type of product or are they realistically something I should give a miss?

Many individuals, myself included, have had good results with $200-$240 direct drive, 48V, 1000w motors combined with 48V or 52V batteries. Total cost of system (including charger) about $600. There are other kits in the $500-$700 range that have functioned adequately too.

You will have to double the budget. You can spend a few hundred on a conversion kit, but the battery will cost at least another three-four hundred bucks. My first kit was a $200 500W motor shipped from a warehouse in Chicago and a $280 ebay battery shipped from Singapore. I put it on a 26 year old bike. I like it. I don't know how far it will go w/o pedalling because I like to pedal.

You can still get $200 motors, but my next battery will be from a US seller, and it will likely be $400-450

I paid $240 for my kit without the battery (ebay, put 48V, 1000w into the browser), $280 for a 52V, 10 a/h battery (Luna Cycle on sale), $40 for the charger about one year ago; bike easily goes 32 mph (240 pounds bike plus rider, flat road, no wind), and has had no problems. Check endless sphere; individuals are getting 20,000 miles from these motors.

Lets be realistic, a decent battery from Luna cycles is going to cost between $450 and $600 at your door (including shipping and charger). And they are one of the best priced vendors out there.

And yep, I bought decent inexpensive battery from china once - it lasted about 2 years of light usage. I'm sticking with the more expensive name brands now - Panasonic or Samsung.

Batteries is where your cost is. The motors and controllers are cheap relative to that. Companies like Bafang and Cute make good geared hub motors (or mid drive) that are quite reliable and well proven world wide.

I'm not a fan of direct drive, the light weight and free wheeling capabilities of a geared motor are fine if you don't go much over 1000 watts.

I order a geared drive with a wheel mounted. It was easy to install and seems to be holding up pretty well.

By the way, consider build vs buy. I considered this model from farbike.com. It's $700 shipped, and has a 350W geared rear motor, 24v battery, disk brakes, new tires, and a front suspension. I spent $500 for a similar motor but a bigger battery, and by the time you count the new tires, tubes, new front wheel, brake upgrades, and a front fork with suspension, I spent more than $700.

It all depends on why you are doing this. Just a hands-on hobby for me, and also recreational riding.

DW, good find; Like you, I'm enjoying this discipline as somewhat of a hobby, so enjoy building different systems. May procure a Haibike or BionX for a more sophisticated (IMO) system. The 400w/h battery on my friend's Bosch 350 SEEMS to have quite a bit more range than my 520 w/h Samsung battery.

I have bought several kits from HalloMotor and have found them to be well build, well packaged and as described.
Currently have a 1500 watt hub motor with a 48volt 20ah battery. I blew out a controller which they walked me through helped determine the problem and replaced the part.
Previous to that I had a 750 watt kit, it was good as well.

This fellow lives near me. The kits are reasonably priced and easy to mount.

Home - Electric Bike Solutions, LLC

+1 Read several posts about this vendor, all positive.

I don't understand the pricing at HalloMotor. I see a 20-inch front wheel kit marked down from $500 to $200..is that the whole kit, or is the battery separate?

Looks like the battery is separate. If a kit doesn't explicitly call out that it comes with a particular battery pack, it's not going to come with one. A decent pack is typically around 50% of the cost of the conversion hardware. Sometimes more.

My bike is 3 years old, so yeah, pretty reliable if you get well proven stuff. (I like https://em3ev.com/ or maybe bmsbattery.com). My battery ( did crap out after 2 years, so my new batteries will all be Panasonic or Samsung (or equivalent) from em3ev. There is an insane amount of ebikes out there once you leave the US, so they the basic technology is well proven.

My LBS does a lot of conversions of bikes using this Motor-Crankset for a Mid dtive .. Hunters Love them ..

Electric Bike Kits - Lectric Cycles