Ideal gearing for ebike

[flik9999]

Hey so I was wondering what the ideal gearing for an ebike is as its heavier. My bike weighs about 20kg and is very hard to get it going, I think its actually harder work sometimes than if I was on a normal bike (Although im going at about 20 mph which I couldn't achieve that easily without the motor.)

So I was wondering what gearing you guys use for your ebikes and how you find it. I have a 5 spd workhorse which is run as single speed (53t 11/14ish) as the guy in the bike shop did a bodge job of attaching the bottle battery making it wobble so I had to tie it with loads of inner tubes to stop it working.

Anyway was wondering what would be ideal, the motor requires at least 1 full turn I think for it to kick in. Would I be better off with a lower geared bike to kick the motor in? Would 53-24 be easy enough ?

Also not sure what gearing I need to keep the ideal cadence of 90rpm is with this extra 10kg of bike, I heard that if you cant go at 90 you should use a lower gear so you can acheive that.

 

[D8ve]

First fix your gears. You should have 11-26 minimum.
Yes 90 is a good cadence, it is age limited and with fitness.
Given age and fitness are you not happy with 15-20 mph, your obviously using an illegal setup. That's your choice but you have a boost over anyone elas.

 

[anotherkiwi]

If you had a decent controller and a 12 magnet PAS disk you would feel the motor kick in after about 1/8th of a pedal revolution.

 

[Nealh]

Also a throttle helps as well..

 

[tringmotion]

First fix your gears. You should have 11-26 minimum.
Yes 90 is a good cadence, it is age limited and with fitness.
Given age and fitness are you not happy with 15-20 mph, your obviously using an illegal setup. That's your choice but you have a boost over anyone elas.

Yes as D8ve says, your setup is illegal, most ebikes have a 44t front chainwheel.


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[flik9999]

Ok so I am going to be switching the kit over to a better bike (specialised sirrus with V brakes and loads lighter).

Now in regards to gears would I gain more using them or going single speed. Do you tend to use your gears when climbing hills like you would on a normal bike or just power through on the highest gear.

Wondering if the 1kg lighter would gain me more than keeping my gears.

Keeping my gears is a complicated issue as I am converting to drop bars but the only levers I could find that support V brakes do not have built in gears.

As for fitness id say im ok fitness wise, can blast about on a road bike at fairly high speed not all day mind. The kit allows me to go even faster (A few roadies can beat me if they push hard and are using carbon etc). But most importantly it allows me to blast around all day without getting too tired.

 

[D8ve]

Keep the gears. Me plus bike is 120Kg an extra kilo for the gears is nothing compared to the ability to spin up hill and still zip off down again at reasonable cadences.
Unless you and the bike weighs less than 50 Kg that is.