Electric trike conversion - advice needed please

[Jaunty]

Hi all.

I am slightly disabled and nowadays ride a recumbent trike. Its great - I can go slower and slower and even stop without becoming unstable and falling over - I can just stop and sit there and have a rest - I don't (and can't) put a foot down to hold me up at traffic lights. I have a really low bottom gear (11 gear inches) and creep up steep hills - sparrows and pedestrians may overtake me, but I get there.

However, I am getting older, as happens for some reason. And I now need some help climbing hills. I bought a second-hand Urban Mover UM44 over eBay to see if I could cope if I didn't have to pedal, but have found that my confidence to ride two wheels has completely gone. It is nicely engineered, and I am contemplating cannibalising it to fit its working bits to my Trice T.

I want to do my own pedalling on the level and down hill, and do not want to have any great electrical speed ability. What I need is good torque to help me climb hills at, say, 5-7 mph. It seems to me that if I fitted the hub motor from the UM 26" wheel to a 20" wheel for the rear of the trike, I would get the kind of torque I would need.

Before I start, I wondered whether anyone had done such a thing before (it seems unlikely that they haven't), and also whether I would be better to buy a conversion kit.

Your advice on both questions would be most welcome.

Thanks,

JT

P.S. Just discovered that the UM has 165mm dropout width, whereas the Trice has only 135mm. Does this mean it can't be done, or is some sort of adapter available?

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[banbury frank]

Hi

we have supplied a kt to convert a ICE trike with a 20 inch rear wheel
climbs hill NO pedaling


The Kit starts AT £1200 we can fit in Banbury

see our web site under testimonials 1

If you email me on frank@xipi.co.uk

I will give you his email address

Frank

 

[Orraman]

Greetings Jaunty,

Can't offer help concerning a hub motor but my experience with a recumbent might interest you.

I 'installed' a double freewheel Cyclone motor to the middle of a long wheelbase recumbent which works very well indeed but I have difficulty with derailleur gears, I forget to change down before junctions.

Recently I bought an electric Powabyke trike with 3 speed hub transmission where the complete rear end is fastened to the "bicycle part" with only 4 bolts.
I am seriously considering converting the recumbent into a trike using the rear section from the tricycle.

The double freewheel Cyclone is intended for recumbents where the chainwheel drives the outer freewheel that sits on a needle roller clutch on the Cyclone gearbox shaft and so drives the back wheel through the clutch without any drag when the motor is not being used. My installation was a lash-up of the "permanently temporary" sort and has been performing as advertised for the last 3 years and took less than a couple of hours.

As the motor drives through the gears a range of ratios can be chosen to climb any hill at a lower speed but this is where the long recumbent bicycle falls down!

Dave