I’m new to this- advice appreciated

[Hoofer]

Hi everyone, I have a couple of Marin mountain bikes; a nail trail and an attack trail, both are about 20 years old and I would like to convert one of them to electric.
I would prefer to convert the full suspension attack trail with a motor on the bottom bracket but am not sure whether it would be compatible with a modern kit. I get the impression that a rear hub drive for the hard tail nail trail would be much cheaper and probably more straight forward.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated

 

[sjpt]

Measure the bottom bracket width and post some photos; that will help people to give good advice.

If you have seriously steep hills or do quite technical mountain biking then a crank conversion will probably be best. Otherwise a rear hub should be quite adequate, and probably much cheaper and probably more straight forward as you say. You will also need to check the axle/rear dropout width. They tend to be a little higher today than 20 years ago; that might limit you choice of rear hub motor. I guess the frames are aluminium; you would need great care stretching them, probably best avoided.

 

[jimriley]

A bafang bbs01b in the hard tail would be great. I fitted on to my 2006 hybrid with 42t front cog, great on the tracks and trails around.