What Parts Come With an E-Bike Conversion Kit?

Usually, if you would like to own an ebike or electric bike, you would have to get rid of your current bike and buy a brand new electric one. This is both expensive and, if your current bike is in good condition, pretty wasteful. But you could always buy an e-bike conversion kit! You see, performing the conversion yourself is almost always cheaper than either buying a new electric bike (you’re only paying for the parts you need) or getting someone else to do the conversion for you (which could end up costing more than the price of the kit). So have a look below at what you would get as part of a conversion kit and learn a little more about what each part is…

Hub Motor Wheel

Installing your new motor is as easy as replacing a wheel… literally! This is because the motor comes as part of a new wheel which you simply need to swap for one of your current wheels. Only if your motor is very powerful do you need to add an additional component called a torque arm, which holds the wheel axle fixed in place.

Battery

The battery which comes with your conversion kit is removable and can be charged from the mains. There are a number of different types of batteries which attach to the bike on the bottle mount screws (“bottle type”), the rear rack, or to the seat post (“frog type”). If treated well, your battery should last for up to 1,000 charge and discharge cycles whilst giving you a range of around 25 miles.

Controller

Your motor needs to know how much power to output, for example based upon how hard you are pedalling. For this, you need a controller, which takes in various inputs and passes power from the battery to the motor accordingly. Controller are specific to a particular motor type so our “brushless DC” motors require (perhaps unsurprisingly) “brushless DC” controllers.

Pedal Assist Sensor

There are two ways to ride an electric bike. The first requires you to manually throttle the motor, whereas the second uses a Pedal Assist Sensor (PAS) to detect how fast you are pedalling and provide automatic motor assistance. A usual PAS consists of a metal ring and a solid magnetic disk which fit to the pedal crank and bike frame. Fitting one of these sensors can be a bit of a nightmare as the pedal crank has to be removed. Instead, the PAS provided in a Panda Bikes conversion kit has a magnetic disk which can snap together, making the sensor extremely simply to fit.

Throttle

The throttle, which fits over the handlebars, is how you can control directly the output of the motor. If you are riding with automatic motor assistance then the throttle is used to give the motor an additional boost of power as and when you choose. Alternatively, you could use the throttle as the sole input to the motor, thereby allowing you to ride without assistance until you decide otherwise.

Display

The small handlebar display is where you can turn the kit on and off, select the level of automatic motor assistance, and read how much charge is left in your battery. These displays are most commonly simple LED readouts but more advanced kits can come with LCD displays which boast even greater functionality (e.g. speedometer and milometer).

Cut-off brakes

For security, you should always fit electric cutoff brake levers. They work like normal v-brake levers except they have an additional wire that goes to the controller to tell it when you are braking so that it can ensure the power to the motor is shut off. This means that you can’t accidentally accelerate forward by accidentally touching the throttle when you are trying to stop in traffic.

Torque Arms

Electric motors can cause damage to your bicycle frame and may jump loose if they are not properly secured using a torque arm. Please see our full page on torque arms for more information here – https://www.eb-uk.co.uk/torque-arms/